I have two buttons to wear today. One you may have seen conventioneers wearing in Denver: in two shades of blue, it says" HOPE is in the air/Barack Obama/Invesco Field at Mile High/ Aug 28 2008." The other is stark black on white. It says: March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom/August 28, 1963."
In August 1963, Barack Obama was two years old. I was 17, and I marched that day. I’ll never forget it. Today I’ll be watching on TV as Barack Obama becomes the first African American to accept the nomination of a major party for President. In a way, it’s not something Martin Luther King even dared to dream.
If you’re curious about what that day was like, at least for me; what the general response was at that time, and what it makes me think of today, follow the jump. If not, glory in this day. Especially for those at the stadium, today will be a memory as unforgettable as that August day in Washington was for me. Probably in some of the same ways.
First a bit of context. In June 1963, President Kennedy introduced a Civil Rights bill, which not only covered voting rights but mandated an end to segregation in public places, gave the federal government new tools to desegregate public education, and created new job training and vocational education programs. Civil rights leaders decided to organize a March on Washington to support this bill. (JFK was afraid it would hurt the bill's chances and tried to dissuade them.)
In his televised address announcing the bill, President Kennedy said "We are confronted with a moral issue. It is as old as the Scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution. Now the time has come for this nation to fulfill its promise."
That’s what it was to me and many others: a moral issue. For the past several years, but especially in 1962 and ’63, our TV screens had shown opposition and violence in Mississippi and Alabama to African Americans trying to exercise fundamental rights, including young men and women, just a few years older than me, who wanted what I wanted: a college education.
Because it was a moral issue, many churches got involved in the March, including Catholic clergy (the Archbishop of Washington gave the invocation, and the program included Protestant and Jewish clergy.)
I lived just outside a small town in western Pennsylvania, with an Italian mother, a father of mixed and only partially known Eastern European background, and I attended a Catholic high school. I was inspired by JFK, Martin Luther King, the essays of James Baldwin, "To Kill A Mockingbird," etc., but it was reading about a local organization called the Catholic Interracial Council that gave me the idea I could actually be part of the March.
I contacted the priest who was named as the Council’s director. He helped secure my parents’ permission, and I was accepted as part of the group that would take one of the special trains to the March. As it turned out, I was the group. In the entire diocese, I was the only one to sign up. Our delegation was two priests and me.
If you’ve seen some of the black and white film of that day, you’ve probably seen people getting off trains. There were something like 21 special trains that rolled into Washington. There was an amazing mood that day, which began on the train ride down. I guess I was on that train eight hours or more. I walked through the cars, and everyone was very subdued, cautiously friendly, and probably a little surprised to see a white, blue-eyed 17 year old boy. Most of the people were black, but the figure I've seen of 80% seems high.
I’d grown up next door to a black family—oddly enough, they were the Robinsons (none was named Michelle, alas.) The oldest son was one of my three best friends until they went to public high school and I went to the Catholic high, and we drifted apart. I knew his family--I remember his father with particular affection-- and I had gone to an event or two at their church, so even though I didn’t relate Civil Rights issues to them directly, I’d had more contact than most of my Catholic school classmates.
Still, that didn't completely prepare me for seeing and being among so many black people. Then again, not even the black people there had ever seen so many black people together. But I think the basic feeling we had was the same, if for somewhat different reasons: awe.
But that was still to come. There was another special experience on the train--when suddenly and without any warning, I pushed open those heavy train car doors and entered an entirely different world: it was a car filled literally to the rafters with young people, college students, white and black. And they were singing. Folk songs, spirituals, Woody Guthrie and other political songs... A wave of happy, defiant sound hit me, and changed everything.
At home I listened to Peter, Paul and Mary and other popular folk singers on the radio, and I took out records from the library by Joan Baez and Bob Dylan. But it hadn’t occurred to me that playing and singing was something I could do, until I stood at the end of that train car. The thrill of that moment led to nearly another half century of misspent youth. And it was a true spiritual experience.
When we reached Washington and got off that train, the reaction of everybody seemed to be the same as mine: utter amazement. There were so many people. I seem to recall that organizers hoped for 50,000 people. Soon I was hearing 100,000. By the end of the day most were saying 300,000 at least. By tradition as much as any real count, the number given is usually 250,000—a quarter of a million people.
I remember it was bright and hot on the march route, and it was not simply peaceful—it was as close to a definition of peace as I’ve ever experienced. An intense peace. Wonder. Awe. Gratitude for each other. Love. It was an altered state of consciousness for the entire march.
Before the March, people had been afraid that there would be violence. But from the time I got off the train, it was clear that violence was not a possibility. (And in fact, even though there were troops ready to come into Washington at a moment’s notice, there were fewer than 6,000 police for this quarter of a million people.)
