March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom

Historic Event

Name

Description

The August 28, 1963 March on Washington is well known as the largest civil rights march of its time. Over 200,000 people attended and heard speeches delivered by the major civil rights leaders. The March was organized by A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin.

Types

Historic Event

Background

Protests in Birmingham launched in April and by May 1963, nations around the world were stirred and stunned by images of teenaged children being attacked by police officers with dogs and men wielding firehoses.

Under a system of racial apartheid, Black Americans were subject to discrimination and violence that was not being brought to justice. The march addressed such inequities with demands for civil rights laws and protections that would desegregate public accommodations and end discrimination in housing, education, employment, and voting, while enforcing the Constitutional virtue of “liberty and justice for all.”

In the years leading to the march, from Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, to the dogs and hoses of Birmingham in 1963, the nation, as well as the lives and future of children, were at risk. Americans rallied around the guarantees of the Constitution, however, to defend its promise of equal rights and protections for every American.

Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, along with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), agreed to support Randolph and join plans for protests in Washington.

The demonstration was not organized as an isolated episode in history but was a culmination of events that led to its need and conception. Decades prior to the march, the nation experienced periods of court cases and protests for justice that were often met with reprisals of heightened discrimination, terror, and violence.

The idea for the March on Washington began with A. Phillip Randolph, founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, who later became a founder and president of the Negro American Labor Council (NALC). In March 1963, Randolph telegraphed King to inform him that the NALC was planning a march for labor and employment rights for June of that year. He hoped to have King’s support.

By the end of summer 1963, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the National Urban League, the United Auto Workers (UAW), and the National Catholic Conference for Interracial Justice, as well as the Commission on Race Relations of the National Council of Churches of Christ in America joined to organize the March on Washington.

Communities across the country came together to ensure the March on Washington’s success. Neighborhood organizations working alongside national institutions demonstrated the power and possibilities of organizing nationwide.

While marking the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom also recognized that one hundred years after slavery’s abolition, African Americans still were not free.