At March on Washington's 60th anniversary, leaders seek energy of original movement for civil rights

At March on Washington’s 60th anniversary, leaders seek energy of original movement for civil rights

1 of 45 |

As the 60th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington approaches, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., recalls her memory of that day as one of the organizers. (August 22)

2 of 45 |

In 1963, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. issued his resounding call for racial harmony that set off decades of push and pull toward progress. The historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom remains a marker by which progress is measured. (Aug. 23) (AP video: Arijeta Lajka and Joe Frederick)

3 of 45 |

Sixty years ago, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. issued his resounding call for racial harmony that set off decades of push and pull toward progress. However, Martin Luther King III, King’s oldest son, didn’t see today’s America achieved the dream his father expected.

4 of 45 |

Sixty years after the March on Washington, Ambassador Andrew Young reflects on the march’s success, and the triumphs and struggles that followed. (Aug. 23)

5 of 45 |

FILE - The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, speaks to thousands during his “I Have a Dream” speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in Washington on Aug. 28, 1963. Actor-singer Sammy Davis Jr. is at bottom right. (AP Photo/File)

6 of 45 |

FILE - Members of the NAACP from Wilmington, N.C., sing in the street near the Washington monument grounds, Aug. 28, 1963 after their arrival to participate in the March on Washington. (AP Photo/File)

7 of 45 |

FILE - Civil rights demonstrators gather on the Washington Monument grounds in Washington Aug. 28, 1963. (AP Photo/File)

8 of 45 |

FILE - The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. acknowledges the crowd outside the Lincoln Memorial for his “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington on Aug. 28, 1963. (AP Photo/File)

9 of 45 |

This photo provided by the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture shows participants in the March on Washington on Aug. 28, 1963. (Aaron Stanley Tretick/Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture via AP)

10 of 45 |

11 of 45 |

FILE - President John F. Kennedy stands with a group of leaders of the March on Washington, at the White House on Aug. 28, 1963. From left are Whitney Young, National Urban League; Martin Luther King Jr., Southern Christian Leadership Conference; John Lewis, Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee; Rabbi Joachim Prinz, American Jewish Congress; Dr. Eugene P. Donnaly, National Council of Churches; A. Philip Randolph, AFL-CIO vice president; Kennedy; Walter Reuther, United Auto Workers; Vice-President Johnson, rear, and Roy Wilkins, NAACP. (AP Photo/File)

12 of 45 |

FILE - During a news conference in New York on Aug. 24, 1963, Bayard Rustin, deputy director of the planned March on Washington, points to a map showing the route of the Aug. 28, 1963 Civil Rights march. (AP Photo/File)

13 of 45 |

This photo provided by the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture shows crowds participating in the March on Washington on Aug. 28, 1963. (Aaron Stanley Tretick/Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture via AP)

14 of 45 |

FILE - Coretta Scott King, at podium, widow of slain civil rights leader the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., acknowledges the crowd gathered for the Civil Rights March at Lincoln Memorial in Washington on Aug. 28, 1993. Standing with King are Dick Gregory, left, and two of her children. (AP Photo/Dennis Cook, File)

15 of 45 |

FILE - Crowds fill the steps of the Lincoln Memorial while attending the “Restoring Honor” rally, organized by Glenn Beck, near the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, on Saturday, Aug. 28, 2010. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

16 of 45 |

FILE - James Johnson, of Delray Beach, Fla., right, attends the “Restoring Honor” rally, organized by Glenn Beck, near the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, on Saturday, Aug. 28, 2010. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

17 of 45 |

FILE - Los Angeles activist Ted Hayes stands with a scale model of a slave ship, in which thousands of slaves were brought to North America, during a rally to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the March On Washington, at Los Angeles City Hall Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2013. Hayes emphasized the part of the Rev. Martin Luther King’s 1963 “I Have A Dream” speech that called for reparations for the descendants of those involuntarily brought from Africa to what later became the United States. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon, File)

18 of 45 |

FILE - From left, Pete Matthew, Louise Moss Fortune, vice president of the Philadelphia Martin Luther King Jr. Association for Nonviolence, and Cynthia Macleod, superintendent of the Independence National Historical Park, take part in a symbolic ringing of the Liberty Bell on the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2013, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)

