The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (commonly known as the March on Washington or the Great March on Washington) was held in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963. The purpose of the march was to advocate for the civil and economic rights of African Americans. At the march, several popular singers of the time, including Mahalia Jackson and Marian Anderson, performed and many of the movement's leaders gave speeches. The most notable speech came from the final speaker, Martin Luther King Jr., standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial, as he delivered his historic "I Have a Dream" speech in which he called for an end to legalized racism and racial segregation.
The march was organized by Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Randolph, who built an alliance of civil rights, labor, and religious organizations that came together under the banner of "jobs and freedom." Estimates of the number of participants varied from 200,000 to 300,000, but the most widely cited estimate is 250,000 people. Observers estimated that 75–80% of the marchers were black. The march was one of the largest political rallies for human rights in United States history. Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers, was the most integral and highest-ranking white organizer of the march.
The march is credited with helping to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It preceded the Selma voting rights movement, when national media coverage contributed to passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that same year.
Background
African Americans were legally freed from slavery under the Thirteenth Amendment and granted citizenship in the Fourteenth Amendment, and African American men were granted full voting rights by the Fifteenth Amendment in the years soon after the end of the American Civil War, but Democrats regained power after the end of the Reconstruction era (in 1877) and imposed many restrictions on people of color in the South. At the turn of the century, Southern states passed constitutions and laws that disenfranchised most black people and many poor whites, excluding them from the political system. The whites imposed social, economic, and political repression against black people into the 1960s, under a system of legal discrimination known as Jim Crow laws, which were pervasive in the American South. Black people suffered discrimination from private businesses as well, and most were prevented from voting, sometimes through violent means.Bass, Like a Mighty Stream (2002), pp. 31, 34–36. Twenty-one states prohibited interracial marriage.
During the 20th century, civil rights organizers began to develop ideas for a march on Washington, D.C., to seek justice. Earlier efforts to organize such a demonstration included the March on Washington Movement of the 1940s. A. Philip Randolph—the president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, president of the Negro American Labor Council, and vice president of the AFL–CIO—was a key instigator in 1941. With Bayard Rustin, Randolph called for 100,000 black workers to march on Washington, in protest of discriminatory hiring during World War II by U.S. military contractors and demanding an Executive Order to correct that.Bass, Like a Mighty Stream (2002), pp. 44–46. Faced with a mass march scheduled for July 1, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 on June 25.Bass, Like a Mighty Stream (2002), pp. 49–51. The order established the Committee on Fair Employment Practice and banned discriminatory hiring in the defense industry, leading to improvements for many defense workers.Neil A. Wynn, "The Impact of the Second World War on the American Negro"; Journal of Contemporary History 6(2), 1971; p. 46. Randolph called off the March.Bass, Like a Mighty Stream (2002), pp. 51–52.
Randolph and Rustin continued to organize around the idea of a mass march on Washington. They envisioned several large marches during the 1940s, but all were called off (despite criticism from Rustin). Their Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom, held at the Lincoln Memorial on May 17, 1957, featured key leaders including Adam Clayton Powell, Martin Luther King Jr., and Roy Wilkins. Mahalia Jackson performed.Bass, Like a Mighty Stream (2002), p. 75.
The 1963 march was part of the rapidly expanding Civil Rights Movement, which involved demonstrations and nonviolent direct action across the United States.: "In 1963, however, the March on Washington was but one aspect of a national explosion of actions against racial discrimination that many criticized as being outside traditional politics. ... In the South after 1960, the widespread adoption of direct action—purposeful defiance of segregation laws and injunctions against demonstrations—inspired activists and attracted new attention from the media, the federal government, and white segregationists." 1963 marked the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln. Leaders represented major civil rights organizations. Members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference put aside their differences and came together for the march. Many whites and black people also came together in the urgency for change in the nation.
