Today, August 28 2024, we remember the 1963 March on Washington, at the time the largest mass demonstration in U.S. history, described by co-organizers A. Phillip Randolph and Bayard Rustin as ” the advanced guard of a massive, moral revolution for jobs and freedom.”
On August 28, 1963, the epicenter of this revolution was the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. But the March announced the prominence of a movement national in scope that would not cease until its goals were achieved. “This revolution reverberates throughout the land touching every city, every town, every village where black men are segregated, oppressed and exploited,” Randolph emphasized in his speech that day. “But this civil rights revolution is not confined to the Negro, nor is it confined to civil rights for our white allies know that they cannot be free while we are not.”
The March highlighted the struggle to secure voting rights as an indispensable element of this civil rights revolution. As Dr. King emphasized in his “I Have a Dream” speech, “We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote.” John Lewis made clear that the voting rights struggle in the United States was part of the larger global decolonization struggle:
“’One man, one vote’ is the African cry,” he told the vast crowd. “It is ours too. It must be ours!”
At the conclusion of the March, Bayard Rustin led the crowd in a recitation of the March pledge, including:
“I pledge to carry the message of the March to my friends and neighbors, back home and arouse them to an equal commitment and equal effort.
I will march and I will write letters.
I will demonstrate and I will vote.
I will work to make sure that my voice and those of my brothers ring clear and determine from every corner of our land.”
For a broader and deeper discussion of the March and its meaning, see:
“The Meaning of the March“
“What We Demand“
Dr. Clarence B. Jones remembers the March
As we remember the March, please remember to carry on its message and vision through action. This November it is imperative to vote. Too many people died to secure voting rights to fail to abandon them at this moment of national crisis.
Please remember the words of A. Philip Randolph to the March participants on that historic day:
“When we leave, it will be to carry on the civil rights revolution home with us into every nook and cranny of the land, and we shall return again and again to Washington in every growing numbers until total freedom is ours. We shall settle for nothing less, and may God grant that we may have the courage, the strength, and faith in this hour of trial by fire never to falter.”
Jonathan D. Greenberg
