March on Washington and the 'I Have a Dream' Speech
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on 28 August 1963 brought approximately 250,000 people to the National Mall — the largest demonstration in American history to that point — organised by a coalition of civil rights organisations (NAACP, SCLC, SNCC, CORE, NUL, NALC) alongside trade unions and religious groups. The march's stated agenda was explicitly economic as well as racial: a federal public works programme, enforcement of the 14th Amendment, a minimum wage increase to $2.00, and an end to employment discrimination. The organisers included Bayard Rustin, A. Philip Randolph, and Whitney Young alongside Martin Luther King. King delivered his 'I Have a Dream' speech from the Lincoln Memorial steps in the late afternoon, improvising the now-famous refrain after departing from his prepared text. The speech, broadcast live to a national television audience of millions, transformed King into an internationally recognisable figure. The march's explicit link between racial equality and economic justice — the unfinished agenda of Reconstruction — was later argued by King's biographers to represent the movement's most ambitious programme, broader than what the Civil Rights Act (1964) or Voting Rights Act (1965) would actually deliver.
- Year: 1963 CE
- Category: Political