That year violent confrontations broke out in the South: in Pine Bluff, Arkansas; Goldsboro, North Carolina; Somerville, Tennessee; Saint Augustine, Florida; and across Mississippi. A violent incident also occurred in Cambridge, Maryland. In most cases, white people attacked nonviolent demonstrators seeking civil rights.: "Violence swept the South all year. Vigilantes in Clarksdale firebombed the home of Aaron Henry, the head of Mississippi's NAACP. After a gas bomb went off in a church in Itta Bena, Mississippi, mobs threw bottles and rocks at activists spilling onto the streets. Vigilantes shot into the home of college professors helping the movement in Jackson. A civil rights worker traveling from Itta Bena to Jackson was shot in the neck and shoulder. A bomb destroyed a two-family home in Jackson. Whites in the North Carolina town of Goldsboro ran down demonstrators in a car and threw bottles and rocks. Whites in Pine Bluff, in Arkansas, attacked civil rights workers with ammonia and bottles. Someone shot into the home of an NAACP board member in Saint Augustine. When nine activists prayed in a country courthouse in Somerville, Tennessee, police allowed hoodlums into the building to beat them up." Many people wanted to march on Washington, but disagreed over how the march should be conducted. Some called for a complete shutdown of the city through civil disobedience. Others argued that the civil rights movement should remain nationwide in scope, rather than focus its energies on the nation's capital and federal government. There was a widespread perception that the Kennedy administration had not lived up to its promises in the 1960 election, and King described Kennedy's race policy as "tokenism".
On May 24, 1963, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy invited African-American novelist James Baldwin, along with a large group of cultural leaders, to a meeting in New York to discuss race relations. However, the meeting became antagonistic, as black delegates felt that Kennedy did not have an adequate understanding of the race problem in the nation. The public failure of the meeting, which came to be known as the Baldwin–Kennedy meeting, underscored the divide between the needs of Black America and the understanding of Washington politicians. But the meeting also provoked the Kennedy administration to take action on the civil rights of African Americans.: "In the TV interview, Baldwin was ashen, disoriented. He had had no idea, before now, just how aloof the Kennedys appeared. He thought the administration's caution came from ruthless political calculation. But now it seemed that the pampered sons of old Joe Kennedy just had no idea—no understanding at all—about race in America. The secret meeting was immediately leaked to the press. Within weeks, the velocity of the civil rights movement would lead President John F. Kennedy to give the most aggressive presidential address in history on race, which was quickly followed with the most comprehensive legislation in modern history." On June 11, 1963, President Kennedy gave a notable civil rights address on national television and radio, announcing that he would begin to push for civil rights legislation. That night (early morning of June 12, 1963), Mississippi activist Medgar Evers was murdered in his own driveway, further escalating national tension around the issue of racial inequality.Bass, Like a Mighty Stream (2002), pp. 67–69. After Kennedy's assassination, his proposal was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson as the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Planning and organization A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin began planning the march in December 1961. They envisioned two days of protest, including sit-ins and lobbying followed by a mass rally at the Lincoln Memorial. They wanted to focus on joblessness and to call for a public works program that would employ black people. In early 1963 they called publicly for "a massive March on Washington for jobs". They received help from Stanley Aronowitz of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers; he gathered support from radical organizers who could be trusted not to report their plans to the Kennedy administration. The unionists offered tentative support for a march that would be focused on jobs. "By going to the old Communists and socialists, Arnowitz later recalled, Rustin hoped to 'outflank Kennedy's labor connections' and King's moderate, nonviolent SCLC. If Rustin went to Kennedy's backers, they would report to the president. Later, in fact, when United Auto Workers joined the march effort, UAW people fed inside intelligence to the White House. In the earliest planning stages, in 1962, it was better to steer clear of Kennedy's financial and political network."
On May 15, 1963, without securing the cooperation of the NAACP or the Urban League, Randolph announced an "October Emancipation March on Washington for Jobs". He reached out to union leaders, winning the support of the UAW's Walter Reuther, but not of AFL–CIO president George Meany. Randolph and Rustin intended to focus the March on economic inequality, stating in their original plan that "integration in the fields of education, housing, transportation and public accommodations will be of limited extent and duration so long as fundamental economic inequality along racial lines persists."David J. Garrow, "The Long March 'The March on Washington,' by William P. Jones"; New York Times, 15 August 2013. As they negotiated with other leaders, they expanded their stated objectives to "Jobs and Freedom", to acknowledge the agenda of groups that focused more on civil rights.