19 of 45 |

FILE - Members of the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church pray during a bell ringing ceremony in Montgomery, Ala., Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2013. The ceremony honors the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington and the “I Have a Dream” speech by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who was pastor at this church in 1954. (AP Photo/Dave Martin, File)

20 of 45 |

FILE - Seen on a monitor, President Barack Obama speaks at a ceremony commemorating the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2013, at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. The president was set to lead civil rights pioneers Wednesday in a ceremony for the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, where Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech roused the 250,000 people who rallied there decades ago for racial equality. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

21 of 45 |

FILE - Audience members wear ponchos during a light rain at the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., spoke in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2013. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)

22 of 45 |

FILE - President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama, former President Jimmy Carter and former President Bill Clinton wave as they leave 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington where Martin Luther King Jr., spoke in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2013. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)

23 of 45 |

FILE - Hundreds march during a “March on Washington” rally, Friday, Aug. 28, 2020, in Salt Lake City. Marchers gathered on the 57th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s “I Have A Dream” speech. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File)

24 of 45 |

FILE - Janet Murguia, president of UnidosUS, speaks during the March on Washington, Friday Aug. 28, 2020, at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, on the 57th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s “I Have A Dream” speech. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, Pool, File)

25 of 45 |

FILE - Yolanda Renee King, granddaughter of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., raises her fist as she speaks during the March on Washington, Friday Aug. 28, 2020, in Washington, on the 57th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s “I Have A Dream” speech. (Jonathan Ernst/Pool via AP, File)

26 of 45 |

FILE - Priscilla Duerrero holds a sign reading “Racism Is A Pandemic” during the March on Washington, Friday, Aug. 28, 2020, at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, on the 57th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s “I Have A Dream” speech. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, File)

27 of 45 |

FILE - Philonise Floyd, brother of George Floyd, speaks at the March on Washington, Friday Aug. 28, 2020, at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, Pool, File)

28 of 45 |

FILE - President Donald Trump and Alice Johnson smile after Trump signed a full pardon for her first-time nonviolent drug offense, in the Oval Office of the White House, Friday, Aug. 28, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

29 of 45 |

FILE - A man holds a portrait of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial during the March on Washington, Friday Aug. 28, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

30 of 45 |

FILE - People carry signs with George Floyd’s portrait as they march from the Lincoln Memorial to the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington on Aug. 28, 2020. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

31 of 45 |

FILE - People walk along Pennsylvania Avenue during the March on Washington, Friday Aug. 28, 2020, on the 57th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s “I Have A Dream” speech. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)

32 of 45 |

FILE - Demonstrators wear costumes depicting Abu Ghraib prisoners while protesting outside the White House following the March on Washington, Friday, Aug. 28, 2020, at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, on the 57th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s “I Have A Dream” speech. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, File)

33 of 45 |

FILE - Stretch Sanders, center, leads a “March on Washington” rally for police accountability and reform at a statue of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Friday, Aug. 28, 2020, in North Las Vegas, Nev. The rally was held on the 57th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s “I Have A Dream” speech. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)

34 of 45 |

FILE - Demonstrator Joyce Norman, of Atlanta wears a KN95 mask with the words “protect my vote” during a march for voting rights, marking the 58th anniversary of the March on Washington on Saturday, Aug. 28, 2021, in Atlanta. Thousands of voting rights advocates rallied across the country Saturday to call for sweeping protections against a further erosion of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson, File)

35 of 45 |

FILE - The Rev. Al Sharpton, foreground third from right, holds a banner with Martin Luther King, III, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, second from right, and Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, right, and others, during the march to call for sweeping protections against a further erosion of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Saturday, Aug. 28, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)

36 of 45 |

FILE - A demonstrator holds a sign reading “Stop Jim Crow 2.0" during a march for voting rights, to commemorate the 58th anniversary of the March on Washington on Saturday, Aug. 28, 2021, in Atlanta. Hundreds of thousands of voting rights advocates rallied across the country Saturday to call for sweeping protections against a further erosion of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson, File)

