I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up live out the true meaning of its Creed we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created 50 years ago dr. Martin Luther King said those words right here on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial but he didn't get here alone there was a coalition of religious and labor leaders who organized the march and they were overshadowed by that riveting speech the real purposes of the march on Washington have faded into history we're going to tell you that story hello I'm Joanne Williams and welcome to this special edition of black Nouveau nobody knew exactly what to expect on that hot and humid day in 1963 would enough people show up to make a difference would there be violence how would the nation respond and with the goals of the marchers be met the march of August twenty-eighth 1963 did more den fulfill my expectation it was a almost a holy moment it was a day where everybody was extremely joyful about being there but knew what they were doing we marched for perfect for access to housing we march for access to jobs we march for access to education the thing that this will always be with me is the come body and of the people that were there and to see that crowd it was remarkable white blacks Hispanics Jews Gentiles always out there I just never seen that many people and in my life and you know I thought it was in the extraordinary outpouring of people was the experience of being there and the sense of solidarity that we had in a common purpose that was really the most important that the nation and the world know the meaning of our numbers we are not a pressure group we are not an organization or a group of organization we are not a mom we are the advance guard of a massive moral revolution for jobs and freedom leading that revolution and the March or two men who spent most of their lives fighting for human rights and economic justice asa philip Randolph and buyer drustan most people do not know that if in fact it was a Phillip Randolph and his colleague Bayard Rustin who actually organized the 1963 march on Washington and it was in fact initially frame as a march for jobs Randolph spent his career fighting for job equity in 1925 he became the head of the Brotherhood of sleeping car porters in the 1930s he was successful in negotiating better wages for the Brotherhood with the Pullman Company he would also lead the struggle to integrate and merge with other labor unions mr. Randolph philosophy was that for african-american people in general that organized labor and employment was the door to economic prosperity for us as the people as he saw it it was the only way into all of his efforts were focused on using that as a vehicle however social justice and civil rights were of in fact a part of that it's sort of it's hard to separate them Randolph's first proposal for a march on Washington came in 1941 to protest the defense industries lack of hiring of people of color that march was postponed when President Franklin Roosevelt issued executive order 8802 it said the federal government would not do business with any company that discriminated in its hiring and vocational training practices that then served as the model for the 1963 march on Washington but of course Bayard Rustin came in and gave it legs I say if mr. Randolph for to the civil rights movement the concept that you had to have mass action fired was the genius of non-violence and of the strategy that that that made that possible Rustin had become involved in the civil rights struggle in the 1930s Rustin was a Quaker and a pacifist during his career he would fight for Human Rights socialism and non-violence an openly homosexual man his sexuality was criticized by a number of people in the civil rights movement but it did not stop his involvement I met byard restin in 1957 when he was organizing at that point support for the Montgomery bus protest Byard and mr. Randolph organized three marches before the 1963 march in 1957 the prayer pilgrimage where dr. King spoke and it was primarily in support of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference which was just beginning to form and the Montgomery boycott the success of the Montgomery boycott would spark activism in the south the Greensboro sit-ins began in nineteen sixty and the Freedom Rides began in nineteen sixty one by 1963 many activists including Randolph were feeling that the time was at hand for something massive he proposed the march on Washington he made that proposal in early in 1963 at a time when the civil rights movement in the south was really building up there was the beginnings of what would become the really mass protests in Birmingham and a number of civil rights activists most importantly Anna Arnold Hegeman who was a black woman activists in the black woman's club movement she suggested that they combine their forces so Randolph met with leaders from the major civil rights organizations one of the important aspects of the march on Washington was this was a national coalition and that's why its statement was so powerful it's made up of all of the major civil rights organizations coming together that day often you know in the past that operated in competition with one another for resources for attention everything was put aside that day it was only a friend on decca who this group together in some of those meeting he was their brother in if you cannot say something good about somebody don't say anything in only occasion he was there we come this fall together let's stay together while those discussions were happening President Kennedy proposed a civil rights bill President Kennedy didn't like that I did a march on Washington he would be met with him in June of 1963 and mr. Randolph said in the media mr. president were going to march on Washington and you can tell the body movement of the president he start moving around in this chair and he said if you bring all these people to Washington won't that be violence and chaos and disorder and we would never get a civil rights bill through the Congress mr. Randolph spoke up instead mr. president in his baritone voice he said this will be a peaceful nonviolent protests and we'll go into march on Washington at the beginning of the March when we started to plan it there was hysteria that black folks could not gather on the streets of Washington without riots but Ruston's meticulous planning would prevent that from happening there was a very big effort to make sure that we had our own marshals and that they were nonviolent pirate had trained in New York more than I think within 150 black men who were members of two auxiliary groups of the police department of the Fire Department in Washington in New York had auxiliary groups made up of their black