John Lewis’s Censored Speech to the 1963 March on Washington, Before and After
Today, as we all knew before a certain hurricane started heading up the East Coast, is the 48th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Martin Luther King gave his “I have a dream” speech that day, but he was only one speaker in a very long program.
Speakers at the march ranged from labor leader Walther Reuther to 1920s cabaret performer Josephine Baker, who flew in from her home in France specially for the occasion. Mahalia Jackson sang, as did Bob Dylan and Joan Baez.
But other than King’s, only one speech from that day is remembered at all anymore. It’s the one given by John Lewis, the 23-year-old chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
Lewis was (if you don’t count Dylan and Baez, each about a year younger) the youngest person to address the crowd, and perhaps the most radical. In the original draft of his speech Lewis slammed Kennedy and the