50th Anniversary of the March on Washington August 24, 2013 dawned bright and clear. I felt excited and proud as I drove to Washington, DC for the 50th Observation of the March on Washington. The original March occurred on August 28, 1963, that is a weekday, so the 50th anniversary was held yesterday. As I made my way down the National Mall, I saw fences in place for crowd control and a large stage had been erected in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Along the way, monitors had been set up for viewing the speakers and a large monitor was in front of the stage. There was another viewing area closer to the stage, but only people with passes could enter it. I was among the first of the marchers to arrive. Many people sat in outdoor chairs that folded or laid on blankets they’d brought with them. The crowd around me was peaceful. Like me, most people stood. The leaders who spoke on the stage were allowed to begin the march first. Police did not remove the barriers in front of the audience until they had dismounted the stage. For the people in front of the lines like I was, about six hours elapsed from the time we got there until our march began. Besides the crowd control barriers, police patrolled the National Mall on foot and bike. Members of the military as well as police protected the area in between the audience where I stood and the large stage. A few people were removed from the audience as a result of the heat, but there were no incidents of unruly behavior anywhere near me. I met several interesting people in the crowd who made the time fly by. There was an older lady from Little Rock, AR. She’d come to DC for President Obama’s inauguration on a bus with a group and decided to fly to the March. She’d been in DC since Thursday and was also among the first to arrive. I ended up telling her about clean eating after she asked about some veggie chips I’d taken out of my bag to eat. I also met a retired teacher from Texas. She was in her fifth year of retirement after teaching for eighteen years and serving as a school counselor for the last seventeen years. She proudly informed us that her daughter had recently graduated from college. She attended with her husband, who was entering his second year of retirement. She had also flown up to attend President Obama’s inauguration. She said she was scheduled to attend the March by bus with a group and she and her husband ended up flying after the bus was delayed. I met a young guy from Wisconsin. His grandmother had marched in 1963 so he’d come from Wisconsin alone to attend. I met a teacher of thirteen years form North Carolina who’d just had Open House to begin the new school year. She was in the middle of decorating her classroom when she got a call from a friend of hers to see if she wanted to come. The friend was a nurse of thirty-six years. The teacher said she still hadn’t done her lesson plans for Monday, but she wasn’t worried. There was also a father who had brought his young son. The son appeared to be in his early teen years. These are the people who I talked to as I waited for the program to begin and in between speakers during the program. The audience was composed of people of all backgrounds and races. The names of most of the speakers and what organization they represented appeared on the monitors as they spoke. Tom Joyner emceed the program. The original emcee lost his voice, and as Tom Joyner had been one of the speakers, he just stepped in as emcee. The early speakers were given two minutes before the microphones were cut off. It appeared that several of them did not know that they had time limits, because the microphones were cut off in the middle of several speeches. The early part of the program was a prayer service. Ministers of many different faiths took to the stage and prayed for continued progress. Toward the end, these keynote speakers were not timed. This is how the program ran a little long. Several high profile people spoke, including Eric Holder, current United States Attorney General; Julian Bond, social activist and past president of the NAACP; Representative Nancy Pelosi, minority leader of the United States House of Representatives; Cory Booker, current mayor or Newark, NJ and attorney who recently received President Obama’s endorsement for New Jersey Senator; Charles Ogletree, a Harvard Law School professor; Martin Luther King, III son of Martin Luther King, Sr.; Al Sharpton, whose National Action Network was the primary organizer of the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington; and John Lewis, one of the original marchers and a Congressman from Georgia. The producers were instructed not to play the music on him now matter how long his speech ran. Several celebrities also attended the March. Jay Anthony Brown, a member of Tom Joyner’s Radio Show and actor, stopped to take pictures with a few people in the audience as well as Danny Glover, another famous actor. Other notable speakers included Bejamin Jealous, current NAACP President; Rajmohan Ghandid, Mahatma Ghandi’s grandson and University of Illinois professor, former presidential candidate Jesse Jackson and author Michael Eric Dyson. A documentary in honor of the children from Sandy Hook Elementary, Trayvon Martin, Hadiyah Pendleton and other people whose lives were lost to violence recently were shown. Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon Martin’s mother, also spoke. She said that Trayvon now belongs to everybody. Finally, Medgar Evans’s widow, Myrlie Evers-Williams, also spoke. Fifty years ago, she was not able to attend the original March on Washington due to travel logistics. She stated that she’d never forgiven herself for it until President Obama had asked her to attend his inauguration. At 80 years old and still looking well, she said that she made sure that she made it to yesterday’s march. Actually participating in the March felt surreal to me. I kept looking around in disbelief that I could be a part of something so big with the potential to influence change on jobs, education and civil rights. If I ever have a family, I will proudly tell my child that I marched yesterday. After my day in DC ended, I remarked that standing for so long waiting for the program to start and then throughout the speakers and the short march made me feel sore and tired. This was unusual to me because I generally eat clean and workout six days a week. Besides, I had been in Adidas race boots, shoes designed for walking. So I wondered how the original marchers must have felt, who may have stood longer than I had, whose shoes were not designed for walking and who did not even know the importance of a healthy diet and exercise. My friend responded that it didn’t even phase them, and I agree. They were used to much tougher work in much worse conditions. Standing and marching were like a day off work for them. I am grateful for the opportunity to have been a part of this experience.
Posted on: Sun, 25 Aug 2013 21:18:44 +0000
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