officers and they volunteered to be the marshals and fired how to train them in non-violence but the training was not needed the crowds were well organized and orderly but a number of marchers were worried because they had been threatened I do not I feel like every time your phone rang 24 hours a day there's somebody calling you a [ _ ] and you don't know who in the hell it is we can't go there whip their butts but you had to sit back and hold yourself together you're gonna be dead if you go to watching near freedom now moving hear me we are requesting all citizens to move into our six weeks the actual organization to the people began and we had hoped for 100,000 150,000 people at most but that was a conservative estimate on August twenty-eighth 1963 more than 200,000 people participated in the great march on washington for jobs and freedom organizers picked that date because it was the eighth anniversary of the murder of Emmett Till a 14 year old black boy from Chicago beaten to death in Mississippi his crime allegedly whistling at a white woman it was also a century after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation it's no surprise that the march on Washington has scheduled a hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation this was a demonstration that clearly made this tie between the Emancipation Proclamation and the unfinished promise that that was given years ago great American in whose symbolic shadow we stand today signed the Emancipation Proclamation in a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check when the architects of our republic wrote The Magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence they were signing a promissory note with Everett American was to fall out this note was a promise that all men yes black men as well as white men would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness and that's one of the important things about the March is that yeah it's incredible that yeah a quarter of a million people descended on Washington from all parts of the country he played football first at Ohio state-penn at Marquette where he received his master's degree Ted Mack led the Congress of racial equality Swiss concen delegation to the March he brought buses from Madison milwaukee and racine it was long tiresome but Jubilee did because when we got to the ginger and so all of those buses with all of the stuff he would say all the gorger's gone to Washington but one thing is saying Jim Crow you did vel Phillips and her husband Dale flew in from Milwaukee at the time she was the first and only african-american and woman on Milwaukee's Common Council her husband was the head of the local n-double-a-cp branch I remember service service and be sure to bring an umbrella naw I bet it's gonna be warm we forgot you know everyone I'm Richard airport I said we didn't bring it about because there were people who bought two and three umbrellas and they were they were generous with their blankets in there everything david knew he was a college student from ohio years i've been working in boston that summer driving a cab and i bought a small motor scooter to get around boston and i drove that road that motor scooter of 400 miles from from boston to to Washington for the March George Paz Martin was a member of st. Boniface parish in Milwaukee he was 16 years old he remembers coming home from his summer job and there was father gruppi standing in front of the house with a station wagon with you know half full of people and my mom was upstairs and the port said you're going come on hurry up and get your stuff together I had no idea what was happening and I got up there and she threw some sandwiches in my gym bag and little change of stuff and off I went and not until we were on the highway was it explain to me where we were going Kurt Schmoke was 13 growing up in Baltimore I remember that so many men and women of different ages different socio-economic groups is the first time that I recall seeing you know whites and blacks and Hispanics all together a lot of older women of were there and they were kind of the glue holding a lot of this together my mother really wanted to come to the March she thought it would be important for me I really didn't have a sense of historical significance but I knew to do what my mother told me more than 200 members of Congress attended the event as do many entertainers and celebrities the answer is blowin the early in the day marchers were treated to a concert which featured Joan Baez Bob Dylan Odetta Peter Paul and Mary and Mahalia Jackson many of the Hollywood celebrities had flown in on a chartered plane from the west coast but no one came as far as singer josephine baker who returned from Paris for the event my favorite person that day for the movie star besides I see Davis who was my own was Lena Horne because she refused to sit with the Stars she wore a simple outfit and and he probably concerns on the hill she was wearing a kerchief around her head and she SAT with the snick staff people and when people came to interview her she would say I'm not the story this is Joyce lagna from Hattiesburg Mississippi I want you to talk to her after the March CBS journalist David schoenbrunn hosted a civil rights roundtable a half hour discussion on the March and its meaning for America jul six of the celebrities who took part you to be in Washington today was for me an accumulation of a number of generations of black Americans who have been trying to appeal to the conscience of white supremacy the March had 10 co-sponsors all of the mail representing different religions some labor unions and the major civil rights groups each spoke to the crowd in support of the 10 demands of the march by a trust and read all of the demands the first demand is that we have effective civil rights legislation no compromise no filibuster and that it includes public accommodations decent housing integrated education fe pc and the right to vote what do you say along with a civil rights law the demands included enforcement of the 14th amendment voting rights and reducing congressional representation where citizens are disenfranchised and a Federal Fair Employment Practices Act this was a law banning discrimination in employment banning any private employer or a union from discriminating against a potential employee this was actually an aspect of the law that was not included in the original civil rights bill that president john f kennedy had introduced a few weeks before this but for most of the people participating in the march this was the primary goal to get the federal government to get Congress to add a fair employment clause to the law the demands call for desegregation of all school districts in 1963 an executive order banning discrimination in