*EPF109 08/25/2003
Rally Held To Commemorate 40th Anniversary of March on Washington
(Thousands remember the Dream) (1510)

By David Pitts
Washington File Special Correspondent

(On August 23, Martin Luther King III, son of Martin Luther King Jr., led a coalition of groups in a rally to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the historic March on Washington which culminated in Dr. King's famous "I Have A Dream" speech. This is the second of two articles to mark the occasion.)

Washington -- Under a near cloudless sky, thousands of people assembled at the Lincoln Memorial August 23 to remember a day that changed the course of American history and that helped shape the civil and human rights movement around the world. The rally took place at the same location as the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom that occurred 40 years ago this month.

The gathering was much smaller than on August 28, 1963, and no speaker equaled the eloquence of Martin Luther King Jr., whose "I Have A Dream" speech four decades ago helped trigger major civil rights victories. How could they? But many speakers recalled Dr. King's words not only to invoke the struggles of his day, but also to call attention to the unfinished tasks of this day. Calling on young Americans to reject complacency and inaction, civil rights veteran Representative John Lewis (Democrat-Georgia), the only person alive who spoke at the 1963 march, said, "In spite of all the progress we have made, we still have a great distance to go." But he cautioned against minimizing the earlier triumphs over segregation. "We live in a different world. If you don't believe me, come and walk in my shoes," he said.

A prevalent theme of the day was the continued inspiration that Americans derive from the March on Washington and Dr. King's speech -- but not just Americans. Lewis spoke of the worldwide impact of that day. "Because of the March on Washington 40 years ago, we did not just change our nation, we changed the world," he said. Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson also spoke of its universal influence. "We changed the priorities of the nation. We set the pace for human rights struggles around the world," he remarked. "From Berlin to Brazil, Santiago to South Africa, they sang 'We Shall Overcome' (the anthem of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement)."

Martin Luther King III asked people to remember his father as a man of action, and not just as an idealist and a dreamer. "He didn't just talk the talk, he walked the walk," he said, referring to his father's nonviolent campaign of direct action to end racial segregation in America. His mother, Coretta Scott King, said that "dissent and protest are not only right, but obligations of good citizenship." She commented on the multicultural nature of the 2003 rally, a reflection of the fact that America now is a much more diverse nation than in 1963. The speakers this year included Arab Americans and Native Americans as well as whites and blacks. And Muslims, as well as Christians and Jews, spoke -- and women.

Incredible as it may seem now, 40 years ago no women were allowed to speak at the march, recalls 91-year old Dorothy Height, president emeritus of the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW). Height, who helped organize the 1963 march as a member of the United Civil Rights Leadership group, said "we pushed for it, but this was before the women's movement. Only men spoke." But at the 2003 rally, many women spoke, some remarking that the example of the Civil Rights Movement helped pave the way for later struggles, including the women's movement. Martin Luther King III called for the "political empowerment of our sisters," pointing out that women form "52 percent of the U.S. population, but only 14 percent of the U.S. Congress."

A major difference compared to four decades ago is that this year's march did not have as singular a focus as the 1963 gathering when racial segregation and discrimination still were entrenched in American society, particularly in the South. Over 100 groups, with a smorgasbord of agendas, were involved in this year's rally, championing causes as varied as debt relief for poorer countries, support for the homeless, opposition to the U.S. presence in Iraq, universal healthcare, equal rights for gays, and greater action against AIDS. There also was heavy emphasis on a continuing voter registration drive, leading up to the 2004 presidential election.

Many people at this year's commemoration were too young to have attended the 1963 march, but not all. Donal Leace, a teacher at the Duke Ellington School for the Performing Arts and a singer, said, he felt it was important to attend the 1963 march "to make a statement. It turned out to be one of the best days of my life. I felt as if I were a member of the great human family. There seemed to be no strangers that day." Asked about the march this year, he said, "this one is very different; the diversity of issues is much more pronounced. But it is obviously the march 40 years ago that was most important. It will be remembered because it helped end the worst features of segregation."

In recognition of that, a ceremony also took place at the Lincoln Memorial on August 22 at which a plaque was unveiled to mark the very spot where Dr. King gave his "I Have A Dream" speech. Now, and for all time to come, visitors will be reminded of the young Baptist preacher who spoke in the shadow of Lincoln exactly 100 years after the president issued the Emancipation Proclamation leading to the end of slavery in America. "It will become sacred ground," said John Lewis. It "opens a new chapter in America's long journey to freedom and equality," said Coretta Scott King.

The 1963 march was the brainchild of civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph, the legendary president of the International Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first black labor union in the United States. He had originally planned a march on Washington in 1941, but called it off because of President Franklin Roosevelt's pledge to ban racial discrimination in the defense industries, a promise Roosevelt kept. The idea resurfaced in the early 1960s during the Kennedy administration. After President Kennedy submitted a comprehensive civil rights bill to Congress in June 1963, Randolph, King and other civil rights leaders agreed in July that a march was necessary to build support for the bill and other needed reforms. Kennedy at first opposed the march, fearing violence, but later embraced it.

The march took place two months later on August 28. "Freedom trains," and "freedom buses," brought more than 250,000 people to Washington from all parts of the United States. In addition to civil rights leaders and U.S. Senators and Representatives, major celebrities attended the event, including Jackie Robinson (who had broken the race barrier in major league baseball 16 years earlier), James Baldwin, Burt Lancaster, Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, Sidney Poitier, Lena Horne, Harry Belafonte, Charlton Heston, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, and Josephine Baker (who flew in from Paris).

Press coverage was more extensive than for any previous political demonstration in American history. According to Taylor Branch, author of "Pillar of Fire," a bestselling history of the Civil Rights Movement, "millions of television viewers, including President Kennedy, heard the complete King speech. All three U.S. networks carried it live." It electrified the marchers and those watching on television, including many around the world who saw it via the newly launched Telstar communications satellite, Branch added. Its impact was instant -- a riveting demonstration of the power of words, some of which were spontaneous, including the "I Have A Dream" portions. King's closing lines, a rhythmic appeal to the best in the American character, also is a plea for unity across barriers of race and religion.

"When we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all God's children -- black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics -- will be able to join hands and sing in the words of that old Negro spiritual: 'Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last'!"

Just a year before his death -- in his book, "Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community" -- King voiced his plea for unity even more fully, words as relevant today as when they were written. "We have inherited a large house, a great world house in which we have to live together -- black and white, Easterner and Westerner, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Muslim and Hindu -- a family unduly separated in ideas, culture, and interest, who, because we can never again live apart, must learn somehow to live with each other in peace."

(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

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