History Of March On Washington

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Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, or popularly known as March on Washington took place on 28th of August, 1963 (Choi, 2006). It was on this august occasion that Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his world famous "I have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington, DC . The main purpose of the march was the emancipation of the black community in a white dominion. Although slavery had been disintegrated by this time and black men did have the right to vote, they generally formed the second or third degree populace. This was particularly evident in the American South, in places like Arkansas, Cambridge etc. Black people were barred from progressing in the society, were given debased jobs, coerced to shun political activity and forced not to vote. Hence, unsurprisingly, 75-80% of the near 300,000 protesters gathered in Washington were black. The march was an effective one as it led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965. The idea was conceived by A. Phillip Randolph and Bayard Rustin alongwith Stanley Aronowitz in late 1962 (Pfeffer, 1990). In June of '63, several organizations came under the banner of Council for United Civil Rights Leadership (Williams, 2003). There were six salient leaders involved, also known as "The Big Six", namely Randolph (Head of Movement), James Farmer (president of the Congress of Racial Equality), John Lewis (chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), Martin Luther King, Jr. (president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference),[6] Roy Wilkins (president of the NAACP), and Whitney Young (president of the Nation... ... middle of paper ... ...nd sentenced to life imprisonment (Smith & Cobbs, 1994). On 12 June, 1963, President John F. Kennedy eloquently spoke and spread the message of racial tolerance, that same day, Medger Evers, first field secretary of National Association for Advancement of Colored People (Naacp.org, 2014) was murdered (Evers, 2005). Evers was the civil rights activist that Mississippi of his time needed. He actively participated in the movement to bring racial segregation at University of Mississippi to an end, the same university that had denied him admission due to his color (Evers, 2005). He organized boycotts, protests, rallies and one his most important contribution to the movement was his investigation of Emmet Till’s murder (Naacp.org, 2014). This also put him in the crosshairs of the supremacists who finally shot him on the eve of Kennedy’s speech. Being a World War 2 vetera

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