An Altered State: My March on Washington (50 Years Later)

I was 17 and a Catholic high school student when I participated in what was officially called the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963. I  heard my own beliefs expressed by President Kennedy in his television address that June: “We are confronted primarily by a moral issue. It is as old as the scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution.”

 In the weekly newspaper for the Greensburg diocese, the Catholic Accent, I read about an organization called the Catholic Interracial Council that was inviting people to go to the March. I contacted the priest who was named, who talked to my parents. He must have been convincing because I got permission to go. But I got my first indication of just how small this group was going to be when I attended a meeting, and it was two priests—and me. A photographer from the Catholic Accent snapped our picture as I pretended to paint the already completed banner we would carry.

 As it turned out, we were the only three people from the diocese to march under that banner. We would meet many other people from the Pittsburgh area, organized by religious groups of various denominations as well as by labor unions and civil rights groups. Many traveled to the March from all over the country by bus, and a few by plane, including celebrities from Hollywood and legendary entertainer Josephine Baker from Paris. I boarded a special train from Pittsburgh, one of the twenty or so originating from various places that were added to take people to the March.

 Recently reviewing video from that day posted on YouTube, I was amazed to see a few frames of my 17 year-old self arriving at Washington’s Union Station, walking towards the camera and trying to look appropriately serious, in my dark suit, white shirt and tie. (I'm on the far right at 11:32 or so.)

 I also looked alert. Vigilance to the possibility of violence was universal that day. From police commissioner Bull Connor unleashing police dogs on demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama, to the murder of Medgar Evers outside his home in Mississippi, it had been a brutal summer in the South. It’s been estimated that over 14,000 demonstrators across the South (including high school students) were arrested during those months, with at least one death.  But the March was very well organized along principles of non-violence.  It was the template used for demonstrations afterwards.

 When I got home I wrote of the “dedicated and dignified fervor” around me at the march. But high spirits were also part of that day’s rhythm. From Union Station to the Lincoln Memorial there was always singing. For me it started even earlier, when I restlessly explored the train, wandering through one quiet car after another until I suddenly pushed open a heavy door to a car literally packed to the rafters with young people. Some were perched in the luggage racks. Several at the far end of the car were playing guitars, and everyone was singing.

 The march itself was like one long song. It is more powerful in my memory than the hours of speeches at the reflecting pool. Looking into the faces of the people nearest me, and all of us looking around, my feelings became a reflection of what we felt in common. We were astonished by our numbers, by the fact of us all there, of the reality that was completely new. The overwhelming mood was wonder. It was a sustained altered state, a living dream.

 We had a sense of unanticipated numbers on the march, but the dimensions of the day weren’t clear until we got to the reflecting pool. So many people (since settled at 250,000, the largest demonstration in U.S. history to that date) and yet the transfixing feeling of peace—I don’t think anyone had foreseen this.

 I saw the joy and wonder and the tears as black people of different ages and from different parts of the country saw each other there. I was also aware that in this context they could see a young white face undistorted by hate or contempt.

 We’d marched and sung together, but even as an audience for the program at the Lincoln Memorial, the interactions didn’t stop-- interactions that in the mid-1960s were still rare. Now we stood in line together at portable water fountains and toilets. We bunched and sprawled on the grass together, sweating under the same steamy sun, both drowsy and responsive to the inspiring words and music coming through the not always comprehensible fuzz of the sound system. We felt careful courtesy becoming a release into a common regard. We looked at each other.

 We listened to Dr. Martin Luther King together, quoting an American hymn—“From every mountainside, let freedom ring!” We heard his American litany reach its crescendo: “Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!...Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!”

 “And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring... from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!’"

 He spoke of a dream that he saw reflected in the water in front of him.

 The official intent of the March was to support passage of the Civil Rights bill that President Kennedy sent to Congress a few days after his June speech. Immediately afterwards I recall commentary in the press calling it a failure because that bill was stalled in Congress (it would pass in early 1964.) Today the march is better remembered than the political reason for it.

 Race has still not been erased as deep separation, nor has full racial justice been achieved. But fifty years after that day, my memories aren’t of politics or even history. They are physical. They are of a future glimpsed by being lived.

