March+on+Washington

Civil Rights



• The political name is The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

• The March on Washington took place in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963. Attended by some 250,000 people, it was the largest demonstration for jobs and freedom ever seen in the nation's capital, and one of the first to have extensive television coverage.

• 1963 was a very big year for racial segregation and civil rights demonstrations.

• Many people were outraged because of the media coverage of police in Birmingham, Alabama, attack dogs and fire hoses were turned against protestors, many of them being in their early teens or younger. • M.L.K jr. was detained and put in jail where he wrote his famous “Letter From Birmingham City Jail”

• Additional demonstrations took place across the country, from California to New York, essentially setting up the March on Washington.

• President Kennedy backed a Civil Rights Act, which was stalled in by the summer.

• Travelers from the south who came to the march were harassed and threatened.

• August 28, 1963, an estimated quarter of a million people, a quarter of which were white, marched from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial, this turned out to be both a protest and a shared celebration.

• Martin Luther King gave his famous, “ I have a dream” speech at this political rally.

• The March was initiated by A. Philip Rudolph president of The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, president of the Negro American Labor Council, and vice president of the AFL- CIO.

• The March was a very big part of the rapid expansion of the Civil Rights Movement.

• On August 28, 1963 more the 2,000 buses, 21 special trains, 10 charter airliners, and an uncounted amount of cars converged on Washington.

• Representatives from each organization preached to the crowd from the podium at the Lincoln Memorial. All six civil-rights leaders of the so called, "Big Six" addressed the crowd. Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish religious representatives, and labor leader Walter Reuther. There was one female speaker, Josephine Baker.

• Floyd McKissick read James Farmer's speech because Farmer had been arrested during a protest in Louisiana, Farmer had written that the protests would not stop he was quoted as saying, "until the dogs stop biting us in the South and rats stop biting us in the North."

•Musician Bob Dylan performed several songs, such as "Only a Pawn in Their Game," this song fit appropriately because it is about the culturally-fed racial hate that was coming from southern whites that led to the assassination of Medgar Evers, and "When the Ship Comes In," during which Joan Baez joined him in the singing of this song, who earlier had led the crowds in several verses of "We Shall Overcome" and "Oh Freedom".

__Works cited__ •[|http://hitchcock.itc.virginia.edu/ViewingAmerica/roundtables/roundtable7/section3_files/marchonwash.jpg]

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