Beginning of a Dream

Many Negroes had looked to the march as an end in itself, a massive demonstration that would somehow solve all their problems. It was not that.

Many other Americans, both white and Negro, had looked to the march with dread. It would, they feared, be an occasion for riot and bloodshed.

But it was not that either.

As against the excesses of expectation on both sides, the day began in anticlimax. Overnight, special trains and buses began moving into Washington from all parts of the U.S. Some of the early arrivals went off to picket Bobby Kennedy's Justice Department. But most of those getting off the trains in Washington's Union Station seemed weary, bewildered and subdued.

Only when a "Freedom Special" roared in from Deep Dixie did things get lively. The train, originating in Jacksonville, Fla., carried 785 marchers--many of them youngsters in their teens or early 20s who, as a result of their participation in Negro demonstrations, had spent time in Southern jails or carried on their bodies the scars inflicted by Southern cops. They piled off the train singing the battle hymn of the Negro's 1963 revolution, We Shall Overcome. Their spirit perked up hundreds of other Negroes still wandering aimlessly around the depot.

Overalls & Ivy. Even so, as of 7:30 on the morning of the great day, there were probably more cops than marchers on the assembly grounds around the Washington Monument. The District of Columbia's police chief, Robert V. Murray, had assembled a force of 5,900 men --including 350 club-carrying firemen, 1,700 National Guardsmen and 300 newly sworn-in police reserves. At nearby bases, 4,000 soldiers and marines were ready to cross the Potomac in helicopters if they were needed for riot duty.

Organizers of the march had publicly predicted a throng of 100,000, although they privately felt confident that many more than that would show up. Now, peeking out of the green-and-white circus tent that served as their headquarters on the Monument grounds, the leaders began to worry that the crowd might fall short of their minimal hopes.

But even then, the railroad tracks and highways leading to Washington were clogged. Throughout the day, the marchers poured into the nation's capital--building to a grand total of well over 200,000. Of these, somewhere between 10% and 15% were white. There were, of course, the guitar-toting, goatee-growing beatniks; but for every one of these, there were probably two or three clergymen. There were Negroes in faded blue overalls; there were even more in stylish Ivy League suits. They swirled around the Monument's assembly ground, ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, passed around canteens filled with water (Washington had prohibited the sale of liquor for the day), tried to keep track of their children with no conspicuous success.

If violence were to occur, it would probably have been set off by a scruffy-looking bunch of about 50 white men who stood across 15th Street from the Monument grounds, staring balefully at the assembling civil rights marchers. These were members of the nitwit American Nazi Party, led by George Lincoln Rockwell. Prohibited by cops from crossing over to the Monument grounds, Rockwell could only rage helplessly: "I can't stand niggers. I can't stand to hear We Shall Overcome." Even before the march started, he led his ridiculous group away from the vicinity in an agony of frustration.

The march from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial, a distance of about eight-tenths of a mile, had been scheduled to start at 11:30 a.m. But at least 20 minutes before then, a group of Negroes started strolling away from the Monument grounds on the way to the Memorial. Hundreds, then thousands and tens of thousands, followed. Constitution and Independence Avenues were transformed into oceans of bobbing placards. Some marchers wept as they walked; the faces of many more gleamed with happiness. There were no brass bands. There was little shouting or singing. Instead, for over an hour and a half, there was the sound of thousands of feet shuffling toward the temple erected in the name of Abraham Lincoln.

Salt & Pepper. At the Memorial, the first order of business was a program of professional entertainment. Folk Singers Joan Baez, Josh White, Odetta, Bob Dylan, Peter-Paul-and-Mary rendered hymns and civil rights songs. Actor Marlon Brando brandished an electric cattle prod of the sort sometimes used by cops against civil rights demonstrations. Author James Baldwin, Actors Paul Newman, Burt Lancaster, Charlton Heston made appearances. And onetime Folies-Bergere Star Josephine Baker looked out at the biracial crowd and snapped satisfiedly: "Salt and pepper--just what it should be."

