1963 March on Washington — it’s time to march again
When labor unions join civil rights
groups this month for 50th anniversary
commemorations of the 1963 March
on Washington, it will be to echo the
original. Organized labor was a big part
of the original quarter-million-strong
event at which Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr., delivered his most famous speech,
“I Have a Dream.”
The August 28, 1963, march — the
largest demonstration in U.S. history
up to that point — was planned and ini-
tiated by African-American labor
leader A. Philip Randolph, who was
vice president of the AFL-CIO and
president of the Brotherhood of Sleep-
ing Car Porters. The event’s full name
was the March on Washington for Jobs
and Freedom, and it marked the 100th
anniversary of an enormous human
rights advance — Abraham Lincoln’s
signing of the Emancipation Proclama-
tion which freed the slaves in Confed-
erate Southern states.
“But … one hundred years later,”
King said in “I Have a Dream,” “the
life of the Negro is still sadly crippled
by the manacles of seg-
regation and the chains
of discrimination. One
hundred years later, the
Negro lives on a lonely
island of poverty in the
midst of a vast ocean of
material prosperity.”
King delivered the
speech on a sound sys-
tem union funds helped
pay for, on a stage
shared with fellow march co-chairs
Randolph and United Auto Workers
president Walter Reuther. In fact, ac-
cording to UAW lore, King wrote an
earlier version of the speech in bor-
rowed office space at the union’s head-
quarters in Detroit. And he delivered
the speech in front of an audience that
included tens of thousands of union
(PHOTO LEFT) At the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, United Auto Workers President Walter
Reuther (center) marches with AFL-CIO Vice President A. Philip Randolph (to the left of him). Reuther and Randolph
were two of the 10 co-chairs of the march. (PHOTO RIGHT) Marchers carry placards articulating the demands of
the carefully planned event, including equal rights, integrated schools, decent housing, and an end to police brutality.
members brought on buses and planes
chartered by their unions. But labor’s
participation, and the economic justice
agenda of the Jobs And Freedom
march, have been writ-
ten out of conventional
narrative of the march.
“Unions were at the
core of the march,” says
King historian Michael
Honey, professor of his-
tory at University of
Washington at Tacoma.
In fact, the march be-
gan as an effort by the
Negro American Labor Council, a
group Randolph and other black trade
unionists had formed to protest segre-
gation and discrimination within or-
ganized labor. But it expanded to a
coalition of mainline civil rights groups
and sympathetic labor unions united
behind the slogan “Jobs and Freedom.”
“King’s job in that event was to say
something inspirational,” Honey said.
“What we remember is mostly that
speech, and rightly so, because it’s one
of the greatest speeches of American
history. But the event itself was full of
substance about jobs and economic jus-
tice.”
Following King’s speech, Randolph
led the crowd in a pledge to continue
working for the march demands, which
were aimed at “the twin evils of racism
and economic degradation.” March or-
ganizers had made it a priority to get
unemployed workers to attend the
march, and economic demands were
front and center. Those demands in-
cluded a $2-an-hour minimum wage,
decent housing for all Americans, a
federal program to train and place all
unemployed workers on meaningful
and dignified jobs at decent wages, and
broadening the Fair Labor Standards
Act to cover farmworkers, domestic
servants, and public sector workers.
The “freedom” demands included
meaningful civil rights legislation,
elimination of school segregation by
year’s end, a federal law prohibiting
discrimination in public or private hir-
ing, and reducing Congressional repre-
sentation of states that kept blacks from
voting.
Congress did ban employment dis-
crimination in the 1964 Civil Rights
Act. It cracked down on state laws that
kept blacks from voting in the 1965
Voting Rights Act. It barred housing
discrimination in the 1968 Fair Hous-
ing Act. Court orders continued to cur-
tail school segregation. And Congress
extended some of the protections of the
Fair Labor Standards Act to domestics,
farmworkers and public employees.
But other parts of the March on
Washington agenda have yet to be ac-
complished, 50 years later. The 1963
March’s call for a $2-an-hour mini-
mum wage would be $15.26 in today’s
dollars, which is more than twice the
current federal minimum wage of
$7.25. There’s still no comprehensive
program to train and employ all unem-
ployed Americans. Federal support for
housing is in decline, and programs to
lift up the poor of all races have fallen
out of favor. Welfare is capped and lim-
ited, and food stamps are being cut.
And even the successful parts of the
march agenda are under threat: In June,
the U.S. Supreme Court struck down
the part of the Voting Rights Act that
required federal approval for voting
law changes in states that historically
blocked blacks from voting.
“There’s regression all along the
line,” Honey said.
So, say union and civil rights organ-
izers, it’s time to march again.
Happy Labor Day
from
Roofers Local 49
Celebrating our 100th Anniversary
1913-2013
RUSS GARNETT, Financial Secretary/Business Agent
5032 SE 26th Ave.Portland, OR, 503-232-4807
PAGE 4
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
AUGUST 16, 2013