Fifty years later President Obama called this day "as important as any day in American history."  In his speech at the Lincoln Memorial he carried the theme sounded by Martin Luther King--of no one being free unless all are free--into the present and the future:

Because they marched, America became more free and more fair -- not just for African Americans, but for women and Latinos, Asians and Native Americans; for Catholics, Jews, and Muslims; for gays, for Americans with a disability. America changed for you and for me. and the entire world drew strength from that example, whether the young people who watched from the other side of an Iron Curtain and would eventually tear down that wall, or the young people inside South Africa who would eventually end the scourge of apartheid."

"But it also teaches us that the promise of this nation will only be kept when we work together. We’ll have to reignite the embers of empathy and fellow feeling, the coalition of conscience that found expression in this place 50 years ago."

 "That’s where courage comes from -- when we turn not from each other, or on each other, but towards one another, and we find that we do not walk alone. That’s where courage comes from.   And with that courage, we can stand together for good jobs and just wages. With that courage, we can stand together for the right to health care in the richest nation on Earth for every person. With that courage, we can stand together for the right of every child, from the corners of Anacostia to the hills of Appalachia, to get an education that stirs the mind and captures the spirit, and prepares them for the world that awaits them. 

 With that courage, we can feed the hungry, and house the homeless, and transform bleak wastelands of poverty into fields of commerce and promise. America, I know the road will be long, but I know we can get there. Yes, we will stumble, but I know we’ll get back up. That’s how a movement happens. That’s how history bends. That's how when somebody is faint of heart, somebody else brings them along and says, come on, we’re marching." 

 "There’s a reason why so many who marched that day, and in the days to come, were young -- for the young are unconstrained by habits of fear, unconstrained by the conventions of what is. They dared to dream differently, to imagine something better."

[More at Dreaming Up Daily, Blue Voice and Kowincidence.]

August 28, 1963/2008

Reflections on the August 28, 1963 March on Washington and the nomination of Barack Obama on August 28, 2008--with photos.

Living the Dream

I've been hearing and seeing the media and the blogs repeat that today is the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech. It is certainly that, and it is an historic speech. It is also a speech that King substantially repeated from earlier events, and what made it so historic was the occasion.

For it is the 45th anniversary of something larger: the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, when more than a quarter of a million people demanded justice.

I have two buttons to wear today. One you may have seen conventioneers wearing in Denver: in two shades of blue, it says” HOPE is in the air/Barack Obama/Invesco Field at Mile High/ Aug 28 2008.” The other is stark black on white. It says: March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom/August 28, 1963.”

In August 1963, Barack Obama was two years old. I was 17, and I marched that day. I’ll never forget it. Today I’ll be watching on TV as Barack Obama becomes the first African American to accept the nomination of a major party for President. In a way, it’s not something Martin Luther King even dared to dream.

[This narrative continues after photos below]

JFK talking about his Civil Rights bill
on national TV: June 11, 1963.

In June 1963, President Kennedy introduced a Civil Rights bill, which not only covered voting rights but mandated an end to segregation in public places, gave the federal government new tools to desegregate public education, and created new job training and vocational education programs. Civil rights leaders decided to organize a March on Washington to support this bill. (JFK was afraid it would hurt the bill's chances and tried to dissuade them.)

In his televised address announcing the bill, President Kennedy said “We are confronted with a moral issue. It is as old as the Scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution. Now the time has come for this nation to fulfill its promise.”

That’s what it was to me and many others: a moral issue. For the past several years, but especially in 1962 and ’63, our TV screens had shown opposition and violence in Mississippi and Alabama to African Americans trying to exercise fundamental rights, including young men and women, just a few years older than me, who wanted what I wanted: a college education.

Because it was a moral issue, many churches got involved in the March, including Catholic clergy (the Archbishop of Washington gave the invocation, and the program included Protestant and Jewish clergy.)

I lived just outside a small town in western Pennsylvania, with an Italian mother, a father of mixed and only partially known Eastern European background, and I attended a Catholic high school. I was inspired by JFK, Martin Luther King, the essays of James Baldwin, “To Kill A Mockingbird,” etc., but it was reading about a local organization called the Catholic Interracial Council that gave me the idea I could actually be part of the March.

I contacted the priest who was named as the Council’s director. He helped secure my parents’ permission, and I was accepted as part of the group that would take one of the special trains to the March. As it turned out, I was the group. In the entire diocese, I was the only one to sign up. Our delegation was two priests and me.

