Students will analyze different primary sources to discover what different groups expected from the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
Students will compare the traditional narrative of the March on Washington with the picture that emerges from the document(s) they analyze in the activity. Â Â
The 1963 March on Washington was followed by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (outlawing segregation) and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Â The traditional narrative of the 1963 March on Washington focuses on the role of significant national figures like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ralph Abernathy in planning and leading the march, and its placement in the timeline of key civil rights events in the 1960s. Â This narrative, repeated in textbooks and films and national celebrations of the civil rights movement, leave out or lose sight of the significant role of ordinary people, students, women, and local organizers to organize the march (and other events of the movement).
Usually these narratives include only one aspect of the marchers' demands, too: civil rights. In fact, the 1963 march was the culmination of a decades-long process of bringing both the political and economic needs of the black community to the attention of Washington lawmakers. This process started during World War II, when labor groups, led by A. Philip Randolph, threatened to march on Washington if black workers were not hired and paid equally to white workers in defense industries. Â Â
Some marchers in 1963 wanted even greater changes than the leaders of the march would dare broach. Women wanted full gender and racial equality.  Randolph and labor leaders continued to ask for greater economic equality, as they had been since the 1940s.  More radical students wanted bigger structural transformations in society, and were not afraid to stridently critique the government they saw impeding progress.  All of these voices were present at the 1963 March, leading some scholars to suggest that the 1963 March was really "many marches" converged in one place at one time. Â
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Step 1: (Optional) Ask students to picture the civil rights movement: what people, places, and events do they see? Â If it does not come up, suggest the 1963 March on Washington and Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. Â Tell students that while the 1963 March on Washington and MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech is one of the most iconic events of the civil rights movement, most textbooks and films just focus on the role of a few key leaders. Â Today they will look at some images and read some primary sources to get a sense of the "bigger picture" of the many people who made the march successful. Â
Step 2: Divide students into small groups. Pass out the "Adding to the Picture" worksheet and the photograph of the march's leaders. Â Lead the students in an analysis of the photograph to complete the first row on the worksheet.Â
Note: Students can be grouped homogeneously by literacy level, and assigned appropriate documents or grouped heterogeneously and perform the activity as a jig-saw.  Each student in the group works on a document matched to his skill level, then shares what he has learned with his peers. Â
Step 3: Pass out the "I Have a Dream" excerpt. Â Depending on the level of the students, the teacher may want to read the document out loud. Have students work with their groups to complete the second row on the worksheet. Before moving on to the next step, go over students' responses. Â
Step 4: Â Pass out one document to each group. Â
Black Workers Call for a March on Washington (pamphlet only): low literacy
Women Protestors Rally at the March on Washington: low literacy
"What We Demand": high literacy
Bayard Rustin Reflects on the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom: low/medium literacy
John Lewis Tells America to "Wake Up": high literacy
A Female Civil Rights Activist Condemns "Jane Crow": high literacy
Step 5: Students work independently to answer the question at the bottom of the sheet, explaining how their document "adds to the picture" of the 1963 March on Washington.
Step 6: (Optional) Each group presents its document to the whole class. The class votes on the one or two documents that BEST "add to the picture" based on which group made their case most convincingly. Â
Monday, Jan 1 – Henry Loeb is sworn into office as mayor.
Sunday, Jan. 31 – Rain sends sewer workers home.
Tuesday, Feb. 1 – Two sanitation workers are killed in an accident on a city truck.
Monday, Feb. 12 – Memphis sanitation and public employees strike after last-minute attempts to resolve grievances fail. Newspapers claim 200 workers of 1,300 remain on the job but only 38 of 180 trucks move. Mayor Loeb says strike is illegal but says "this office stands ready… to talk to anyone about his legitimate questions at any time."
Tuesday, Feb. 13 – An International Union official flies in from Washington to meet with the mayor. He calls for union recognition, dues checkoff and negotiations to resolve the workers' grievances. The Mayor says he'll hire new workers unless the strikers return to their jobs.
Wednesday, Feb. 14 – The Mayor delivers a back-to-work ultimatum for 7 a.m. Feb. 15. Police escort the few garbage trucks in operation. Negotiations between the city and the union break off. Newspapers say more than 10,000 tons of garbage is piled up.
Friday, Feb. 16 – Union leaders urge the city council to intervene. The council supports the Mayor. Memphis NAACP members endorse the strike.
