As remembered and commemorated by most Americans, the 1963 March on Washington — its 60th anniversary fell on Monday — represents the essence of the civil rights movement, defined in our national mythology as a colorblind demand for neutrality and fairness in the face of discrimination, embodied in the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream that his “four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
Less well remembered, in our collective memory at least, is the fact that both the march and King’s speech were organized around much more than opposition to anti-Black discrimination. It was officially known as the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, with a far more expansive vision for society than formal equality under the law. The march wasn’t a demand for a more inclusive arrangement under the umbrella of postwar American liberalism, as it might seem today. It was a demand for something more — for a social democracy of equals, grounded in the long Black American struggle to realize the promises of the Declaration of Independence and the potential of Reconstruction.
Consider the 10-point list of demands issued by the organizers of the march. They wanted “Comprehensive and effective civil rights legislation” to guarantee all Americans “access to all public accommodations, decent housing, adequate and integrated education” and “the right to vote.” They wanted “a massive federal program to train and place all unemployed workers — Negro and white — on meaningful and dignified jobs at decent wages.” They wanted “a national minimum wage act that will give all Americans a decent standard of living.” They wanted federal legislation to protect workers from exploitation and a federal government that brought its full power to bear on discrimination and disenfranchisement.
Or, better yet, consider the labor leader A. Philip Randolph’s opening speech to the assembled marchers. “We want a free, democratic society dedicated to the political, economic and social advancement of man along moral lines,” said Randolph, for whom the 1963 March on Washington was the fulfillment of a call made more than two decades earlier, in the midst of World War II, to “Let the Negro masses speak with ten thousand Negroes strong, marching down Pennsylvania Avenue in the capital of the nation.”
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