But entertainment was not what the crowd had gathered for around the great brooding statue of Lincoln. Finally, the formal program began. Speaker followed speaker to the platform. Each was supposed to talk for four minutes. Each spoke longer than that --notably the United Auto Workers' President Walter Reuther, who is also a vice president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., and who clearly meant to convince the audience that he had had nothing to do with the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s decision to withhold endorsement of the march.

The crowd, most of it standing and packed shoulder to shoulder, began getting restless. But its attention was caught by a 25-year-old Alabama Negro named John Lewis, aggressive chairman of aggressive SNICK.

Lewis had planned to deliver a speech scorching President Kennedy's civil rights legislation package as "too little and too late." It would have ended with a bold threat: "Listen, Mr. Kennedy. Listen, Mr. Congressman. Listen, fellow citizens. The black masses are on the march for jobs and freedom. We will march through the South, through the heart of Dixie, the way Sherman did. We shall pursue our own scorched-earth policy."

The Tone. But Washington's Roman Catholic Archbishop Patrick O'Boyle saw an advance copy of the Lewis speech, considered it an incitement to riot, and straight out refused to deliver an invocation to the ceremonies unless Lewis agreed to tone it down. Leaders of other civil rights organizations pleaded with Lewis. He finally gave in, but not very far. In his changed version, he said Kennedy's bill could be supported, but only with "great reservations." And he promised to "splinter the segregated South into a thousand pieces and put them back together again in the image of democracy."

The crowd liked Lewis. But then came more speeches, some of them rather dull, and all of them overlong. People began to mill around, many even started to leave. But their attention was captured once again by a slender, low-toned speaker wearing a blue legionnaire-type cap. He was Roy Wilkins, executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, who was introduced as the "acknowledged leader" of the civil rights movement. Wilkins talked quietly of the necessity for passage of President Kennedy's bill. "The President's proposals," he said, "represent so moderate an approach that if any part is weakened or eliminated, the remainder will be little more than sugar water. Indeed, the package needs strengthening. The President should join us in fighting for something more than pap." Then Wilkins praised Republicans and Democrats who had gone on record for the bill, and snapped wryly: "In fact, we even salute those from the South who want to vote for it but don't dare to do so. And we say to those people, 'Just give us a little time, and one of these days we'll emancipate you.' " After Wilkins, everything was upbeat.

Lonely Island. Now to the platform came Singer Mahalia Jackson. First she sang a slow, sorrowful Gospel song titled I've Been Buked and I've Been Scorned. Her voice was marvelous, but her impact was more in her manner. Near tears, she moved her huge audience to tears. But in the very next breath, she would break into an expression of expectant happiness. When that happened, people who had been sobbing a second before began laughing, sharing in her expectancy.

Mahalia was hard to follow--and there probably was only one person in the civil rights world who could have done it quite so successfully. His introduction was drowned out by the roaring cheers of those who saw him heading toward the speakers' platform. He was Atlanta's Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the civil rights leader who holds the heart of most American Negroes in his hand.

"The Negro," he said, "lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity and finds himself an exile in his own land."

King continued stolidly: "It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality."

Table of Brotherhood. Already, King's particular magic had enslaved his audience, which roared "Yes, yes!" to almost everything he said. But then, King came to the end of his prepared text--and he swept right on in an exhibition of impromptu oratory that was catching, dramatic, inspirational.

"I have a dream," King cried. The crowd began cheering, but King, never pausing, brought silence as he continued. "I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood."

"I have a dream," he went on, relentlessly shouting down the thunderous swell of applause, "that even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with people's injustices, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice." Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. "I have a dream," cried King again, "that my 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."

Even after King finished, there were some final ceremonies. But to all effective intents and purposes, the day was over. Obeying their leaders' injunctions to leave town as soon as the official ceremonies had ended, the demonstrators made their way back toward their trains, buses, planes and cars. It was a quiet night in Washington--after a day that would never be forgotten.

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