March on Washington for Work and Freedom

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View of the Washington Monument on August 28, 1963

The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (less: March on Washington , American label March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom ) was a political demonstration on 28 August 1963. He is together with the Civil Rights Act and the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Martin Luther King , which followed in 1964, is seen as one of the high points of the civil rights movement in the United States . Over 200,000 people gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC calling for an end to racial discrimination in the United States. King gave his famous speech I Have a Dream at the event .

History and organization

Program of the event

As early as 1941, Asa Philip Randolph , Bayard Rustin and Abraham J. Muste had planned a march on Washington to raise awareness of the poor economic situation of black workers in the United States. The then President Franklin D. Roosevelt accommodated the cause with the Fair Employment Act and the march did not take place.

In 1962, Randolph resumed his earlier plan. With Roy Wilkins ( NAACP ) and Whitney Young ( National Urban League ) it was initially as little approved as with Martin Luther King . However, King had helped organize a Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom in Washington in 1957 , whose 25,000 participants celebrated the three-year anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education made known court ruling in favor of black pupils and students. King wanted to build on the success of that time and subsequently supported Randolph's idea. Roy Wilkins was also persuaded not to isolate the NAACP from the other civil rights organizations. In June 1963 the date was set to fall on a Wednesday so that Jews and Christian chaplains could participate without violating their religious obligations. Randolph was appointed director of the preparatory group and Bayard Rustin his deputy.

Supporters of the march were the Afro-American civil rights groups:

Other organizations, including the National Council of Churches , the American Jewish Congress , and the United Auto Workers supported the march on Washington. American President John F. Kennedy was initially concerned about public safety in the face of a mass rally, but reinforced the project through his own policies, watching the event on television and receiving the speakers after the event. Organizing such a mass gathering required considerable planning in terms of travel, safety, medical and sanitation, public relations, and funding. To avoid the overly visible presence of white police officers, stewards from among the African American participants were trained.

Event and goals

Impressions of the March on Washington captured in the film
Harry Belafonte (center) on the March on Washington for Work and Freedom with Sidney Poitier (l.) And Charlton Heston (r.)

One hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation by Abraham Lincoln that the slavery in the American South abolished, marched more than 200,000 people, both white and black skin to Washington for a peaceful protest. The evening before, the participants had traveled by special trains and buses from all over the country. Around noon there were up to 250,000 people, an estimated twenty percent white.

Contrary to the original plans for a train to the Capitol at the request of the authorities, the route in Washington led from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial . The prevention of the abuse of the event for self-portrayal of individual groups was achieved through standardized slogans and banners. The choice of the title of the event showed the effort to integrate demands of a concrete economic as well as political nature. Ten demands were set up in an official catalog of goals that supported John F. Kennedy in his civil rights policy and those of ten speakers in each case five minutes should be displayed.

Some important civil rights activists were absent that day: James Farmer's speech was canceled due to his prison sentence; his message was read by Floyd McKissick . WEB Du Bois had died in Ghana the day before . The widow of the recently murdered Medgar Evers highlighted the achievements of civil rights activists such as Daisy Bates , Diane Nash , Rosa Parks and others. Martin Luther King's speech was placed at the end of the program by Randolph to allow for more speaking time for King, whom he described as the "moral leader of the nation." She became known worldwide under the title I Have a Dream .

In addition to the speakers, various musicians also performed, including Joan Baez , Bob Dylan , Odetta Holmes , Mahalia Jackson , the Eva Jessye Choir and Peter, Paul and Mary . Even Harry Belafonte and other celebrities took part in the march on Washington. The Orthodox Rabbi Uri Miller said a prayer and the Baptist Pastor Benjamin Mays closed the rally with a blessing. The event was hosted by the actor couple Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis .

Effects

The March on Washington was televised worldwide on the new Telstar satellite . American television companies broadcast live from Washington. It did not bring about any immediate political changes, but it had a high symbolic significance and triggered a great deal of media coverage in the USA and Europe. In a broader sense, it also led to the enforcement of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act of 1964 and 1965 by Kennedy's successor Lyndon B. Johnson .

The March on Washington was the model for the Million-Man March of 1995. In 2003, forty years after the March on Washington, a commemorative event was held at the same location under different thematic conditions and with different political demands Thousands of demonstrators attended , among them Martin Luther King III , the eldest son of Martin Luther King and King's widow, Coretta Scott King . In 2010, Barack Obama decorated the Oval Office with a bust of Martin Luther King and a framed program of the March on Washington.

