In 1963, civil rights leaders A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin began plans for a march on Washington to protest segregation, the lack of voting rights, and unemployment among African Americans. Randolph and Rustin enlisted the support of all the major civil rights organizations, and the march—on August 28—was a resounding success.
The March on Washington sought to pressure Congress to pass civil rights legislation. Many public officials feared that the march would result in violence and proposed a bill in Congress to prevent it. Despite predictions of trouble, an interracial crowd of over 250,000 gathered and listened to speakers without any violence.
The demonstration was not organized as an isolated episode in history but was a culmination of events that led to its need and conception. Decades prior to the march, the nation experienced periods of court cases and protests for justice that were often met with reprisals of heightened discrimination, terror, and violence. In the years leading to the march, from Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, to the dogs and hoses of Birmingham in 1963, the nation, as well as the lives and future of children, were at risk. Americans rallied around the guarantees of the Constitution, however, to defend its promise of equal rights and protections for every American.
Most often remembered for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, the March on Washington was organized around more than a dream or vision. As King made clear throughout his address, the movement converged on Washington with a set of legislative demands and strategies. While marking the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom also recognized that one hundred years after slavery’s abolition, African Americans still were not free. Under a system of racial apartheid, Black Americans were subject to discrimination and violence that was not being brought to justice. The march addressed such inequities with demands for civil rights laws and protections that would desegregate public accommodations and end discrimination in housing, education, employment, and voting, while enforcing the Constitutional virtue of “liberty and justice for all.”