The day they marched - 40th Anniversary Of The March On Washington 1963-2003

IT was the beginning of something, and the ending of something. It came 100 years and 240 days after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. It came like a force of nature.

Like a whirlwind, like a storm, like a flood, it overwhelmed by its massiveness and finality.

More than 300,000 people were in it, and of it; and millions more watched on TV and huddled around radios.

There had never been anything quite like it.

A TV spectacular, a Sunday School picnic, a political convention, an impressive demonstration of Black unity, "a visible expression of interracial brotherhood," an almost unprecedented exhibition of resolve, a new concept of lobbying, a living petition, a show of strength, an outburst, a call to the national conscience: the mammoth March on Washington was everything they said it was, and more; and it moved men and women as they had never been moved before.

It threatened, at points, to become a meaningless gesture, an extravaganza, an outing, a prayer said to the wind. But people, the old ladies and the young boys, the students and the dreamers, the young girls in bright babushkas and the old men in shiny blue suits: the people--they redeemed it, and made it something to remember.

They came from points all over America, and several overseas; they assembled in Washington on the grassy slopes of the Washington Monument and walked about a mile to the Lincoln Memorial where they said with their bodies that Blacks had been waiting for 100 years and 240 days and that they were still not free and that 100 years and 241 days were too long to wait. There, in balmy, 84-degree weather, they recalled (in Archibald MacLeish's phrase) "the holy dream we were to be"--recalled the Dream and made it flesh and blood and bone in their Black and White togetherness.

This, then, was the March: a long and uncomfortable trip on trains and buses and planes, a short walk down Constitution and Independence avenues, words said in the sun and, beneath it all, a quiet anger, a fierce hope and the wind and the fire of a dream.

Critics said in the beginning that the march was going to be a disaster. Newspapers reported a lack of interest; they said sponsors were having trouble filling chartered trains and buses.

But in the final week, Black America exploded in a frenzy of activity. In thousands of homes, from sea to shining sea, bags were being packed, lunches prepared, goodbyes said.

Monday came, August 26, and the feeling took shape and substance. They were leaving now from New Canaan, Connecticut, and Barre, Vermont; they were leaving now from towns in Oregon and cities in California, from Las Vegas, Nevada, and Seattle, Washington, from Durham and Greensboro, from West Memphis and Selma, from Dallas and St. Paul and Miami and Gary.

Monday night came and 23 people, including three Whites, assembled at the Dunbar Community Center in Little Rock and got on a bus; farther South the scene was repeated in Mississippi and Louisiana. Already now, cars were on the way, from the West Coast and the Gulf Coast; and 12 youths from the Brooklyn chapter of CORE were walking down the East Coast.

All across the nation now people were moving, going in ones and twos and hundreds to a rendezvous with history. As the sun moved west, a chartered plane took off from Los Angeles' International Airport. A few hours later, another plane, with about 30 stage and screen celebrities, including Marion Brando and Harry Belafonte, jetted into the air from Lockheed Airport.

On they came, on wheels of every description, and Washington waited, tight with tension.

The day, Wednesday, August 28,1963, dawned clear and slightly cool with the streets deserted and a large number of White inhabitants in self-imposed exile in Virginia and Maryland enclaves. The Government and private businesses, fearing violence or traffic tie-ups or both, had urged employees to take the day off; bars and whisky stores had been closed. Washington, in the early morning, looked like a city under siege. Burly MPs, Black and White, directed traffic and scurried about the city in Jeeps and command cars. By 11 A.M., there were at least 90,000 people on the grassy slopes of the Monument and the Ellipse behind the White House.

There had never been such a crowd.

There were society women in new hats and old women in Sunday go-to-church black; there were bright young men from the top level of the agencies, looking important and hurried, and lost; there were pretty girls and plain ones, priests, preachers and rabbis, union members, seminarians, housewives and teachers.

They had come from different places, in different ways, for different reasons. But, once there, they were welded into a whole and living thing.

The people stood for a long time in the assembly area, listening to speeches and songs from stage and screen celebrities. Then, spontaneously, they began to march. The trickle became a flood and, at 11:30 A.M., 10 minutes ahead of schedule, the March began, with the followers leading. The marchers moved in two great waves, shoulder to shoulder, Black people and White people, Jews and Gentiles, Old Negroes and New Negroes, organization men and radicals, Hebrews from Brooklyn, sharecroppers from Mississippi, Puritans from New England. On they came, a riot of sound and color, signs bobbling above the sea of their heads, Spirituals coming from the well of their throats; on they came, feet pounding on the hot pavement of history; on they came, wave after wave beating against the sandy beach of American indifference.