Sixty years ago, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom inspired more than 250,000 people to gather for a public demonstration — at the time, one of the biggest marches in the country's history. The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his now famous speech, “I Have a Dream” at the Lincoln Memorial, just weeks after President John K. Kennedy called civil rights a “moral issue.”
"I thought it was a wonderful opportunity to put my feet where my heart was, to speak in support of civil rights, to join all the other thousands of people who wanted to see the United States make some moves toward civil rights," said Jane Bowers, a Boston resident who attended the 1963 March.
But the original focus of the March was to be a public stand for jobs and freedom, and a push against a deeply segregated, racist America.
"A month after this event, white people blew up a church and killed four children. And so I think it's very important that we make a distinction between the white people," said Byron Rushing, former Massachusetts state Rep. "Never say this [march] had an effect on white people. It had an effect on the moment, it seems. Maybe a majority of white people, but it certainly did not have an effect, except the negative concern by Southern white people."
What is the legacy of this seminal event in this moment of continued efforts to roll back civil rights gains, and at a time of increasing violent racial tension?
"We now see a determined resistance that's called MAGA, that is trying to go back to where they were again in the sense, which is make America great again for them," Courtland Cox, civil rights activist who helped organize the 1963 march, told Under the Radar.
"Making America great depended on racial and economic exploitation of the African American community. ... And the good thing about today is that, while we only could protest in 1960 and '63 and '65, we can now be in power. ... We now have positions of power and we need to be able to really uphold the concepts of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence."
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Jane Bowers, a Boston resident who attended the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
Byron Rushing, former Massachusetts state representative and president of the Roxbury Historical Society
Courtland Cox, civil rights activist who helped organize the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
