Sixty years after the March on Washington and Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech galvanized supporters of the Civil Rights Movement with an anthemic call to action, several thousand people gathered on the National Mall on Saturday to remind the nation of its unfinished work on equality.
Many who turned out, some having also attended the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, traveled from across the country to recall a searing moment in American history that propelled, in the words of one speaker, “the struggle of a lifetime.” The event was convened by the Rev.
Al Sharpton and by Martin Luther King III, the son of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, and was attended by dignitaries including Andrew Young, the former United Nations ambassador and mayor of Atlanta, and the U.S. Representative Hank Johnson of Georgia.
Hovering above all the proceedings, though, were the words delivered by Dr. King six decades ago in front of the Lincoln Memorial, when he took the measure of society a century after slavery was abolished and lamented how Black Americans were “still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination.”
Persons:
Martin Luther King’s, Al Sharpton, Martin Luther King III, Martin Luther King Jr, Coretta Scott King, Andrew Young, Hank Johnson of, Dr, King, ”
Organizations:
Civil Rights Movement, Jobs, United Nations, U.S, Lincoln
Locations:
Washington, Atlanta, Hank Johnson of Georgia