Foreword

By Dr. Bernard LaFayette, Chairman, Southern Christian Leadership Conference

On August 28, a Wednesday in 1963, something quite amazing occurred. In the photo journal that follows, you can experience that event that changed America.

African American civil rights organizations, including the Negro American Labor Council, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Congress of Racial Equality, and the National Urban League united into joint leadership, with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) prominent among them, in one of the largest political rallies ever to march on Washington, D.C. on behalf of their civil and economic rights.

And the nation listened.

Some say it was Mahalia Jackson who called out from the crowd for King to “Tell them about the dream.” He did.

In a seventeen-minute speech in which he diverted from his notes, Dr. King gave one of the most stirring speeches in the history of America. Standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial, he delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, in which he advocated racial and economic harmony.

Estimates vary on the number of participants in the march, but most reports agree on around a quarter of a million people, most black, but with white, Jewish, and nonblack minority supporters.

The march, made 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, was organized to encourage jobs and freedom. It is widely credited with helping to pass the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Voting Rights Act (1965).

America had indeed listened.