'THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON"

 “THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON”

Sixty years ago today, over 250,000 people gathered in Washington, DC, for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.  It was the brainchild of A. Philip Randolph, the great union organizer, and his assistant Bayard Rustin, the conscientious objector and civil rights leader.  There were many moving parts to organize in order to get this many people from all over the country to DC.  Randolph had wanted to do this kind of march in the 1940’s, but President Roosevelt talked him out of it.  A smaller version was held in 1957, but this one in 1963 was the send-off for many people in the movement.  

President Kennedy tried to talk Randolph out of doing the march in 1963, fearing that bringing 100,000 Black people to DC would lead to violence and maybe even rioting.  Randolph and Rustin cited their lifelong commitment to nonviolence and virtually guaranteed that it would be a peaceful march.  Other civil rights leaders wanted to ban Rustin from the March because he was gay, but Randolph said “no Rustin, no Randolph.”  Rustin stayed on as the principal organizer, and while Randolph worked on the political aspects of the March, Rustin worked on the logistics of getting people into DC and getting them back out again.  

He contacted labor unions, churches and synagogues and other places of worship, and civil rights groups, hoping to draw the 100,000 people to DC for the day and the March.  The time was right – in June, Medgar Evers had been assassinated in Mississippi the day after Governor George Wallace had stood in the door at the University of Alabama to prevent the entry of Black students Vivian Malone and James Hood.  The Children’s Crusade at Birmingham in the spring of 1963 had showed the nation the depth of hatred and racism in us, and MLK’s “Letter from the Birmingham Jail” had called out white moderates and liberals who thought things were moving too fast.  People all over the country began to organize to come to the March.  We found out at the funeral of Azzie Preston that as a teenager she organized a busload of people to ride to DC from Dekalb County.  

This work of Azzie’s was repeated all over the nation, and the turnout was astonishing.  Thousands traveled by road, rail, and air to Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, August 28. Marchers from Boston traveled overnight and arrived in Washington at 7am after an eight-hour trip, but others took much longer bus rides from cities such as Milwaukee, Little Rock, and St. Louis.  A total of 450 buses left New York City from Harlem. Maryland police reported that by 8:00 a.m., 100 buses an hour were streaming through the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel.  Organizers had hoped for 100,000 participants – they were stunned but gratified to see 250,000 line the mall between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial.  There were many struggles over who would be speaking at the March – one obvious glaring omission were women speakers.  None were allowed, though Daisy Bates was allowed to say 200 words in replacing Myrlie Evers, whose plane was delayed.  John Lewis, who was head of SNCC at the time, wrote a fiery speech condemning the federal government for its lack of interest in the suffering of Black people.  The organizers did not want to offend President Kennedy or Attorney General Robert Kennedy, but Lewis would not back down.  Finally, A. Philip Randolph, for whom Lewis had great respect, talked Lewis into modifying his speech just enough to make it palatable.

The main event (other than the 250,000 people) was Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech to conclude the March.  I have written previously in this blog that I listened to King’s speech in my home in Arkansas by myself, because I did not want my friends to know that I was listening to this speech in the week before I entered into my senior year in high school.  King’s speech had a profound effect on me and on many in our nation.  He framed the American vision of equality in a way that I had never heard before, and I was not alone in thinking this.  King opened a window into my head and heart, so that my imagination could begin to see the world and myself differently from the white supremacy that I had been taught and which I believed.  

Our friend John Blake wrote a fine column on King’s speech earlier this year in his work for CNN.  Here is part of what he wrote:  

“The speech King gave 60 years ago in Washington has been endlessly replayed, dissected and misquoted. It’s his most famous speech. But here’s another way to look at it: It is also the most radical speech King ever delivered.  That declaration might sound like sacrilege to those who will point to King’s thunderous takedowns of war, poverty and capitalism in other sermons. But “I Have a Dream” has arguably become his most radical speech — not because of what he said but because of how America has changed since that day.  Forget the nonthreatening version of the speech you’ve been taught that emphasizes King’s benign vision of Black, White and brown Americans living in blissful racial harmony.  The core concept in King’s dream is racial integration – and it still terrifies many people 60 years later.”  For the rest of John’s fine article, here is the link:  

https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/15/us/mlk-i-have-a-dream-speech-blake-cec/index.html

    John is correct – many of us classified as “white” do not accept the idea of equality and integration that is at the heart of March on Washington and at the heart of our lives today.  As we celebrate this powerful March, let us rededicate ourselves to continue to develop that dream of equality, lest the Trumpsters take us back to the 1850’s.

"AN ACTIVIST BEFORE HE WAS AN ARTIST"

 “AN ACTIVIST BEFORE HE WAS AN ARTIST” 

Harry Belafonte (HB) died in April at age 96 after a long and prolific career as an artist and an activist.  I knew that he had been involved in the human rights movement, but I had no idea how deeply he had been involved nor how long he had been involved – he was active right up until he died.  He broke into my consciousness in 1956 when I was 10 – not as an activist, but as an artist.  His “Banana Boat Song” with its “Day-o, Day-o/Daylight come an’ me wan’ go home” burst on the American consciousness, and for a while he battled Elvis to be the #1 artist in the country.  His album “Calypso” became the first one in history to sell over a million copies. From this point on he was a giant on the American artist scene.  If you have not read his remarkable memoir, “My Song,” published in 2011, go find it in your library.

