This week, as we all know by now, is the 50th 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 to the US 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 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.
The original draft of Lewis’ speech was a blistering attack on racism, the white South, and the Democratic party. In it, Lewis predicted that a revolution was coming in America, one that would shake the nation to its foundations and remake the South completely. It was a great speech, but it was bit much for some of the march’s organizers.
On the day before the march, the Catholic archbishop of Washington DC — who was scheduled to give the opening invocation the next morning — received a copy of Lewis’ speech. The archbishop’s complaints sparked a crisis among march organizers, one that eventually pulled in government officials, labor leaders, and other white clergy. Even as the early speakers at the march were on stage, Lewis was huddled in a small guard station under the Abraham Lincoln statue in the memorial with Dr. King, A. Philip Randolph, and white church leader Eugene Carson Blake, negotiating changes.
The amended speech was typed up just moments before Lewis went on stage
