March On

We’re coming up on the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, with a major commemoration taking place this Saturday in D.C. and then the actual anniversary coming on Monday.

This means, of course, that we’re going to be treated to another round of comments from politicians and pundits who think that the entire event was encapsulated by the Only MLK Quote They Know™ and nothing else. I’ve already ranted about this before, on this site and elsewhere, but I’ll say one more time that all of those people need to read the rest of King’s speech, which laid out some stark criticisms of structural racism, police brutality, and endemic poverty, all issues we’re still grappling with today.

But more than just urging people to read all of King’s speech, I’d also like to remind folks that King was just one of the speakers that day.

The opening remarks came from the socialist labor leader A. Philip Randolph, who had organized the first March on Washington back in 1941, to force Franklin D. Roosevelt to take action against discrimination in defense industries and more. His presence was a reminder of the continuities of activists engaged in a long struggle for black equality, and his comments showed how closely he linked that cause to larger political fights.

“The March on Washington is not the climax of our struggle, but a new beginning not only for the Negro but for all Americans who thirst for freedom and a better life,” the 74-year-old labor leader said. “Look for the enemies of Medicare, of higher minimum wages, of Social Security, of federal aid to education and there you will find the enemy of the Negro, the coalition of Dixiecrats and reactionary Republicans that seek to dominate the Congress.”

Another major labor leader, Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers, likewise linked the struggle over civil rights to the preservation of all Americans’ rights. “I believe that freedom is an indivisible value that no one can be free unto himself,” he told the crowd. “And when Bull Connor with his police dogs and fire hoses destroys freedom in Birmingham, he is destroying my freedom in Detroit.”

The event featured religious leaders, as well. There was a post-WWII norm of including one prominent Protestant, one prominent Catholic and one prominent Jewish leader in major events — a straight-faced version of all those jokes about “a priest, a rabbi and a minister” — and the March on Washington was no different.

The three clerics backed the cause of civil rights, of course, but to different degrees.

Patrick O’Doyle, the Catholic archbishop of Washington, offered some tame words of support and sympathy, noting that “simple justice demands that the rights of all be honored by every man.”

Rev. Eugene Carson Blake from the National Council of Churches, an umbrella organization of mainline Protestant denominations, laid that challenge more directly at the feet of religious leaders, noting that “it is partly because the churches of America have failed to put their own house in order 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation [that] the United States still faces a racial crisis.”

Rabbi Joachim Prinz, the president of the American Jewish Congress, emphasized a line of argument that King himself had stressed earlier that year in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, when he called out white moderates for their indifference and inaction.

Dr. Prinz, who had been forced to flee Germany in 1937 due to his early opposition to the Nazis, pointed out parallels. “Under the Hitler regime, I learned many things,” he noted. “The most important thing that I learned under those tragic circumstances was that bigotry and hatred are not 'the most urgent problem.’ The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful and the most tragic problem is silence. A great people which had created a great civilization had become a nation of silent onlookers. They remained silent in the face of hate, in the face of brutality and in the face of mass murder.”

Leaders of various civil rights organizations only deepened this argument about how all Americans should be invested in the struggle for civil rights.

On behalf of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), Floyd McKissick read a speech written by James Farmer, who was locked up in a Louisiana jail. “We are fighting not only for our rights, and our freedom, we are fighting not only to make our nation safe for democracy it preaches, we are fighting also to give our old world a fighting chance for survival,” he read. “We are fighting to give millions of babies yet unborn, black, white, yellow and brown a chance to see day, and to carry on the battle to remove the night of hate, hunger and disease from the world.”

Whitney Young from the National Urban League likewise laid out an ambitious vision, warning that the day’s gathering was merely the start. “The evils of the past and the guilt about it cannot be erased by a one-day pilgrimage, however magnificent,” he said. “Our march is a march for America. It is a march just begun.”

Roy Wilkins of the NAACP called on all Americans to act and, more important, for the American government to live up to its fullest potential. He marveled that “the United States government, which can regulate the contents of a pill apparently is powerless to prevent the physical abuse of citizens within its own borders” and demanded it do better.

The strongest challenge to the government, however, came from John Lewis, leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

Just 23-years-old at the time, Lewis was by far the youngest and most radical of the speakers that day. Organizers had convinced him to tone down a fiery first draft, but he still gave a strong rebuke to all of Washington. “What political leader can stand up and say, ‘My party is the party of principles’?” he asked. “For the party of Kennedy is also the party of Eastland. The party of Javits is also the party of Goldwater.”

Criticizing leaders of both parties, he laid out an expansive vision that called not just for civil rights for African Americans but a “social revolution” that would uplift all Americans. “We need a bill that will provide for the homeless and starving people of this nation,” he said. “We need a bill that will ensure the equality of a maid who earns five dollars a week in a home of a family whose total income is $100,000 a year.”

“We must say: ‘Wake up America!  Wake up!’”

As you can see, it’s impossible to take a complex event like the March on Washington, with multiple speeches from a varied lineup of speakers, and boil it down to one single sentence. And yet, of course, so many Americans try to do just that.

But if you look back over those speeches, you’ll see that even if we were able to sum up the March in a single sentence, that wouldn’t be the one to pick.

The uniting theme of these speeches isn’t that one day, in the far-off future, white Americans would be able to forget about race and simply think of racial minorities as “just like us.”

No, the consistent message of the March was that in our present moment — in 1963, but 2023 too — all Americans needed to understand that their fates and fortunes are thoroughly intertwined with those of the most marginalized and powerless in the nation, that they had to work together in common cause and demand their representatives in Washington truly represent their needs and address them directly.

The message of the March, in the end, isn’t that we shouldn’t pay attention to race.

The message of the March is that we should pay attention to all the problems that plague all of us, whatever our race, or class, or religion, or region.

It’s not a message of complacency. It’s a call to action.

“The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful and the most tragic problem is silence.”

“Our march is a march for America. It is a march just begun.”

“We must say: ‘Wake up America!  Wake up!’”