![]() ![]() Each of the speakers was allotted fifteen minutes, but the day belonged to the young and charismatic leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.ĭr. On August 28, 1963, under a nearly cloudless sky, more than 250,000 people, a fifth of them white, gathered near the Lincoln Memorial in Washington to rally for “jobs and freedom.” The roster of speakers included speakers from nearly every segment of society - labor leaders like Walter Reuther, clergy, film stars such as Sidney Poitier and Marlon Brando and folksingers such as Joan Baez. The leaders even agreed to tone down the rhetoric of some of the more militant activists for the sake of unity, and they worked closely with the Kennedy administration, which hoped the march would, in fact, lead to passage of the civil rights bill. ![]() The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Congress of Racial Equality, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee and the Urban League all managed to bury their differences and work together. The various elements of the civil rights movement, many of which had been wary of one another, agreed to participate. He welcomed the participation of white groups as well as black in order to demonstrate the multiracial backing for civil rights. Philip Randolph, a labor leader and longtime civil rights activist, called for a massive march on Washington to dramatize the issue. On June 11, 1963, he proposed such a bill to Congress, asking for legislation that would provide “the kind of equality of treatment which we would want for ourselves.” Southern representatives in Congress managed to block the bill in committee, and civil rights leaders sought some way to build political momentum behind the measure.Ī. Kennedy recognized that only a strong civil rights bill would put teeth into the drive to secure equal protection of the laws for African Americans. And the dream that they heard on the steps of the Monument became the dream of a generation.Īs far as black Americans were concerned, the nation’s response to Brown was agonizingly slow, and neither state legislatures nor the Congress seemed willing to help their cause along. They came to Washington to demand equal rights for black people. They came by plane, by car, by bus, by train, and by foot. More than 200,000 people-black and white-came to listen. He did not want people to think about impossibilities rather, he inspired them to focus on Possibilities.On August 28, 1963, some 100 years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves, a young man named Martin Luther King climbed the marble steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. In fact, he wanted African Americans to fight for the same rights held by whites in the U.S. King is preaching to his people a lesson of moving ahead and focusing on goals in life, despite facing difficulties. If you can’t fly, run if you can’t run, walk if you can’t walk, crawl but by all means keep moving.” This is your challenge! Reach out and grab it… but there is something we can learn from the broken grammar of that mother, that we must keep moving. “Keep moving, for it may well be that the greatest song has not yet been sung, the greatest book has not been written, the highest mountain has not been climbed. The exact origin of this phrase is not known, though it is reported that it appeared in the book of Isaiah for the first time, but later Martin Luther King used it in his famous speech at a Spelman college rally in Sisters Chapel.
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