How the 1963 March on Washington Failed
Despite its greatness, Dr. King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech has become a bromide and an empty promise
It’s probably sacrilege
to criticize the 1963 March on Washington and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Especially during the 60th anniversary of the celebrated event.
But surely, enough time has passed to look at the speech without tears. Without going to pieces over the martyrdom of the million-dollar Black man who was slain by a 10-cent white boy five years later. Without blinding ourselves to the truth of a legacy that has not fully lived up to expectations.
Yes, I used to get blurry eyed over that speech, too.
I used to dream along with Martin just like everyone else. But bliss can only last so long. Rapture can only take you so far. Orgasms (thank God) do not last forever.
Sooner or later you have to open your eyes and wake up to difficult truths and harsh reality.
The great bromide
It’s time to accept that Dr. King’s speech was a bromide lifted from Old Testament prophets Isaiah and Amos. Despite its appropriation by a plethora of less-gifted orators, the speech was essentially what all bromides turn out to be. A sedative.
Pharmaceutical scientists have used bromide compounds to treat bipolar disorders, epilepsy, and to curb the sexual urges of British soldiers during World War I. My parents used to keep Bromo-Seltzer in the house for the inevitable hangovers that followed their weekend bid-whist parties.
Bromides are a treatment, not a cure. The March on Washington provided an illusory temporary fix, which has proved in some ways to be more destructive than even Dr. King would have dreamed.
The ad lib heard round the world
This is not to deny the majestic power of the ad lib heard round the world. Dr. King’s “Dream” speech is arguably the most important American speech since the Gettysburg address. And possibly the most important speech of the entire 20th century.
Nothing else matches its oratorical eloquence. Not Roosevelt’s Pearl Harbor Address. Not Huey Long’s “Every Man a King.” Not even JFK’s big “ask” during his inauguration as 35th president of the United States.
It is a testament to Dr. King’s rhetorical brilliance that the speech seems to lose some of its power when read rather than listened to.
Surely everyone knows by now that the most famous part of the speech was not in the prepared script. It was an ad lib, something he’d been alluding to for a long time. Which became part of the speech only when Gospel singer Mahalia Jackson shouted, “Tell ’em about your dream, Martin!”
It was at that point that Dr. King’s attorney Clarence B. Jones, who had written a good portion of the speech, turned to the person standing next to him and said, “These people don’t know it, but they’re about ready to go to church.”
Bromo-Seltzer for the masses
I was just a kid during the March on Washington. A bit young to attend. But I remember watching Dr. King as he spoke to that crowd of 250 thousand people, the black & white images projected from the television set in my parents’ bedroom.
The room had three windows. There was a dark-brown four-poster bed, the dresser that held my mother’s things, and the bureau that held my Dad’s. The RCA console TV sat in a corner with an indoor rabbit-ears antenna on top. It was always on.
That Wednesday in 1963 was the first time all three major television networks provided day-long coverage of an event. The Price Is Right, Truth or Consequences, As the World Turns, General Hospital, Search for Tomorrow, Queen for a Day, American Bandstand — none of those shows could be found that day.
Television as church
Not that I had anything in particular in mind as I passed my parents’ room on the way to my own. School wouldn’t start until after Labor Day, one week later. Kids still had whole summers off back then.
But instead of The Price Is Right or Dick Clark, I saw all these people — some famous, most not — crowded between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. As if four baseball stadiums had just been emptied onto the National Mall. One hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation.
And then I heard Dr. King deliver his iconic speech. Until that moment, I didn’t know you could go to church without physically being in a church. My family was Catholic. We didn’t have preachers like Martin Luther King, Jr. Our priests were white. Our prayers were quiet, Latin chants.
A clown show?
The march was historic. But few besides Malcom X understood its shortcomings. He called it a picnic and a circus. The March on Washington was a “Farce on Washington,” he said.
Malcolm X was, of course, a Black Nationalist. He was especially upset that moderate civil rights leaders “had diluted the original purpose of the march, which had been to show the strength and anger of Black people, by allowing white people and white organizations to help plan and participate in the march.”
It would take a while for his criticisms to find acceptance among other civil rights leaders. As well as his observation that the march scared the hell out of white people.
