This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon: Dozens of demonstrations have taken place in the nation’s capital over the years, but none matched the symbolism and impact of the one staged 50 years ago this month. Organized by labor leader A. Philip Randolph, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom drew up to 250,000 people to the Lincoln Memorial.
Its broad goals of ending discrimination in employment, housing, voter participation and public education were spelled out eloquently that day when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. electrified the crowd with his “I Have a Dream” speech, a gem matched by only a few other public addresses in American history. The event is being remembered over the next several days through numerous activities.
In St. Louis, meanwhile, some residents are commemorating the 50th anniversary of a different occasion, the Jefferson Bank Demonstrations.
In the photo above: Leaders of the march (from left to right): Mathew Ahmann, executive director of the National Catholic Conference for Interracial Justice; (seated with glasses) Cleveland Robinson, chairman of the Demonstration Committee; (standing behind the two chairs) Rabbi Joachim Prinz, president of the American Jewish Congress; (beside Robinson is) A. Philip Randolph, organizer of the demonstration, veteran labor leader who helped to found the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, American Federation of Labor (AFL); (wearing a bow tie and standing beside Prinz is) Joseph Rauh Jr, a Washington, D.C., attorney and civil rights, peace, and union activist; John Lewis, chairman, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; and Floyd McKissick, national chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality
The peaceful event and the King speech 50 years ago turned out to have a lasting impact, not unlike the unexpected consequences that followed the simple gesture nine years earlier of Rosa Parks quietly refusing to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Ala. But one of the immediate indirect outcomes of the Washington march was unsettling. Little more than two weeks after the event, a bomb ripped through the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., killing four girls. Rather than instilling fear, the explosion became a turning point, boosting public sympathy for the next big development, the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The law marked the first time since the period following Reconstruction that Congress had enacted major legislation aimed at tackling discrimination in voting procedures, public accommodations and public facilities controlled by municipal governments. The law also encouraged the desegregation of public schools and prohibited discrimination by government agencies that got federal funds. Passed the same year that King won the Noble Peace Prize, the civil rights law not only brought added legal protection to black Americans but made affirmative action official policy for opening more employment and higher education opportunities for minorities in general and for women.
A year later came the Voting Rights Act of 1965, regarded in many ways as the most powerful of all modern civil rights laws. It gave blacks in the Deep South access to the ballot box, prompting activist Jesse Jackson to predict that hands that picked cotton in Mississippi could now pick the president. It sounded like typical Jackson rhetoric but it turned out to be prophetic.
With the backing of black and white voters, Barack Obama became the nation’s first African-American president in 2008. Then something even more unimaginable occurred during the 2012 presidential election. For the first time in U.S. history, black voter participation outstripped that of whites. More than 66 percent of eligible black voters went to the polls, a rise from nearly 65 percent during the 2008 election. By contrast, the non-Hispanic white voter turnout was slightly above 64 percent in 2012. To put that in context, African-American voter turnout had tended to be roughly 8 percentage points below that of non-Hispanic whites.
Many black Americans in particular regarded the march and the subsequent civil rights laws as changes that made Obama’s election possible. But the next chapter is still being written, and the outcome is unpredictable, occurring in an era when job opportunities are less plentiful for all Americans, while access to higher education is thwarted in part by cost and an attack on liberal admissions policies.
Meanwhile, benefits growing out of the Voting Rights Act are vanishing, particularly Section 5. That provision included a requirement that specified states, counties and townships get permission or preclearance when changing certain voting rules. The intent was to prevent restrictions on voter participation by minorities. But those affected argued that Section 5 was unneeded since the number of Justice Department challenges or objections to changes in state and local voter rules had declined sharply over the years. Just two months ago, the Supreme Court ruled in Shelby County v. Holder that the government’s preclearance coverage formula was unconstitutional.
Many in this new generation probably have heard about the March on Washington but may know little about major civil rights events that followed it. The generation who marched for these rights is passing away. The Beacon could not find a St. Louis area resident who took part in the march and is still alive. The developments set off by the march, good and bad, reverberate to this day. Many helped to shape American attitudes.
Wikipedia photos Clockwise from top: Joan Baez and Bob Dylan at the March on Washington; The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the same day, Aug. 28, 1963, delivers the "I Have a Dream Speech"; President John F. Kennedy addresses the nation on civil rights, June 11, 1963; Alabama Gov. George Wallace, on the same day as the president's address, blocks the doorway at the University of Alabama.
During the next several months, we’ll look back and point to events today that have only a few degrees of separation from the big moments of 1963. It’s one way to help us connect the dots and understand how we got where we are.
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