Upwards of 100,00 people came to Washington last week to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. But they didn’t all come for the same event. Indeed there were so many things going on that there is no way to count how many people came for something. There were at least two marches and two celebrations at the Lincoln Memorial, as well as several exhibits, numerous conferences and conventions and a few protests. I went to many and took photos at several.
By August it seemed that everyone wanted a piece of the commemoration pie, but first out of the gate was an amateur without an institutional base. Van White is a civil rights attorney in Rochester NY whose late father frequently talked about going to the 1963 march. As much in memory of his father as anything else, early in 2012, White decided to replicate the march on the actual date, August 28, even though it was a Wednesday. That’s a hard day to draw a crowd, but about 10,000 people got up early to march 1.6 miles to the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
He filed for the ideal domain name in June of 2012 and requested the permits two months later. Once his webpage was up, he invited people to comment and get in touch; that’s how he found a couple dozen of the original marchers to lead his legacy walk the morning of August 28. He also ran a civil rights conference the day before, attended by about 150 people and staffed by a couple dozen students from Alabama State University (an HBCU in Montgomery) as a school history project.
White was going to do a presentation at the Lincoln Memorial, but the National Park Service nixed that idea. White eventually found out why; the White House wanted that spot on that day. He did get permits for his march, but only after the King Center did its best to kill it.
The King Center was created in Atlanta after Dr. King’s death to memorialize Dr. Martin Luther King and house some of his archives. As a family business, it has mirrored a lot of the family disputes. That may be why it didn’t file for a domain name until late in June of 2013, and had to settle for officialmlkdream50.com. For many months, anyone who googled variations of “March on Washington anniversary” to find out what was in the works got Van White’s webpage, not the “official” one.
To pull off an event the size of Reclaim the Dream, MLK III, the current CEO of the King Center, partnered with Brooklyn’s Al Sharpton and his National Action Network. NAN handled most of the logistics and the Rev. Al was the keynote speaker. While they wanted their event to be on Saturday, when ordinary working people could come, they didn’t want any competition. The old dogs didn’t like that new puppy, Van White, poaching on their territory. But he had his permits and wouldn’t go away.
As was true in 1963, organized labor provided major resources. Unions were about half of the official organizational sponsors and probably brought more than half of the participants to DC. All 500 bus parking spots at RFK stadium were filled on Saturday. The UAW alone paid for 106 buses. Other organizations sponsored buses, but their riders had to pay for their passage. Anyone who could get a spot on a union bus road for free and got fed along the way. Saturday’s speakers included a lot of union leaders. If a speakers list had been provided to the press or posted online I could do a count, but that never happened.
Since the speeches started early in the morning, anyone coming from far away had to travel all night or come early. Those that did found plenty to do. The DC Commemoration Committee held its own forum at the African-American Civil War Museum the preceding Tuesday. On Thursday and Friday the Coalition on Black Civic Participation held a two day training session for black youth at the National Education Association. Friday night an anti-war group lighted up the steps of the Lincoln Memorial until the U.S. Park Police made them move. That’s just a small sampling.
On Saturday both sides of the reflecting pool were packed with people. While there is no longer a count given out by any disinterested party, my guess is that there were about a hundred thousand people. A few hundred drifted across the street to see the exhibits at the “Freedom Festival,” but most just sat in the sun, watched the speakers on a large screen and waved their signs. Most of these came from the NAACP, whose logo appeared on at least half of the printed posters. Major themes were “End Racial Profiling” and “Justice for Trayvon Martin.” The march that began when the speeches ended was an anti-climax. Led by bigwigs and mounted US Park Police, the crowd walked pass Dr. King’s statue to disperse at the Washington Monument.
Wednesday’s commemoration was called Let Freedom Ring and featured a bell-ringing ceremony at 3:00, the hour of Dr. King’s 1963 speech. While bells were rung all over the country, the one placed at the Lincoln Memorial had once been at Birmingham’s 16th St. Baptist Church, which was bombed on Sept. 15, 1963. President Obama spoke afterwards. In contrast to Saturday’s almost slapdash style, Wednesday’s event was carefully orchestrated and timed so that all the other speakers and entertainers finished right before 3:00. The weather was less predictable, with frequent light showers and only occasional sun. Despite the rain, people dribbled in. When the speeches began, there were only a few thousand members of the general public on either side of the reflecting pool. When the President spoke, both sides were full.
Those listed as sponsors of Wednesday’s “coalition” included more black organizations and few unions, but the Secret Service was the power behind them all. Access to the area between the reflecting pool and the Lincoln Monument was limited to press, staff and people with tickets. Press movement was severely restricted; audience tickets were given out to pre-selected people; umbrellas were removed when everyone went through the metal detectors; men stood on top of the Lincoln Memorial scanning the crowd with binoculars. For the final staging, when three Presidents and a first lady were on one side of the speaking level and members of the King family on the other, a three-panel bullet-proof screen was placed in front.
At this semi-centennial celebration of a protest march, there was something for everyone, from the President on down. The only thing I didn’t see, hear or read about were counter-protests.
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