all housing supported by federal funds and a national minimum wage act standing before the Lincoln Memorial on the twenty eighth of august in the centennial year of emancipation i affirm my complete personal commitment to the struggle for jobs and freedom for american attendees took a pledge promising to go home and continue to work for the goals of the march one thing i didn't realize until i actually got to the March was the role that labor was playing in the march and that became an important part of it for me david newbie went on to teach at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama and worked with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee he moved to madison got a teaching position and joined the union in 1994 he was elected head of the Wisconsin afl-cio he retired from that position in 2010 but remained very involved in labor and civil rights issues but it's quite apparent to me that the members of this honorable body to put it in while to put it in the terms of my command old friends these cats are just too dumb just too dumb to know when they have something going for them you know things are it's bad enough to have to deal with with with a bigot but when you got a dumb bigot vel Phillips came back to Milwaukee and continued to fight for equality especially for open housing she broke down a number of barriers by becoming the state's first african-american judge and Secretary of State and as a 16 year old boy from Milwaukee he was my truly my coming of age George Martin became an activist for the civil rights movement the Black Panther Party and the war on poverty his strong belief in the philosophy of non-violence sparked his work for Human Rights peace and justice he joined the boards of peace education fund us peace council and has been a delegate to the World Peace Council Ted Mack came back to Milwaukee and continued working with the Congress of racial equality he helped to integrate the Pabst Brewing Company in 1970 he became the first african-american owner of a brewery when he bought people's beer in Oshkosh and developed other businesses Rochelle Horowitz continued to work with buyer drustan in civil rights in 1974 she became the political director for the American Federation of Teachers a position she held until nineteen ninety-four she is still a civil and human rights activist John Lewis continued to march for civil rights including the protest in selma alabama in 1987 he was elected to Congress from Georgia's 4th district Kurt Schmoke became the first elected african-american mayor of Baltimore he served as dean of the howard university school of law and vice president and general counsel for that historically black university I feel so my career was really affected by both the generation of people who organized and those young people who were there at the March i would really in some respects i was still on the shoulders of that generation after the march the leaders took the demands to President Kennedy at the White House President Kennedy invited us back down he stood in a door to Oval Office and greeted each one of us and he said you did a good job too did a good job and when it got to dr. wonders the King jr. he said hannover the atmosphere of the day of the march was as if the Beloved Community had been achieved two weeks after the March however this euphoria ended with a thud and that was the Burma the bombing of the 16th Avenue Church in Birmingham for little girls died in that bombing so everybody then got back to business and the youth period of euphoria was ended the next year congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which included the Federal Fair Employment Practices Act and in 1965 Congress would pass the federal voting rights act if it hadn't been for the large maybe just maybe we would have got any civil rights act passed but not as soon maybe we would have got a vote in rank site I think in in terms of the goals it created some momentum that to change some laws are and for a period there was a feeling of hope and moving along bangs chain because all of us changed we became more aggressive and we became more diversified we became more demanding we often think of the the march as a sort of moral statement right we focus on Martin Luther King's Speech as a tremendous moral statement and I think a very successful one as to the sort of the the immorality of segregation and racial inequality equal lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity 100 years later and what we forget is actually the march was not focused so much on making moral statement what the goal of the march was actually to to convince Kennedy and Congress that very strong federal action was needed to enforce that commitment so it wasn't just enough for people to believe in racial equality was that we needed very strong laws to enforce racial equality I think it'd be had for that when things are just going much better but we seem to be backtracking not be seen to be we are as far as civil rights is concerned there are no final victories I think that that's what people understand you know that we went from issues dealing with race to then gender equality than the disabilities and then of course we've had issues now with the you know sexual orientation and and these kinds of issues even immigration becomes a civil rights issue so the agenda continues it evolves but I think we're a better country because of what happened back in 1963 the amazing thing in a way is that that happened at all and that those various organizations couldn't come together for such a massive undertaking that had such an incredible and impact on this country it's politics and its ideals 50 years ago a quarter of a million Americans stood up for freedom equality and economic justice there have been victories but the struggle continues the leaders of the march wanted their voices to make a difference but not just theirs they wanted the voices of the 250,000 people who made the march on Washington to make a difference 24 black Nouveau i'm joanne williams if you would like more information about the march on Washington go to ww mptv.org / local shows / black underscore nouveau you'll find expanded interviews with the program guests and links to more information we went down the street and washington DC dress and I've abyss I hate on I said again I had on a mohair suit stay sad and shoes and no handling the Morristown Washington and I've never been so proud of being part of something like that I feel like I was the luckiest person in the world that that that that fired did me a tremendous favor by saying come along help me make history and I was able to help them do that I know I'm a better human being the close of the march on Washington didn't steal din me a greater sense of hope you