They said it would be a riot. The federal government mobilized 19,000 troops in the Washington suburbs. Hospitals cancelled elective surgeries to prepare for casualties. The city banned the sale of alcohol for the first time since Prohibition. [1]
On August 28, 1963, between 200,000 and 300,000 people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial. They came by bus, by car, by train, by foot. They were Black and white, young and old, Northern and Southern. They carried signs that said “We March For Jobs And Freedom.” [1]
The official name was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. It was organized by A. Philip Randolph, who had first proposed a similar march in 1941, and Bayard Rustin, a Quaker pacifist and master organizer who planned the entire logistical operation in less than two months. Rustin coordinated 450 chartered buses, 21 special trains, and 10 chartered aircraft. He arranged for 80,000 box lunches. [1]
The speakers included John Lewis of SNCC — the youngest, at twenty-three — who had been pressured to tone down a speech that originally called the proposed civil rights bill “too little, too late.” He toned it down. It was still the most incendiary address of the day. [1]
Then Martin Luther King Jr. stepped to the microphone.
Partway through his prepared text, Mahalia Jackson called out from behind him: “Tell them about the dream, Martin!” He set aside his notes. [1]
What followed — “I have a dream” — was not a speech but a sermon, and not a sermon but a prayer, and not a prayer but a demand made directly to the soul of a nation that had promised liberty and delivered chains. [1]
Less than a year later, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law. [1]
They said it would be a riot. It was the most dignified day in American history.
Bibliography
[1] Wikipedia. “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_on_Washington_for_Jobs_and_Freedom