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 . . .
Read more: Marching on Washington: Controversial in 1963, Celebrated in 2013