Sunday, Feb. 18 – AFSCME International President Jerry Wurf arrives and says the strike can end only when the workers' demands are met. The Ministerial Association arranges a meeting between the Mayor and union leaders moderated by a Memphis rabbi. It goes until 5 a.m.
Monday, Feb. 19 – NAACP and others stage all-night vigil and picketing at city hall.
Tuesday, Feb.20 – The union and the NAACP call for a citywide boycott of downtown merchants.
Thursday, Feb. 22 – City Council sub-committee headed by Councilman Fred Davis urges that the city recognize the union, in rowdy meeting with council chambers packed by more than 1,000 strikers and supporters. Meeting adjourns without action.
Friday, Feb. 23 – The Council refuses to recognize the union. Police attack strikers during a march on Main Street, using mace.
Saturday, Feb. 24 – Black leaders and ministers form citywide organization to support the strike and the boycott. City obtains court injunction to keep union from staging demonstrations or picketing.
Sunday, Feb. 25 – Ministers call on their congregations to boycott and march.
Monday, Feb. 26 – Daily marches begin, amid rumors that a compromise has been received by the Mayor.
Tuesday, Feb. 27 – The Mayor backs down on the compromise. Hundreds demonstrate at city hall. Courts cite 23 union members for contempt of court.
Thursday, Feb. 29 – Mayor Loeb sends each striker a letter inviting him back to work without union recognition. Two strike leaders arrested for jaywalking. Union files suit in federal court.
Friday, March 1 – Mayor meets with black ministers. Windows at his home are broken and he blames the strikers. Federal judge rejects union's suit.
Sunday, March 3 – Eight-hour gospel singing marathon at Mason Temple raises money for strikers and shows community support.
Monday, March 4 – State Sen. Frank White proposes bill to create state mediation board to resolve impasse. Mayor opposes it.
Tuesday, March 5 – Ministers announce the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. will come to Memphis, as 116 strikers and supporters are arrested for sitting in at city hall.
Wednesday, March 6 – Seven union leaders given 10-day sentences and fines for contempt of court. Strikers stage a mock funeral at city hall, lamenting the death of freedom in Memphis.
Thursday, March 7 – City Council votes against dues checkoff proposal.
Friday, March 8 – Trash fires in South Memphis are blamed on strike supporters.
Saturday, March 9 – At Mayor's suggestion, National Guard begins holding riot drills.
Monday, March 11 – Students skip high school to participate in march, led by black ministers. Two students arrested.
Wednesday, March 13 – Nine demonstrators arrested at Main and McCall. Police claim they threatened shoppers.
Thursday, March 14 – National NAACP leader Roy Wilkins addresses meeting of 10,000 or more and expresses support for a firm, peaceful protest. Six pickets are arrested and charged with blocking the Democrat Road sanitation depot entrance.
Saturday, March 16 – Mayor says entire city should vote on dues checkoff questions in August. Union says no.
Monday, March 18 – Newspapers claim strike is failing as scabs operate 90 garbage trucks. But 17,000 Memphians attend rally where Dr. King calls for a citywide march on March 22.
Wednesday, March 20 – Mayor restates his opposition to union demands.
Friday, March 22 – Record snowstorm blocks Dr.King's return. March is cancelled. City and union agree to mediation. Round-the-clock meetings begin.
Wednesday, March 27 – SCLC Leader Ralph David Abernathy addresses rally in support of strikers. Mediation talks collapse.
Thursday, March 28 – March from Clayborn Temple, led by Dr. King, is interrupted by window breaking. Police move into crowds with nightsticks, mace, tear gas and gunfire. A 16-year old boy, Larry Payne, is shot to death. Police arrest 280, report about 60 injured, mostly blacks. State legislature authorizes 7 p.m. curfew and 4,000 National Guardsmen move in.
Friday, March 29 – Some 300 sanitation workers and ministers, march peacefully and silently from Clayborn Temple to City Hall — escorted by five armored personnel carriers, five jeeps, three hugh military trucks and dozens of Guardsmen with bayonets fixed. President Johnson and AFL-CIO President George Meany offer assistance in resolving the dispute. Mayor Loeb turns them down.
Sunday, March 31 – Ministers urge restraint. Dr. King cancels trip to Africa and plans return to Memphis to lead peaceful march. Attempts to renew mediation of strike fail.
Monday, April 1 – Curfew is lifted.
Tuesday, April 2 – Hundreds attend funeral for Larry Payne. National Guard withdrawn.
Wednesday, April 3 – Dr. King returns to Memphis and addresses rally, delivering his "I've been to the Mountaintop" address.
