Thread

63 years ago today, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom brought nearly 250,000 people to Washington, D.C. to protest racial discrimination and demand economic justice. The UAW, led by President Walter Reuther, supported the march with signage emphasizing the interconnection of racial and labor justice. Dr. King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech is rightly regarded as a watershed moment in the civil rights movement and one of the most famous and influential orations of American history. Slotted initially to be a four-minute closing to the march, it became “a powerful 16-minute rallying cry for the entire civil rights movement,” says Kevin Strait, curator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). “Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy…Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred…We cannot turn back…No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” – Martin Luther King, Jr., speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, 1963.