If you’ve seen some of the black and white film of that day, you’ve probably seen people getting off trains. There were something like 21 special trains that rolled into Washington. There was an amazing mood that day, which began on the train ride down. I guess I was on that train eight hours or more. I walked through the cars, and everyone was very subdued, cautiously friendly, and probably a little surprised to see a white, blue-eyed 17 year old boy. Most of the people were black, but the figure I've seen of 80% seems high.

Update 2013: Near the 50th anniversary of the March, I found some newly posted footage on YouTube, and was utterly amazed to see my 17 year old self in just that kind of black and white film--just off the train, walking down the platform of Union Station in Washington.  It's just a few frames--between 11:31-11:33--but it's me on the right of the picture, in my dark suit, white shirt and tie, looking serious until just before I walk out of frame, when I start to smile at the camera.

I’d grown up next door to a black family—oddly enough, they were the Robinsons (none was named Michelle, alas.) The oldest son was one of my three best friends until they went to public high school and I went to the Catholic high, and we drifted apart. I knew his family--I remember his father with particular affection-- and I had gone to an event or two at their church, so even though I didn’t relate Civil Rights issues to them directly, I’d had more contact than most of my Catholic school classmates.

Still, that didn't completely prepare me for seeing and being among so many black people. Then again, not even the black people there had ever seen so many black people together. But I think the basic feeling we had was the same, if for somewhat different reasons: awe.

But that was still to come. There was another special experience on the train--when suddenly and without any warning, I pushed open those heavy train car doors and entered an entirely different world: it was a car filled literally to the rafters with young people, college students, white and black. And they were singing. Folk songs, spirituals, Woody Guthrie and other political songs... A wave of happy, defiant sound hit me, and changed everything.

At home I listened to Peter, Paul and Mary and other popular folk singers on the radio, and I took out records from the library by Joan Baez and Bob Dylan. But it hadn’t occurred to me that playing and singing was something I could do, until I stood at the end of that train car. The thrill of that moment led to nearly another half century of misspent youth. And it was a true spiritual experience.

When we reached Washington and got off that train, the reaction of everybody seemed to be the same as mine: utter amazement. There were so many people. I seem to recall that organizers hoped for 50,000 people. Soon I was hearing 100,000. By the end of the day most were saying 300,000 at least. By tradition as much as any real count, the number given is usually 250,000—a quarter of a million people.

I remember it was bright and hot on the march route, and it was not simply peaceful—it was as close to a definition of peace as I’ve ever experienced. An intense peace. Wonder. Awe. Gratitude for each other. Love. It was an altered state of consciousness for the entire march.

Before the March, people had been afraid that there would be violence. But from the time I got off the train, it was clear that violence was not a possibility. (And in fact, even though there were troops ready to come into Washington at a moment’s notice, there were fewer than 6,000 police for this quarter of a million people.)

I’m sure there was singing, chanting, clapping, but somehow I remember it as a sweet quiet, a walking joy. Only later did I realize that I was marching with Rosa Parks and Josephine Baker, Paul Newman and Charlton Heston, Harry Belafonte and James Garner, Lena Horne and James Baldwin.

Then we gathered around the Reflecting Pool for the program. In the photos of the crowd taken from the stage, I’m on the left, about halfway up. Although I'm a little hard to make out.

The sound wasn’t all that great as I recall, and the speeches were sometimes hard to hear. And they were, after all, speeches. We had walked a ways, and it was hot—-really hot, sitting still in the sun. I was more interested in the music: Dylan, Baez, Odetta, Lena Horne, Peter, Paul & Mary. Marian Anderson had sung earlier. I wound up wandering around a bit, looking at the signs, looking at people.

There was a young firebrand named John Lewis who spoke, chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Famed labor leader Walter Reuther spoke: labor unions were an organizing force for the March, which was billed (as my button says) as a march for JOBS and Freedom. It was about the economy then, too—economic justice, equal opportunity.

Mahalia Jackson sang, and then Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke. Even dulled by the heat, I remember hearing those words, feeling that crowd. King’s speech was about the fierce urgency of now.

“Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God’s children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.”
King told the country that these rights could no longer be denied, and that efforts to secure these rights was only beginning. He said that half measures won’t be enough.