Harry Belafonte was born in poverty in Harlem in 1927 to illegal immigrant parents from Jamaica, who had moved to NYC.  Harry’s father left the family before he was born, and Belafonte was raised by his single mom Melvine Love.  They went back and forth to Jamaica where Harry spent much of his childhood with relatives.  He went to high school in New York but dropped out to join the Navy in 1944 in the middle of WW II.  In his segregated barracks, his mates began to share with him pamphlets written by WEB Dubois, and he became hooked on the human rights movement.  His mother, however, had planted the seed long before this when she told him as a boy:  “When you grow up, son, never ever go to bed at night knowing that there was something you could have done during the day to strike a blow against injustice, and you didn’t do it.”

When his Navy term was up, he chose not to re-enlist, and went home to live with his mother and work as a janitor.  He was afraid that he would be stuck there for the rest of his life, but there was intervention coming.  He did a favor for one of the tenants, and as a tip, she gave him tickets to a play at the American Negro Theater (ANT).  He had never been to a professional play before, and he was mesmerized and transformed by it.  He put it like this:  “When the curtain rose and the actors appeared….they radiated a power that felt spiritual to me.  The play, titled “Home is the Hunter,” by Samuel Kootz, was freshly written, about Black servicemen trying to establish postwar lives in Harlem.  I knew these characters…..This was a whole new world – an exhilarating world.”  

    It changed Belafonte’s life – he began to volunteer at the ANT, and he met Sidney Poitier there.  The leaders noticed his magnetism and presence, and he began to act in plays.  On one such occasion, Paul Robeson came to see the play, and afterwards, Robeson came backstage to praise the cast, and he and Belafonte met.  It began a lifelong friendship between them, and Robeson had a huge effect on Harry Belafonte:  “Paul Robeson had been my first great formative influence; you might say that he gave me my backbone.  Martin Luther King was the second.  He nourished my soul.”

    Belafonte’s artistic career had begun, and he went back and forth between singing and acting, but eventually he became a star and made a comfortable living.  He never forgot his roots, however, and he never forgot the call to justice, instilled by his mother at an early age.  All during his early career in show business, he worked for human rights, supporting the labor union movement, refusing to perform in the segregated South, constantly raising money to support many human rights causes.  In the spring of 1956, in the early months of the Montgomery bus boycott, Belafonte received a call from someone who said: “You don’t know me, Mr. Belafonte, but my name is Martin Luther King, Jr. “  Belafonte replied:  Oh, I know you – everybody knows you.”  

    King asked to meet him at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, where King would be preaching soon.  They met and began another lifelong friendship.  He supplemented MLK’s salary during the civil rights years.  The reconciliation meeting between King’s SCLC and SNCC in 1962 took place in Harry Belafonte’s apartment in New York.  Belafonte took out a life insurance policy on MLK, with Coretta Scott King as the beneficiary.  Belafonte helped to fund the Montgomery Improvement Association, SCLC, SNCC, and the Freedom Riders. He provided the entertainment for the Selma March.  MLK would write his famous anti-Vietnam speech in Belafonte’s apartment in New York.  Belafonte would also assist Coretta in picking out the suit for MLK to be buried in after King’s assassination.  

    Like many others in the human rights movement, Belafonte received his share of threats and harassment.  One such threat came in Baltimore, when he found a Maryland state trooper standing in his dressing room, glowering at him.  The trooper was there to provide security for Belafonte, but he seemed like a menacing presence to HB. When HB got back to his hotel room, he found an envelope with these words:  “Dear Mr. Belafonte, I give you these six bullets because they will never be used.  None of them will take a human life, because my experience listening to you and Dr. King made me realize I have been serving the wrong forces. I should be in your ranks.  Tonight was transforming for me.”  It was signed by the state trooper who had been with him that night.

    Belafonte also felt his heart turning towards Africa, and he got deeply involved in the African freedom movements, especially in South Africa, when it was still controlled by European powers.  He co-founded TransAfrica, which created the economic sanctions against South Africa.  He became a leading spokesperson for seeking an end to apartheid. He had become friends with Nelson Mandela while Mandela was still in prison.  After Mandela’s release from prison, he asked HB to coordinate a tour of America. Belafonte agreed to share the duties with Roger Wilkins, and in 1990 Nelson Mandela came to America.  The tour was an astonishing success.

.      Here's how he humbly described his work:  “All of us see the world as it exists; fewer envision what it might look like if made to change; and fewer still try to put together the people and ideas that make change happen.  Paul Robeson was one; Martin Luther King, Jr. was one;  Bobby Kennedy became one.  And, of course, Nelson Mandela.  I had just enough vision to see that they were visionaries, and to do what I could to help.”  Harry Belafonte had eyes to see and ears to hear – as Jesus once put it, “If you have ears, then listen!”  Belafonte listened and acted, and we are all so grateful that he did.