How the March on Washington Worked

Many people think King organized the march. But the kudos actually belong to A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin.

Sadly, few Americans recognize those two names. But without the pair, the march would never have become reality. Randolph gets the first applause. A long-time civil rights activist and labor leader, Randolph was president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and vice president of the AFL-CIO. In 1941, he called for a march on Washington to protest discrimination against blacks by the defense industries, federal government and other groups that were routinely ignoring black applicants when filling positions. The prospective march began gaining widespread support, with some newspapers predicting 100,000 people would descend upon the capital.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt panicked, quickly issuing an executive order creating the Fair Employment Practices Committee, charged with ending discrimination in defense industries, federal agencies and unions. Randolph canceled the march [sources: Penrice, Stanford].

Twenty years later, with blacks continuing to face discrimination and the Civil Rights Act stalled in Congress, Randolph renewed his call for a march on Washington [source: History]. This time, the event went on as scheduled. And it was wildly successful, partly due to Randolph's vision, and partly due to the expert organizational skills of his associate and protégé, Bayard Rustin [source: Hendrix].

In some ways, Rustin was an odd pick for such a critical job. He was an openly gay, black, Quaker intellectual. He quoted poetry, walked with a cane and wore his hair in a pompadour. Eccentric? Without question -- which could have been highly polarizing in the still-conservative early 1960s. But Rustin was a brilliant organizer, which is exactly what the march needed. In just two months, Rustin did everything from coaching volunteer marshals in nonviolent crowd control techniques to creating a 12-page manual for bus captains, instructing them on issues like where to park their vehicles and locate bathrooms for passengers. He managed to divvy up the limited podium time among competing interests without angering anyone. Thanks to his incredible attention to detail, the event was well-organized, calm, dignified. In other words, an utter success [source: Hendrix].

The goals of the march included passage of civil rights legislation, elimination of school segregation, job training for the unemployed and a $2-an-hour minimum wage [source Stanford].

Call in the celebrities if you want more attention for your event. And don't worry if a few prominent dissidents start yapping -- that never hurts. And so it went with the March on Washington. Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, James Garner, Charlton Heston, Marlon Brando and Josephine Baker were among the many celebrities attending.

Singers who performed at the march included Marian Anderson, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mahalia Jackson and Peter, Paul and Mary. Baez opened the march's program with "Oh Freedom." She also led the crowd in singing "We Shall Overcome." Peter, Paul and Mary crooned their version of "Blowin' in the Wind," Dylan's civil rights anthem; it later became one of the era's signature songs [source: PBS]. Dylan followed Peter, Paul and Mary with "Only a Pawn in Their Game," his new song about the murder of Medgar Evers, which occurred two months before the march [source: Highway History].

Contralto Anderson, who fought against racism in the arts, sang the Negro spiritual "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands" [source: Critical Past]. And Jackson performed the final song as the lead-in to King's famous speech -- the gospel classic "I've Been 'Buked, and I've Been Scorned" [source: History]. Celebrity speakers included actors Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee (the emcees), John Lewis, head of SNCC (and later Georgia Congressman), Rabbi Joachim Prinz, head of the American Jewish Congress, and Walter Reuther, head of the United Auto Workers.

Lewis had to tone down his speech as some people felt his criticisms of Kennedy and his threat to "march through the South, through the heart of Dixie, the way Sherman did," was too intimidating. So those comments were excised [source: Stanford].

Perhaps surprisingly, some of the march's most vocal dissidents were black, namely Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X. Carmichael was a civil rights activist and the leader of SNCC. But over time he moved away from King's theory of nonviolence and toward one of self-defense; he also coined the "black power" slogan. The March on Washington, in Carmichael's view, was "only a sanitized, middle-class version of the real black movement," so he refused to attend [sources: History, The National Archives, Penrice]. Black nationalist leader and Nation of Islam spokesman Malcolm X bitterly referred to the event as "The Farce on Washington" and discouraged fellow Nation of Islam members from attending. Curiously, he himself attended [sources: Stanford, Penrice].

The best-known moment of the March on Washington was King's "I Have a Dream Speech" which says in part: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

But that part was not scripted in advance. The main thrust of the speech was actually the "bad check" – that the architects of the Republic had signed a promissory note guaranteeing all its citizens life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and had defaulted on that note as far as African-Americans were concerned. King stated, "Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked 'insufficient funds.'

"But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice." King went on to demand that civil rights and voting rights be given to blacks.

As the speech was winding down, Mahalia Jackson, a close friend of King's, felt it needed to go in a different direction. So she shouted to him from behind the podium, "Tell them about the dream, Martin!" And he did, improvising that well-loved section from speeches and sermons he had given in the past [source: History].

Interestingly, Life magazine did not put King on the cover of its next issue, but rather A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin. The speech grew in stature after King's assassination and efforts to have his birthday declared a national holiday [source: Democracy Now].

After the March on Washington, civil rights leaders met with Kennedy and Johnson to press their case. In late October, Kennedy called on Congress to have the votes lined up to pass the Civil Rights Act. But that did not happen. Kennedy was assassinated in November. In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson shepherded the bill through Congress, calling it a fitting tribute to the late Kennedy [source: UPI].

Fifty years on, official segregation in the U.S. is long-gone. Life has improved for African-Americans: 28 percent live in poverty, versus 42 percent in the 1960s, but unemployment for blacks remains higher and household income remains lower than for whites [source: Wessel]. Many Americans are disillusioned by a recent spate of racially charged events, such as the trial of George Zimmerman, charged with shooting and killing unarmed African-American teen Trayvon Martin, and the Supreme Court's decision to strike down a key provision in the Voting Rights Act, thus allowing states to change their election laws without advance federal approval [sources: Bello, Liptak].

But the gains of the March on Washington live on. The overall themes of justice, equality and freedom continue to resonate with people all over the world and inspire other struggles for human rights.