37 of 45 |

FILE - With the Washington Monument at left, demonstrators hold up banners during a march for voting rights commeorating the 58th anniversary of the March on Washington, Saturday, Aug. 28, 2021, in Washington. Hundreds of thousands of voting rights advocates rallied across the country Saturday to call for sweeping protections against a further erosion of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)

38 of 45 |

FILE - Rain runs down the face of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington, Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2013. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

39 of 45 |

Civil Rights activist Andrew Young speaks during an interview on Wednesday, Aug. 16, 2023, in Atlanta. “If there is a place where we can learn to live together as brothers and sisters, rather than perish together as fools, it’s the United States of America,” he says. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

40 of 45 |

FILE - With civil rights activist Andrew Young at right, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. hops over a puddle as it rains in Selma, Ala., on March 1, 1965. King led hundreds of African Americans to the court house in a voter registration drive. At right, behind King is Rev. Ralph Abernathy. (AP Photo/File)

41 of 45 |

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., reflects on her time as a young civil rights activist during the 1963 March on Washington, during an Associated Press interview in her office on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2023. Norton was a 26-year-old Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee worker in Mississippi in 1963 when she became part of the staff that organized the March on Washington. “As I flew from New York to Washington, I could see that the march would be a success because as far as the eye could see, there were crowds,” she said. “We weren’t sure how big because there had never been such a large march before, but it was overwhelming.” (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

42 of 45 |

43 of 45 |

The Rev. Al Sharpton, who will participate in the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington on Aug. 26, speaks during an interview at his office about the event, Monday July 31, 2023, in New York. 2023 is at least the third time that Sharpton has organized a commemoration of the Aug. 28, 1963 March on Washington. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

44 of 45 |

The Rev. Al Sharpton, who will participate in the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington on Aug. 26, leaves his office for an interview about the event, Monday July 31, 2023, in New York. 2023 is at least the third time that Sharpton has organized a commemoration of the Aug. 28, 1963 March on Washington. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

45 of 45 |

FILE - A stone slab marks the spot of the “I have a dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, Thursday, Aug. 28, 2008 - the 45th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King’s speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. (AP Photo/Lawrence Jackson, File)

By AARON MORRISON

Sixty years ago, Andrew Young and his staff had just emerged from an exhausting campaign against racial segregation in Birmingham, Alabama.

But they didn’t feel no ways tired, as the Black spiritual says. The foot soldiers were on a “freedom high,” Young recalls.

“They wanted to keep on marching, they wanted to march from Birmingham to Washington,” he said.

And march they did, in the nation’s capital. Just four months later, they massed for what is still considered one of the greatest and most consequential racial justice demonstrations in U.S. history.

The Latest Movie Reviews

Movie Review: ‘Harold and the Purple Crayon’ brings beloved book to life in a familiar story

★★★★

Movie Review: ‘Cuckoo’ is a stylish nightmare, with a wonderfully sinister Dan Stevens

★★★★

Review: In ‘The Instigators,’ a heist goes terrifically wrong

★★★★

Movie Review: A third-act friendship comedy in ‘The Fabulous Four’

★★★★

The nonviolent protest, which attracted as many as 250,000 to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, helped till the ground for passage of federal civil rights and voting rights legislation in the next few years.

But in the decades that followed, the rights gains feeding the freedom high felt by Young and others came under increasing threat. A close adviser to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Young went on to become a congressman, a U.N. ambassador and Atlanta’s mayor. He sees clear progress from the time when Black Americans largely had no guarantee of equal rights under the law. But he hasn’t ignored the setbacks.

“We take two steps forward, and they make us take one step back,” Young told The Associated Press in an interview at the offices of his Atlanta-based foundation.

“It’s a slow process that depends on the politics of the nation.”

At 91 years old, an undeterred Young will gather again with Black civil rights leaders and a multiracial, interfaith coalition of allies on Saturday, to mark 60 years since the first March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, an event most widely remembered for King’s “I Have A Dream” speech.