“We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Then he spoke to those who had suffered for their protests, to give them hope.

“Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama...go back to the slums and ghettos of our Northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. At the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream."

That’s how the most famous passages of that speech begins. And even if it now survives mostly as a mini-soundbite (“I have a dream”), it’s worth recalling their purpose as well as their resonance.

That’s the moment that has lasted in history, but the most powerful moment for me, being there, happened just afterwards: it was the singing of “We Shall Overcome.”

Are you kidding me?—250,000 people singing ‘We Shall Overcome”—it gives me goosebumps just thinking about it.

When the program was over, and the March leaders went off to eat with President Kennedy and talk about the Civil Rights bill, I went to the House of Representative offices of William Moorhead, a Pittsburgh congressman, with my priest companions. We washed up and chilled out for awhile before the train ride back.

Some days after we got back, I wrote an article about the March for the local Catholic weekly newspaper. It was printed under the title, “Eyes of Youth,” and it definitely has a young person’s point of view that might still have some resonance in 2008. First, on the public response to the March, before it became a part of history. But there’s an immediate transition to what the March ultimately meant for my generation. Here’s what I wrote then:


The big shock came to us when we returned home. After all the hours of standing, walking, riding, and marching: after seeing huge masses of dedicated and self-sacrificing people; after hearing the songs and speeches crying for freedom, we were vastly surprised to hear the dispassionate estimates of our effectiveness. The consensus seemed to be that we did little, of any, real good.

Most of these opinions were in reference to civil rights legislation, but to the young people this was not the real issue. The legislation will inevitably come, and it is for future generations to make it work, and to promote the true social integration of the races.

Is this impossible? Had there not been a march, there would be grave doubts about the practicality of realizing this American ideal.

But today, after the march, there can be no doubt. When a mass of people roughly equivalent to the population of Syracuse, comprised of different backgrounds, religions, races, and coming from different regions, could converge on Washington with such dedicated and dignified fervor as to make thoughts of violence absurd, then hope for the future is supremely justified.

It all held special meaning to the young people. They had come from many places, and for many reasons. Perhaps their thoughts were best expressed by a favorite folk singing group who sang these lyrics from a popular song at the march:
“How many years can some people exist before they’re allowed to be free?
How many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn’t see?”
From the singing on the Freedom Train, to the slow chant of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, the young people brought spirit and compassion to a cause in which they deeply felt.

While all the banners for “Freedom Now!” will have to be satisfied by the present generation, the young people of today will also face a great task.

Prejudice is based mainly on ignorance. It was evident to the marchers that once the races begin to live and work together, as we marched together, meaningful integration can be achieved. It will fall upon the shoulders of the young people of today to see it through.

So perhaps this is the legacy of my generation to the younger generation of today. It is the achievement of some level of “social integration” at the level of the heart as well as the mind that has made Barack Obama’s candidacy possible. Despite residual racism, particularly in older generations, his young supporters represent the real possibility that Dr. King’s dream of a time when people are not judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character, is finally at hand.

Tonight I won't be at Mile High Stadium. (I'd hoped to be one of the ten Obama contributors invited, but alas...) But I'll be watching, and over my heart I will wear both those buttons, from August 28, 1963, and for the fierce urgency of today.

Postscript: Speaking of the American Promise, here is what Barack Obama said to end his acceptance speech before 84,000 people at Mile High stadium in Denver:

And it is that promise that forty five years ago today, brought Americans from every corner of this land to stand together on a Mall in Washington, before Lincoln's Memorial, and hear a young preacher from Georgia speak of his dream.

The men and women who gathered there could've heard many things. They could've heard words of anger and discord. They could've been told to succumb to the fear and frustration of so many dreams deferred. But what the people heard instead - people of every creed and color, from every walk of life - is that in America, our destiny is inextricably linked. That together, our dreams can be one.

"We cannot walk alone," the preacher cried. "And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back."

America, we cannot turn back. Not with so much work to be done. Not with so many children to educate, and so many veterans to care for. Not with an economy to fix and cities to rebuild and farms to save. Not with so many families to protect and so many lives to mend. America, we cannot turn back. We cannot walk alone. At this moment, in this election, we must pledge once more to march into the future. Let us keep that promise - that American promise - and in the words of Scripture hold firmly, without wavering, to the hope that we confess.