60 years ago this month, more than 125,000 people marched down Woodward Avenue in Detroit in the largest civil rights demonstration ever at that time.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. joined activists, ministers, and civic leaders for the Detroit Walk to Freedom.

Afterward, he delivered an early version of his "I Have a Dream" speech at Cobo Arena.

"American Black Journal" contributor Bryce Huffman sat down with two women who were there in 1963 for this history-making event.

- [Bryce] It's been 60 years since the Walk to Freedom was held in Detroit.

This is the march that concluded with Dr. Martin Luther King giving his famous "I Have a Dream" speech for the first time.

The streets of Downtown were flooded with people young and old, Black and white, who all believed in racial and economic justice.

Lifelong activist Dorothy Aldridge was just 20 years old at the time of the march, but she remembers it well.

- It was well integrated and then, you know, at the time, the mayor of Detroit, Mayor Cavanagh, was a white person.

So there was no conflict between Blacks and whites as such.

No, none whatsoever.

- So tell me, what was going on in the city of Detroit in 1963?

- In 1963, of course there was the question about police harassment, police brutality of the young people in Detroit, and the march was called in particular to talk about housing, to talk about jobs, and to talk about schools, because the schools were slowly being integrated.

Now, one other thing I wanna add that Medgar Evers had just been killed in Jackson, Mississippi, and so that was another one of the things that spurred interest in the march.

- Aldridge first became an activist at a young age, just as many Detroiters did.

She said it was the Montgomery bus boycott and Emmett Till's death that pulled her into the fight for equality.

Aldridge heard about the march when she was a member of the Northern Student Movement in Detroit.

What was the first thing you can really remember thinking and feeling as you're joining this march?

- Oh, much excitement.

For one, it was a beautiful, beautiful day, and no one expected these many people to show out.

- So the march, where did it start and where did it end?

It started, it was Warren and Woodward area and then went all the way Downtown to Cobo Hall.

There's wall-to-wall people from Warren all the way Downtown practically to the riverfront.

- [Bryce] Then Aldridge says people funneled into Cobo Hall to hear local leaders and well-known entertainers speak.

Did you realize how important that moment was gonna be for American history?

- Well, I did, and many of us did.

Many times we had to talk about the Detroit march because people forget about that there was a march before Washington.

Dr. King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech fully flushed out at Cobo Hall before he did at the March on Washington.

- [Bryce] Tell me what was like to hear that speech for the first time.

- Oh, it was electrifying.

Well, of course it was my first time really hearing Dr. King speak, and he was, had a wonderful speaking voice, and he had, you know, just come through himself the Montgomery bus boycott.

- [Bryce] Edith Lee-Payne, a lifelong Detroiter and community activist, also remembers that day in 1963.

- Well, I heard about the march because of my mother hearing about it on TV, I'm sure.

- We spoke to Payne at the Central United Methodist Church in Detroit, which was along the march's route to Cobo Hall.

She was just 11 years old when she went to the march with her mother.

So at 11 years old, did you realize how monumental those two marches would become?

- I did not realize that those marches would be so huge where we would be talking about 50 years later, 60 years later, even 10 years later.

That was the largest march in history at that point.

Dr. King, of course, you know, led many, many marches across the South.

So if 10,000 people were there, that was still considered to be a lot.

- Tell me, were there a lot of kids your age there?

Were there a lot of kids from your school or from your neighborhood who attended?

- I don't remember seeing anyone from my neighborhood, but what I know now later, there were.

We didn't, like, I don't think my mother called anyone and said, "I'm going to the march, you going?"

and we met up with people.

It wasn't like that.

She was pretty much an independent person.

She just decided to do what she was gonna do the same way when we went to Washington, DC, for the March on Washington, so.

- [Bryce] Payne mostly knew about Dr. King from seeing him on TV or seeing his name appear in the newspaper.

- I fortunately did not experience some of the injustices that people did in the South because I was here in Detroit.

I was in the North, but I did hear about it.

I did see about it, and we were encouraged in school to be involved with current events.

So we would read about those things and know about them, and of course we'd hear conversations with families who were from the South.

So I understood full well why I was there, and I was real proud to be there and walk along with other people.

- What were the conversations you and your mom had after that first march here in Detroit?

- Well, I can't remember how long it was after that first march, the June 23rd march here that she decided that we would go to Washington.

- [Marchers] Freedom, freedom, freedom!

- She would always stress to me how important it was for me to be the best that I could always be, and not because I was a little Negro girl, because I was a little girl, and I was an intelligent little girl, and I could achieve and be whatever I wanted to be.

It helped me be more of an American, which is what I am.

The fact that I'm a Black American is secondary.

That doesn't define me, and our colors should never define us.

Dr. King didn't want our colors to define us.

He wanted our character to define us and who we were as a person.

- [Bryce] Payne and Aldridge have both had decades to process what they witnessed at the march, and both have thoughts of how that event could help people who weren't there.

If Dr. King could speak to us today, what do you think he'd wanna talk to us about?

- First of all, he would want us to talk about nonviolence and nonviolent conflict management in the community.

There's just entirely too much trigger happy-ness in the community these days, and the people resolve conflict with a gun, and of course, that's goes against all of Dr. King's teachings.

- [Bryce] Payne also believes the emphasis on non-violence is a big takeaway from the march.

- It was about our democracy.

It was about commitment.

It was about dedication.

It was about wanting a better life, a better quality of life.

Now, Dr. King advocated for non-violence, and non-violence was the genesis of the success of the civil rights movement.

- [March Leader] Assemble in your expected group and begin the March for Freedom now.

- If it had been anything other than that, we wouldn't be talking about him now.

There would be no Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

What his message then would've been lost, and the way people would have reacted if it wasn't, other than nonviolent.