But organizers of this year’s commemoration don’t see this as an occasion for kumbaya — not in the face of eroded voting rights nationwide, after the recent striking down of affirmative action in college admissions and abortion rights by the Supreme Court, and amid growing threats of political violence and hatred against people of color, Jews and the LGBTQ community.

The issues today appear eerily similar to the issues in 1963. The undercurrent of it all is that Black people are still the economically poorest in American society.

Organizers intend to remind the nation that the original march wasn’t just about dreaming of a country that lived up to its promises of equality and liberty to pursue happiness. They wanted legislative action then, and they want the same now.

The survival of American democracy depends on it, the organizers say.

“It’s inevitable to me that this nation, as Martin Luther King said, will live out, one day, the true meaning of its creed,” Young declared.

___

Six decades ago, from the steps of the monument to President Abraham Lincoln, King began his most famous speech by decrying economic disparity, quality of life issues, police brutality and voter disenfranchisement. He brought his remarks home with the sermonic delivery of his dream of social and class harmony transcending racial and ethnic lines in America.

His words have resounded through decades of push and pull toward progress in civil and human rights. Today, the March on Washington is a marker by which racial progress is measured. But drivers of that progress — namely the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — have teetered precariously on the edges of partisanship.

“(King) said in the speech, ’We come to here, Mr. Lincoln, because 100 years ago, in 1863, you promised that we’d be full citizens, and America has not fulfilled the promise’,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton, president of the National Action Network and co-convener of the 60th commemoration of the march.

King also said America had given Black Americans a check for equality that had been marked “insufficient funds” in the bank of justice.

“They came (to Washington) in ’63 to say the check bounced,” Sharpton said. “We come in ’23 … to say the check didn’t bounce this time. They put a stop payment on the check. And we’re coming to say, ‘You’re going to take stop payment off the check, and you will pay your debt.’”

This is at least the third time that Sharpton has organized a commemoration of the March on Washington. There was a march in 2000, the 37th anniversary of King’s speech, focused on police brutality and racial profiling. Thirteen years later, the late Rep. John Lewis, who at the time was the last living speaker from the original march, and a host of celebrities, athletes and politicians attended the 50th anniversary commemoration.

Each time, Sharpton has partnered with members of King’s family. Martin Luther King III, the eldest son of the late civil rights icon, and his wife, Arndrea Waters King, head the Drum Major Institute and are co-conveners of this year’s march. A list of march partners includes about 100 other civil rights, faith and cultural organizations.

Sharpton’s organization expects tens of thousands to attend on Saturday.

Part of the success of the original march was its turnout, said author Michael Long, who next month will publish the book “Bayard Rustin: A Legacy of Protest and Politics,” which celebrates the march’s chief architect.

“Rustin really believed that the power on that day would be in numbers created by this coalition that he put together of Black civil rights activists, people from faith communities and progressive workers in the labor rights movement,” Long said.

“Civil disobedience attracts the hardcore few,” he added, “but when you get 250,000 people together on the National Mall, you serve notice on the political leaders of the day.”

Most Americans say King has had a positive impact on the U.S., according to a Pew Research Center report detailing the results of an opinion survey conducted in the spring. Just over half of Americans say there has been a great deal or a fair amount of progress on racial equality since the original March on Washington.

Along racial lines, a clear majority of Black adults (83%) say efforts to ensure equality for all, regardless of race and ethnicity, haven’t gone far enough. About 58% of Hispanic adults, 55% of Asian American adults and 44% of white adults say the same. A 2022 poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found similar gaps in opinions about the treatment of Black people by police and in the criminal justice system.

Further, in the Pew report, a majority of people who think efforts to ensure equality haven’t gone far enough also feel it is unlikely that there will be racial equality in their lifetime.

It’s difficult to blame those with a pessimistic view of racial progress, considering most of the key measures of socioeconomics in America.

Today, Black Americans are more educated, they are less disproportionately incarcerated, and they are in more positions of power than they were 60 years ago. But the Black-white wealth gap is larger now than in 1963, the Black homeownership rate has risen only modestly, and younger Black Americans are more often saddled with student loan debts that dim gains made in other areas. Black Americans and other nonwhites live disproportionately in communities plagued by climate disasters and exposure to pollution that shortens their lifespans and depresses their property values.

