The dream remembered
AFTers recall the 1963 March on Washington that changed a nation

Last month, Americans commemorated the 40th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in Washington, D.C. On Aug. 28, 1963, as more than 250,000 people--a massive crowd in those days--gathered near the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his eloquent "I Have a Dream" speech that today is part of every classroom curriculum on the civil rights movement.

But four decades ago, organizers of the landmark event that raised American consciousness of racial inequality and catapulted King to international fame could not have known how truly successful the march would be--or how it would change the nation.

"It was an outstanding milestone in American history," recalls AFT executive vice president Nat LaCour, then a third-year teacher in New Orleans, a district in the throes of desegregation. The March on Washington, he says, "galvanized the country," brought King to the leadership of the civil rights movement and was a springboard to the passage of two historic bills in Congress--the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Although rallies and marches in the nation's capital are commonplace today, the 1963 march was a "very vocal and very visible" event, says LaCour, who believes the key to that visibility was television. TV coverage of the march--and of the violence against peaceful civil rights demonstrators in the South--"got the whole country involved in this movement," he says. Americans were incensed by the treatment of blacks in the South and "people wanted to do something about the situation."

Ten years ago, the AFT published a special supplement to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the march. Writer Karin Chenoweth described how in the weeks before the march, organizers were still debating what type of demonstration it would be, who would speak and which organizations would co-sponsor the event.
 

'An incredible experience'

The march was successful in part because its organizer, Bayard Rustin, was an "obsessive planner" who left nothing to chance--from chartering buses to securing food, water and toilets, Chenoweth wrote. Also, a number of unions, including the United Auto Workers, the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union and the AFT, played an important role in helping to finance and support the march.

AFT president Sandra Feldman was among those who helped Rustin from his New York City headquarters. At 22, she had been a civil rights activist since joining the Eugene Victor Debs Society at Brooklyn College. During the summer of 1963, she spent every spare moment helping organize the march--answering the phone, running off leaflets, writing correspondence.

Rustin "was incredible to work with," she remembers, "because he went out of his way to involve us. He would have meetings at the end of the day, and we would have discussions, and he would ask us questions." By "us" Feldman means the young volunteers, who Rustin treated as valuable members of the team.

On the day of the march, Feldman was on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. "I was doing things--ushering, running errands. But when the program started, I had the honor to be behind Bayard, Martin Luther King, John Lewis. It was an incredible experience to see the crowd, to see history being made."

Her civil rights activism propelled Feldman into union activism. Using many of the lessons she had learned in the civil rights movement on how to persuade and mobilize people, Feldman organized the first school she taught in.

George Altomare, then a high school teacher in Brooklyn, remembers the special atmosphere the day of the march. "People walked with a kind of silence and peacefulness," says Altomare, now a retired vice president of New York City's United Federation of Teachers. During King's speech, "there was almost a spiritual hush that came over everyone," Altomare recalls. "There were tears in my eyes and in those of everyone around me."