March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom

In 1941 A. Philip Randolph had threatened a march on Washington to protest the exclusion of Black workers from defense jobs; President Roosevelt responded with Executive Order 8802, and the march was called off. By 1963, the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, high Black unemployment, low wages, disenfranchisement, and segregation persisted.

Randolph’s Negro American Labor Council began planning a march for jobs, and in May 1963, during the Birmingham campaign, King joined him and leaders of CORE and SNCC in calling for it. Its goals included a comprehensive civil rights bill, protection of voting rights, desegregation of all public schools, a federal jobs program, and a federal law barring employment discrimination.

Sponsors expanded to include the NAACP, the National Urban League, the United Auto Workers, and major religious bodies. The march was not universally supported: Malcolm X called it “the Farce on Washington,” and the AFL-CIO’s executive board stayed neutral. SNCC’s John Lewis had to tone down a draft speech calling the administration’s bill “too little and too late.” Near the end of the program, King moved the Lincoln Memorial crowd and a live television audience with what became known as his “I Have a Dream” speech.

Afterward, march leaders met President John F. Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson at the White House to discuss bipartisan support for civil rights legislation.

Although they passed after Kennedy’s assassination, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 reflected the march’s demands. The National Archives calls it “the largest demonstration for human rights in United States history.”