From neighborhood redlining and job discrimination to healthcare disparities and incarceration, racism has proven to be the most effective tool to uphold an unjust capitalist system, said Jennifer Jones Austin, CEO of the the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, an anti-poverty policy and advocacy group and a march partner.

The federation recently released an analysis of stalled civil rights progress in the 60 years since the March on Washington, as a way to recenter King’s focus on economic issues. Job attainment, income inequality and poverty continue to greatly impact how differently Black Americans and other people of color experience life in the U.S. compared to many white people.

“If America is able to tell the story today, that Black unemployment has reached record lows, but they’re not saying that Black Americans are still disproportionately earning just minimum wage or that they’re not earning as much as their white counterparts, with the same levels of education and experience, they’re only telling half the story,” said Jones Austin who, with the National Action Network and the Drum Major Institute, is lobbying the federal government to change how economic deprivation and need are measured in the U.S.

___

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton was a 26-year-old Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee worker in Mississippi in 1963 when she became part of the staff that organized the March on Washington.

“I was on the staff in New York and was the last person to leave because we were getting people on the buses,” she said. “And as I flew from New York to Washington, I could see that the march would be a success because as far as the eye could see, there were crowds. We weren’t sure how big because there had never been such a large march before, but it was overwhelming.”

Norton, now 86, and Washington’s nonvoting delegate, said she knew once she saw how many people had come that “the march was not only successful, but they would help us with what we wanted the march to do.”

The civil rights and voting rights legislation, as well as the 1968 Fair Housing Act, all came in part from the energy and commitment from the march, she said.

Now, 60 years out, she said the political environment is so polarized it is hard to imagine the legislative achievements in the aftermath of the 1963 march being possible now.

“Unlike the kind of atmosphere we had during the March on Washington, we have exactly the opposite now,” Norton said.

At the 1963 march, the late AFL-CIO leader Walter Reuther seemed to predict the current period of political division, retrenchment and violent threats on democracy.

“If we fail, then the vacuum of our failure will be filled by the apostles of hatred who will search in the dark of night, and reason will yield to riot, and brotherhood will yield to bitterness and bloodshed, and we will tear asunder the fabric of American democracy,” Reuther warned.

Indeed, Congress and the White House have often been consistently at odds on modern civil rights and voting rights legislation. A Democratic-controlled House, for example, has passed versions of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act — it would have restored a potent tool against voting law bias that was gutted by the Supreme Court in 2013 — only for a past Republican-controlled Senate and then a narrowly Democratic Senate to block or fall short of sending legislation to the president’s desk.

That’s also been true of police reform legislation proposed after the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis and during unprecedented racial justice demonstrations nationwide. The Floyd legislation was before Congress when Sharpton convened a march at the Lincoln Memorial in 2020 that featured several families of Black victims of police brutality.

Voting rights and police reform aren’t the only issues that march partners want to uplift on Saturday. Increased antisemitic hate crimes, as well as attacks on Asian American communities, have drawn in participation from the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil rights organization.

“America was built on the backs of enslaved Africans — you can’t deny that reality,” said ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt. “That is a unique and searing experience, which I think its effects still linger today and are pervasive in so many ways.”

The traumatic experiences of Jews across millennia in Europe and the Middle East have shaped how many in the community view racism and the threat it poses to everyone, Greenblatt added.

“And so I think we both stand here today in this reality, aware of our path and focused on how we can lock arms, to build a better future for ourselves, for our children and for our grandchildren.”

Young, the King adviser and former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said he thinks it unwise for him to predict how successful this year’s March on Washington will be. But his Christian faith tells him to not place limits on what is possible.

“If there is a place where we can learn to live together as brothers and sisters, rather than perish together as fools, it’s the United States of America,” he said.

___

AP Democracy writer Gary Fields in Washington contributed to this report.

___

Aaron Morrison is a New York-based member of the AP’s Race and Ethnicity team. Connect with him on social media: https://linktr.ee/aaronlmorrison.

___

The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

AARON MORRISON

Aaron is a national writer who covers race and justice.