Shout it from the mountain top

Aug. 28 marks the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. You may not recognize it by that title, but the whole world knows what was said there when its keynote speaker, Martin Luther King Jr, took to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and proclaimed “I have a dream.”

That dream, or at least a speech about it, almost never came to be.

Three years after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered an end to segregation at public schools in the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education ruling, A. Phillip Randolph, the head of the Pullman Porters Union, proposed a March on Washington to persuade Congress to draft and adopt a civil rights bill.

A crowd of about 25,000 was rallied on the National Mall between the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial, but the marchers were not sufficient enough in numbers to persuade Congress to take action.

The march, however, had planted in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People the belief that a concentrated national effort bringing in activists from across the country and descending on the Capitol would convince the House and Senate to “wake up.”

To draw as large of a crowd as possible, speakers such as Randolph, NAACP president, Roy Wilkens, John Lewis, the head of the Student Non Violent Committee, and the leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Martin Luther King Jr., would headline the event.

Initially, it was planned to be a full-fledged march on the city, surrounding the Capitol with peaceful speeches and song. However, when the White House learned of the plan, despite being friendly to the cause, President John F. Kennedy objected, urging King to call it off because his security advisers feared violence and that it would lead to, as they termed it, an “insurrection.”

When King could not be dissuaded, the president’s administration decided the safest way to have the event was if the White House co-coordinated it. Kennedy assigned his brother, Bobby, who was also Attorney General, to serve on an advisory committee and guide the event coordinators.

The attorney general held regular meetings and conducted weeks of phone calls with rally leaders, ultimately convincing them to call off the march on the Capitol, and instead, offered the Lincoln Memorial, complete with a loud speaker sound system and security for the organizers in exchange for the relocation of the event.

The president, himself, was scheduled to deliver an oration, but King and others objected, saying this was an opportunity for the oppressed to shine and that if the president were to speak, it would become his event, not theirs.

Despite this concession, some advocates of the civil rights movement were vocal critics of the Kennedys being involved at all, even if the event most likely been would have been canceled or diminished had they not served as consultants and provided guidance. Malcom X most bluntly scolded the planners, saying, “There wasn’t a single logistics uncontrolled, the marchers were told how to arrive, when to arrive, where to assemble, when to start marching and the route to march.”

Nonetheless, with an agreement reached between the White House and event coordinators, more than 250,000 activists and members of the public of all races gathered in Washington, D.C. on Aug. 28 at the east steps of the Lincoln Memorial. They heard songs performed by Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Marian Anderson, who took a substantial step in the move toward equality when, in 1939, she drew a crowd of 75,000 to the Lincoln Memorial for a performance of the song “My Country Tis of Thee.”

Twenty-four years following her barrier shattering appearance on the same steps, after Wilkens, Lewis, and others had spoken, King stepped up to the microphone and delivered his most famous, and defining, speech. He said the crowd was assembled there to cash a check issued to them by the Founding Fathers who promised in the Declaration of Independence, that “all men are created equal.”

Mahalia Jackson, who at the time was known as the Queen of Gospel and equaled Anderson in notoriety, yelled out to King that he should tell them about the dream.

He then switched the focus of his speech to present the story of how he had a dream, a dream that one day the nation would rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed as promised in the Declaration of Independence and that in this same dream he foresaw the day when his four little children would live in a nation where they would be judged not by the color of their skin, but he content of their character.

The 15 minute or so oration ended with the stirring lyrics, and hope, there would come a day when they could sing the words of the old slave era spiritual song “Free at last, free at last, great God Almighty, we are free at last.”

That complete and total freedom has yet to be achieved. However, the author of this column is proud to state that I stood on a small commemorative stone midway up the steps of the Lincoln Memorial marking the precise spot where King delivered those words and looked out upon the line behind me of both Black and white, as they all waited for the privilege to say they stood on that historic and inspiring spot.

We, as a society, may not have reached the mountain top, but we are getting closer.

David V. Wendell is a Marion historian, author and special events coordinator specializing in American history.