Thursday, April 4 – A sniper, later captured and identified as James Earl Ray, assassinates Dr. King as he stands on the balcony outside his room at the Lorraine Hotel.
Friday, April 5 – Federal troops and Atty. Gen. Ramsey Clark are in Memphis as FBI begins international manhunt for assassin. President Johnson instructs Undersecretary of Labor James Reynolds to take charge of mediation to settle the strike.
Saturday, April 6 – Reynolds meets with Mayor Loeb in the first of a long string of meetings-first with one side, then the other, rarely together.
Monday, April 8 – Mrs. King and dozens of national figures lead a peaceful memorial march through downtown in tribute to Dr. King and in support of the strike.
Tuesday, April 9 – Funeral services are held in Atlanta for Dr. King.
Wednesday, April 10 – Reynolds steps up meetings with city and union officials, most without publicity.
Tuesday, April 16 – AFSCME leaders announce that agreement has been reached. The strikers vote to accept it. The strike is over.
For those who ask the question, "Aren't you a civil rights leader?" and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: "To save the soul of America." We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself until the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier:
O, yes,
I say it plain,
American never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath —
America will be!
Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read: Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.
As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1954 [sic]; and I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission—a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for "the brotherhood of man." This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I'm speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men—for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the Vietcong or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this One? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?
And finally, as I try to explain for you and for myself the road that leads from Montgomery to this place I would have offered all that was most valid if I simply said that I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be a son of the living God. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood, and because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned especially for his suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come tonight to speak for them.
This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls "enemy," for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.
April 5 ‘68
LZ Sally
Dear Dad –
… I’ve just been listening to the Vietnam radio station. They just had a news report special on the assassination of Martin Luther King in Memphis. I realize how involved you are with the whole situation. I also realize how bad this makes Memphis look to the rest of the nation… I heard President Johnson’s speech but now I’ve got a story to tell.
On Friday, March 29, in our AO just south of Hue near the ocean, we received small-arms fire from a village… My platoon leader, Gary Scott, 2nd lieutenant, Infantry, was in command. Lt. Scott, a Negro from Rochester, New York, graduated recently from the University of Syracuse.
As the platoon moved toward the rear of the village, automatic weapons fire suddenly came from a near woodline. Lt. Scott and one other man were killed… He was a fine man, a good leader, yet we could not understand the whys of this conflict which called him 10,000 miles from his home, to a land of insects, poverty and hostility – this conflict which killed him. Why?
… This country is no gain that I can see, Dad. We’re fighting, dying, for a people who resent our being over here. The only firm reason I can find is paying with commie lives for U.S. lives, Dad.
Tonight the nation mourns the death of Martin Luther King. Not me. I mourn the deaths of the real leaders for peace, the people who give the real sacrifice, people like Lt. Scott. Tonight as the nation mourns Dr. King, they drink their cold beer, turn on their air conditioners and watch their TV. We who mourn the deaths over here will set up our ambushes, pull our guard and eat the C-rations.
I will probably get a Bronze Star for the fire fight. Lt. Scott will get a Silver Star. That will help me get a job someday and it is supposed to suffice for Lt. Scott’s life. I guess I’m bitter now, Dad. This war is all wrong. I will continue to fight, win my medals and fight the elements and hardships of this country. But that is because I’m a soldier and it’s my job and there are other people depending on me. That’s my excuse. That’s all I have, theories and excuses – no solutions.
Your loving son,
Phil
Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963:
…I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
Dec. 1967, published posthumously in King’s The Trumpet of Conscience, 1968:
The dispossessed of this nation the poor, both white and Negro live in a cruelly unjust society. They must organize a revolution against that injustice, not against the lives of … their fellow citizens, but against the structures which the society is refusing to take means … to lift the load of poverty…
… Nonviolent protest must now mature to a new level to correspond to heightened black impatience and stiffened white resistance. This higher level is mass civil disobedience. There must be more than a statement to the larger society, there must be a force that interrupts its functioning at some key point. That interruption must not, however be clandestine or surreptitious. It must be open and, above all, conducted by large masses without violence. If the jails are filled to thwart it, its meaning will become even clearer…
…The storm is rising against the privileged minority of the earth, from which there is no shelter in isolation or armament. The storm will not abate until a just distribution of the fruits of the earth enables men everywhere to live in dignity and human decency. The American Negro … may be the vanguard of a prolonged struggle that may change the shape of the world, as billions of deprived shake and transform the earth in the quest for life, freedom and justice.