I’m sure there was singing, chanting, clapping, but somehow I remember it as a sweet quiet, a walking joy. Only later did I realize that I was marching with Rosa Parks and Josephine Baker, Paul Newman and Charlton Heston, Harry Belafonte and James Garner, Lena Horne and James Baldwin.
Then we gathered around the Reflecting Pool for the program. In the photos of the crowd taken from the stage, I’m on the left, about halfway up. Although I'm a little hard to make out.
The sound wasn’t all that great as I recall, and the speeches were sometimes hard to hear. And they were, after all, speeches. We had walked a ways, and it was hot—-really hot, sitting still in the sun. I was more interested in the music: Dylan, Baez, Odetta, Lena Horne, Peter, Paul & Mary. Marian Anderson had sung earlier. I wound up wandering around a bit, looking at the signs, looking at people.
There was a young firebrand named John Lewis who spoke, chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Famed labor leader Walter Reuther spoke: labor unions were an organizing force for the March, which was billed (as my button says) as a march for JOBS and Freedom. It was about the economy then, too—economic justice, equal opportunity.
Mahalia Jackson sang, and then Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke. Even dulled by the heat, I remember hearing those words, feeling that crowd. King’s speech was about the fierce urgency of now.
"Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God’s children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood."
King told the country that these rights could no longer be denied, and that efforts to secure these rights was only beginning. He said that half measures won’t be enough.
"We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream."
Then he spoke to those who had suffered for their protests, to give them hope.
"Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama...go back to the slums and ghettos of our Northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.
Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. At the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream."
That’s how the most famous passages of that speech begins. And even if it now survives mostly as a mini-soundbite ("I have a dream"), it’s worth recalling their purpose as well as their resonance.
That’s the moment that has lasted in history, but the most powerful moment for me, being there, happened just afterwards: it was the singing of "We Shall Overcome."
Are you kidding me?—250,000 people singing ‘We Shall Overcome"—it gives me goosebumps just thinking about it.
When the program was over, and the March leaders went off to eat with President Kennedy and talk about the Civil Rights bill, I went to the House of Representative offices of William Moorhead, a Pittsburgh congressman, with my priest companions. We washed up and chilled out for awhile before the train ride back.
Some days after we got back, I wrote an article about the March for the local Catholic weekly newspaper. It was printed under the title, "Eyes of Youth," and it definitely has a young person’s point of view that might still have some resonance in 2008. First, on the public response to the March, before it became a part of history. But there’s an immediate transition to what the March ultimately meant for my generation. Here’s what I wrote then:
"The big shock came to us when we returned home. After all the hours of standing, walking, riding, and marching: after seeing huge masses of dedicated and self-sacrificing people; after hearing the songs and speeches crying for freedom, we were vastly surprised to hear the dispassionate estimates of our effectiveness. The consensus seemed to be that we did little, of any, real good.
Most of these opinions were in reference to civil rights legislation, but to the young people this was not the real issue. The legislation will inevitably come, and it is for future generations to make it work, and to promote the true social integration of the races.
Is this impossible? Had there not been a march, there would be grave doubts about the practicality of realizing this American ideal.
But today, after the march, there can be no doubt. When a mass of people roughly equivalent to the population of Syracuse, comprised of different backgrounds, religions, races, and coming from different regions, could converge on Washington with such dedicated and dignified fervor as to make thoughts of violence absurd, then hope for the future is supremely justified.
It all held special meaning to the young people. They had come from many places, and for many reasons. Perhaps their thoughts were best expressed by a favorite folk singing group who sang these lyrics from a popular song at the march:
"How many years can some people exist before they’re allowed to be free?
How many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn’t see?"
From the singing on the Freedom Train, to the slow chant of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, the young people brought spirit and compassion to a cause in which they deeply felt.
While all the banners for "Freedom Now!" will have to be satisfied by the present generation, the young people of today will also face a great task.
Prejudice is based mainly on ignorance. It was evident to the marchers that once the races begin to live and work together, as we marched together, meaningful integration can be achieved. It will fall upon the shoulders of the young people of today to see it through."
So perhaps this is the legacy of my generation to the younger generation of today. It is the achievement of some level of "social integration" at the level of the heart as well as the mind that has made Barack Obama’s candidacy possible. Despite residual racism, particularly in older generations, his young supporters represent the real possibility that Dr. King’s dream of a time when people are not judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character, is finally at hand.
Well, I’ve stayed up all night writing this, so I’m going to post it and go to sleep. But I’ll be watching tonight. Wearing both my buttons.