When I participated in the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, I was fortunate to witness an exquisite example of Dr. King’s oratory, but I did not then understand the full meaning of King’s concluding “I Have a Dream” speech. Only after his widow, Coretta Scott King, chose me to edit her late husband’s papers did I begin to appreciate Dr. King’s most famous speech in the broader context of his life and times. In cogent, metaphorically rich passages, his speech expressed the universal longing for freedom and justice.
By Sylvia A. Allegretto and Steven C. Pitts
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After months of hearings, Ghana’s Supreme Court justices will put to rest, this week, a challenge to the election of 2012, creating a possible scenario of bitter if not violent feuding between the two major parties.
By Makani Themba
As the nation celebrates the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, there is a strong temptation to get stuck in a kind of nostalgia for the good old days of a simpler civil rights movement; a movement without angry Black people, afros and shattered glass. And in that nostalgia, sweep under the rug that, although the civil rights movement helped all people live better lives, it was unabashedly a movement borne out of Black organizing traditions to improve the lives of Black people.
Tens of thousands of people gathered in the nation’s capital on Saturday to mark the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, originally held on August 28, 1963.
Today we spend the hour with 13-term Congressmember Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, one of the last surviving speakers from the historic 1963 March on Washington, D.C. — which took place 50 years ago this year.
by Dr. Boyce Watkins
The funny thing about so-called “black leadership” is that much of our perception of black public figures is controlled and managed by predominantly white media. Therefore, it is no coincidence that nearly every prominent black person who speaks firmly for the rights of African Americans has been typecast as either a buffoon, a crook or a greedy, selfish liar.
When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. took the podium on August 28, 1963, the Department of Justice was watching. Fearing that someone might hijack the microphone to make inflammatory statements, the Kennedy DOJ came up with a plan to silence the speaker, just in case.
Traveling along the streets and alleyways of inner-city American neighborhoods, I find commercial signs, graffiti, folk altars and murals that announce why the residents remember their dead, who is worthy of admiration, whom they pray to and the proud achievements of their ancestors.
In less than a week, the 50th anniversary celebration of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom will take place on the same site as it did in 1963. The event, coordinated by the National Action Network and The King Center in coalition with an array of organizations, will seek to commemorate and rekindle the original gathering’s aims.
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