On the 57th anniversary of the 1963 rally, on August 28, 2020, the March on Washington was reissued. The motto this time was "Take your knee off our necks". It referred to the agonizing death of African American George Floyd on May 25, 2020, when a police officer put his knee on his neck for more than eight minutes, choking him to death. The rally was dominated by the recent police violence that sparked mass protests in the United States and around the world . Just four days before the march, on August 23, 2020, the African American Jacob Blake was seriously injured in the back by a white police officer who shot him at close range, while Blake, who was paralyzed from the hip, was handcuffed to the hospital bed. Tens of thousands of people demonstrated and demanded - after a summer of protests against systemic racism and police violence - a reform of the criminal law and electoral law. Blake's father shouted at the rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial: "Without justice there is no peace!" There are two systems of justice: one for whites and one for blacks. “But we'll get up!” The Floyd family civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump , who also represented the families of Jacob Blake, Trayvon Martin , Michael Brown , Tamir Rice , Stephon Clark , Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery , said, “We have to finally get them The culture and police behavior in America is changing this incredible pattern of violence against black Americans during this pandemic . "King's eldest son Martin Luther King III said at the rally," We are calling for real, lasting, structural change. " King's twelve-year-old granddaughter Yolanda Renee promised: "We will be the generation to end systematic racism once and for all, now and forever!"

criticism

The cooperation between the state and the organizers and the high willingness to integrate and compromise triggered not only criticism from white segregationists but also criticism from within their own ranks. Martin Luther King had not shown a concrete way to turn his "dream" into reality, and the economic demands of the demonstration had faded into the background. More radical African Americans could not share King's vision of a society where blacks and whites merge into a community regardless of skin color. The civil rights activist Malcolm X , then still a member of the “ Nation of Islam ”, also addressed the march in his speech Message to the Grass Roots in November of the same year and criticized the participation of whites, Jewish and Christian clergy and the loss of black militancy . The march has become a “circus”, a “picnic” and can be compared with strong, black coffee that has been diluted and weakened with white milk. Alluding to King's speech, he said he saw an "American nightmare".

literature

  • Tobias Dietrich: Martin Luther King. Pp. 56-68 . Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Paderborn 2008, ISBN 978-3-8252-3023-4 .
  • Daniel Moosbrugger: The American Civil Rights Movement: "Black Revolution" in the 1950s and 60s. Pp. 97-109 . ibidem Verlag, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 978-3-89821-415-5 .

Web links

Commons : March on Washington 1963  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Commons : Members of the African American Civil Rights Movement (1954–68)  - collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The double meaning of the preposition "on" or "on" instead of "to" or "after" refers to both the place of the assembly and its meaning as the seat of government. (Tobias Dietrich 2008, p. 56)
  2. ↑ George Houser's biography at congressofracialequality.org. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on October 7, 2012 ; Retrieved September 26, 2012 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.congressofracialequality.org
  3. ↑ Tobias Dietrich 2008. p. 56
  4. ↑ Tobias Dietrich 2008. p. 57
  5. ↑ Tobias Dietrich 2008. p. 56
  6. ↑ Tobias Dietrich 2008. pp. 56,60.
  7. ↑ Tobias Dietrich 2008. p. 58
  8. ↑ a b Spiegel online on August 24, 2003: March on Washington: A dream for 40 years. Retrieved March 27, 2011 .
  9. ↑ Tobias Dietrich 2008. P. 58f.
  10. ↑ Program of the event crmvet.org. Retrieved April 4, 2011 .
  11. ↑ a b Tobias Moosbrugger, p. 102 f.
  12. ↑ a b Holidash on January 7, 2010: Obama's Oval Office Rehab Salutes Martin Luther King, Jr. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on December 28, 2010 ; accessed on March 28, 2011 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / news.holidash.com
  13. ↑ Tobias Dietrich 2008. p. 59
  14. ↑ NBC -Washington: 10 Things You Didn't Know About the 1963 March on Washington ( Memento of the original from June 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , August 28, 2013 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.nbcwashington.com
  15. ^ Robert Dallek: Lyndon B. Johnson: Portrait of a President. Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-515921-7 , pp. 230 ff.
  16. ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/28/march-washington-dc-racism-get-your-knee-off-our-necks
  17. ↑ https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2020-08/marsch-auf-washington-anti-rassismus-protest-gegen-polizeigewalt
  18. ↑ https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/politik/usa-protest-marsch-washington-rassismus-polizeigewalt-100.html
  19. ↑ https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/nehmt-euer-knie-aus-unseren-nacken-zehntausende-demonstrieren-bei-neuem-marsch-auf-washington/26139494.html
  20. ↑ https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/marsch-auf-washington-nehmt-euer-knie-von-unseren-nacken/26139528.html
  21. ↑ Tobias Dietrich 2008. P. 58 f.
  22. ↑ Tobias Dietrich 2008. p. 67
  23. ^ The Speech Site: "Message to the Grass Roots" by Malcolm X delivered November 10, 1963 in Detroit, MI. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on August 24, 2010 ; accessed on March 27, 2011 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / thespeechsite.com
  24. ↑ the daily newspaper on April 4, 2008; Albert Scharenberg: Pious, liberal, American. Martin Luther King was murdered 40 years ago. But the civil rights movement was unable to overcome informal racism. Retrieved March 27, 2011 .