A two-edged sword
There is no question that the 1963 March on Washington was a catalyst for the eventual passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The march was a high point in a struggle that began in earnest after the 1955 murder of Emmett Till. Which led to Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on a bus. Which led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The Freedom Riders. The sit-ins. The Birmingham Children’s Crusade. The murder of Medgar Evers. Dr. King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”
But the great orator himself was disappointed that white participants accounted for only 25 percent of the march. He had hoped for 35 percent. The 60 thousand whites who did show up were nothing to sneeze at. Every movement needs allies.
The other white people
What to make, though, of the other white people ? What were those white folks doing? One of them took the liberty of detonating a bomb at the 16th Street Baptist Church —a month after the march — killing four little Black girls and wounding 21 others.
A good portion of the rest helped define “the silent majority” and “white backlash.” Most of them abandoned the Democratic Party after passage of the Civil Rights Act and flocked in droves to a Republican Party that bears absolutely no resemblance to the party of Abraham Lincoln. It became instead the party of Richard Nixon and Donald Trump. No Democratic presidential candidate has received a majority of white votes ever since.
Dramatic shift
To the extent that the March on Washington led to a dramatic shift in the lives of African Americans, it was a success. As King’s Attorney Clarence B. Jones once said, “You’d have to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to recognize the progress we’ve made.”
A bevy of African American judges, politicians, and entrepreneurs joined the nation’s first Black president and three African American Supreme Court Justices in roles that were impossible in 1963.
As someone who lived during and after segregation, my own life certainly shifted. For one thing, my mother no longer had to pack a box lunch when we traveled by train between Atlanta and New Orleans. We could finally eat in the dining car where my father worked but was not allowed to sit down to eat.
The ironic downside
But to the extent that the march failed to anticipate the power of white backlash and the unforeseen negative consequences of the Civil Rights Act, maybe it was not so successful.
For all its accomplishments, Dr. King’s dream led to the routing of Black communities all over America. Once jobs and housing opportunities opened for middle-class African Americans, those who could get out, got out.
But not to the post-racial or integrated America he dreamed of. Because 60 years later that does not exist. Structural racism and race-neutral segregation discriminate against them despite federal policies.
A prevailing theory in post-Civil Rights America said the exodus of the best and brightest African Americans meant the poor and disadvantaged were left behind. This led to the rise of inner-city drug lords and gangs, drive-by shootings. And the draconian criminal justice system that has incarcerated more African American men than were enslaved in 1850.
That theory has been challenged in recent years, but most agree that urban areas with high poverty rates also sustain high incidents of crime.
The great divide
Today, the chasm between the largest Black middle-class in history and the largest Black underclass in history is as great as the divide between white and Black America generally.
Although no one I know would like to return to the days of segregation, some acknowledge that at least that Black world was a viable organic culture. Separate from the rest of America, but whole. Forced to live on our own side of town, we had our own upper, middle, and lower classes.
It was a community where rich and poor rubbed shoulders together, sending their kids to the same schools, which served an important supportive function within the community. As journalist Michele Norris once observed in her 2004 report on the decline of Birmingham’s Parker High, the loss of that led to the resegregation of inner-city schools, where Black kids fail terribly.
A remedy for fear?
In the run-up to this 60th anniversary of the March on Washington, I watched the first Republican Presidential Debate on Fox News. And I saw candidates arguing about vouchers and charter schools just as they did decades ago in hopes of further segregating white kids from Black kids.
Because I don’t usually watch Fox News, I saw during that presidential debate that Malcolm X was right about white fear.
Fox News is White Backlash News. It’s also Scared White Folks News. And their fear is deadly. When white police officers say they killed an unarmed Black man out of fear for their safety, what they’re really saying is this: If you have Black skin, they’re scared.
This is a sad thing to consider. But at least we can pull out Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech on his birthday and during celebrations like this anniversary. And pretend we really mean it. For a while. After all, isn’t that what bromides are for?
©2023 Andrew ‘Jazprose’ Hill
Thanks for reading.
This deserves a wider audience.
It is sad but true and a commentary deserving of a wider audience.