Today’s Almanac-August 28, 2010
Fox News blowhard Glenn Beck is bringing his shtick to what he describes as a non-political Restoring Honor rally to he held on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial today. He says he expects 300,000 devoted fans to show up to worship-strike that-listen to him and Tea Party darling Sara Palin as well as a parade of lesser celebrities said to include St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa and slugger Albert Pujols-yet another reason to cheer for Cincinnati this year. Beck claims that “providence” led him to coincidentally pick the exact date and venue of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which was the occasion of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr’s famous I Have a Dream Speech.
While acknowledging that Beck and his acolytes have a perfect right to assemble on this day and in this location, to claim that his event is both non-political and in the tradition of Dr. King is a mockery. One top Civil Right leader got it right when he called Beck the top cheerleader for white racial resentment and fear.
Meanwhile the media covering the controversy invokes that original event, held on August 28, 1968 as purely Dr. King’s event. He may have been the star, but it serves us well to remember exactly what really happened-and how. The march originally was the brainchild of an elder of both the Labor and Civil Rights movements. A. Philip Randolph, President of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and of the Negro American Labor Council as well as a Vice President of the AFL-CIO modeled his call for a march on Washington on a similar event he had planned back in 1941 to force President Franklin D. Roosevelt to open up employment in the burgeoning defense industry to Blacks. Just the threat of thousands of Negros descending on the Capital had been enough to cause the President to establish the Committee on Fair Employment Practice and bar discriminatory hiring in the defense industry. Randolph wanted to bring similar pressure on President John F. Kennedy and Congress to move on stalled civil rights legislation, but also to bring up new issues of jobs and economic opportunity that had been overshadowed by the tumultuous battle for civil rights in the South.
Randolph brought together the leaders of all of the largest national civil rights organizations-no small feat because of turf wars, ideological differences, and egos-to form a coalition to sponsor the march including James Farmer, President of the Congress of Racial Equality; John Lewis, President of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; Roy Wilkins, President of the NAACP; Whitney Young, President of the National Urban League; and Dr. King, President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
In addition Randolph sought support from the Labor movement, most significantly from Walter Reuther, President of the United Auto Workers. The White dominated craft unions of the AFL, however, were notable for their absence.
Bayard Rustin of the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation and the organizer of the 1947 Journey of Reconciliation, an early forerunner of the Freedom Rides meant to test a Supreme Court ruling that banned racial discrimination in interstate travel, was tapped to coordinate volunteers and logistics, recruit marchers from across the country and attend to all of the other details of the march while Randolph pulled together political, labor and religious support for the march.
Other than being a star speaker that day and helping to turn out SCLC members, King was not heavily involved in the planning or management of the event.
As word spread, it became apparent that the march was going to turn into the largest event of its kind in history. The media began to pay attention. On the day of the march, busses poured into the city from sleepy Mississippi towns and from gritty industrial hubs like Detroit and Chicago. Trains from Boston, New York, and Philadelphia were jammed. Thousands of local Washington residents swelled the throng. Organizers put the crowd at more than 300,000. The National Park Service, in charge because the speakers’ platform was erected at the Lincoln Memorial, said 200,000. What ever was the case, crowds filled the Mall far passed the Washington Monument. About 80% of the marchers were Black, the rest mainly white. Marchers included many celebrities including actors like Sidney Poitier, Harry Belefonte, and Charlton Heston-yes that Charlton Heston.
It was a Wednesday afternoon but the three major broadcast networks broke away from their usual programming of afternoon soap operas to cover the swelling crowd and speeches live.
Marian Anderson, who had sung on the same steps at the invitation of Eleanor Roosevelt after she was denied use of the Daughters of the American Revolution Constitution Hall in 1939, opened the program with the National Anthem. Several other performers took to the stage over the course of the program, perhaps most notably Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, and Mahalia Jackson.
The Catholic Archbishop of Washington, Patrick O’Boyle led the invocation. Other religious leaders on the program included Dr. Eugene Blake on behalf of the Protestant National Council of Churches and two leading Rabbis.
After Randolph’s opening remarks each of the major civil rights leaders took the stage in turn. Floyd McKissick had to read the remarks of CORE’s James Farmer, who was in a Louisiana jail. The youngest leader, John Lewis of the militant SCLC, excoriated the Kennedy Administration for not acting to protect Civil Rights workers who were under regular and violent attack across the South. Randolph and others who were trying to flatter and coax the President into action forced Lewis to strike the most inflammatory portions of his speech, but what was left was still plenty critical.
Slain NAACP organizer Medgar Evers’s wife Myrlie was on the announced program to lead a Tribute to Negro Women, but did not appear. In the end the only woman to speak was jazz singer Josephine Baker who wore her World War II Free French uniform emblazoned with her medal of the Légion d'honneur.
It all led up the last major address-the highly anticipated speech of Dr. King. If civil rights veterans knew what to expect from the notoriously eloquent leader, millions of Americans viewing at home were in for an eye opening experience. The speech, built to the thundering crescendo:
Let freedom ring. And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring-when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children-black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics-will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!
The nation, or most of it was awestruck and impressed. That speech, along with the continued televised violence against Blacks struggling for equal access to public accommodation and the vote, helped set the stage for the major civil rights legislation enacted in the next three years. If Glen Beck, in his most fervent and fetid dreams believes he can have that kind of influence on the country, he is every bit a delusional as he seems.