WASHINGTON — On the 40th anniversary of the March on Washington, we look back on that day as the ultimate expression of Americans peacefully petitioning their government for change. But before the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. inspired the nation with his dream of racial equality, the march inspired fear. The Kennedy administration, Congress and the press spoke uneasily of mobs of black people rioting in the capital.
Despite the tense climate, at least 250,000 people showed their personal and political conviction by going to Washington and expressing their support for Congressional action to protect civil rights and end segregation. They have rich stories to tell about that day, ones that continue to resonate four decades later.
Rachelle Horowitz, former political director of the American Federation of Teachers, was then a 24-year-old college dropout working with the civil rights advocate Bayard Rustin.
"Bayard was a homosexual and had been arrested on a morals charge — that hurt him a little in the movement, but he was always three steps ahead of the traditional civil rights movement. It was really his idea for the march and he pushed the whole movement into it. The good thing that happened was that Senator Strom Thurmond, a few weeks before the march, denounced Bayard. A. Philip Randolph and King had to publicly defend him. Everybody knew Thurmond had nothing good in mind. He wanted to sabotage the march."
Clay Carson, who now directs a project to archive the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s papers at Stanford University, was 19 at the time.
"I had met Stokely Carmichael and when I told him I wanted to go to the march he dismissed it as something boring. So I remember being a little on the defensive but going to the march was pretty exciting for me. If someone had tapped me on the shoulder after the march to tell me that in years to come I would be a professor teaching African-American history at Stanford it would have been akin to telling me that I would be living on Mars. It was inconceivable. There wasn't anyone who looked like me teaching history at Stanford and African-American history wasn't a field."
Gene Young, retired professor of education, was then 12 and living in Jackson, Miss. His parents reluctantly agreed to let him get on a bus chartered by the Congress on Racial Equality.
"My mom came to the bus with sandwiches and fried fish. I didn't have much change in my pocket. It's a good thing those guys from CORE were there to take care of me. Every mile of that trip was exciting. We sang freedom songs; we stopped in Atlanta to pick up more people. When we pulled into Washington that morning I couldn't believe it. I had never seen that many people, on buses, coming off trains. Black people and white people, together. I'd never seen anything like that in Mississippi."
Julian Bond, chairman of the N.A.A.C.P., was 23 and a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
"What struck me looking at the photos was how many people were dressed in suits and ties — as if it was church or a formal occasion — not people who had come for a picnic but for a serious purpose."
The Rev. Walter Fauntroy, a Washington minister, was then 26 and director of the Washington office for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
"I got a call from the Park Service to tell me that our $75,000 sound system that we had brought to reach all the people at the mall had been severely sabotaged — someone had cut the cables so deeply they couldn't get it up and running by the time the march was supposed to start. So I called Bobby Kennedy at home. `We need the Army signal corps,' I said. `Listen, we're going to have more than 100,000 people here and not having a loudspeaker will be disastrous.' By the grace of God it was ready by noon."
Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia's representative to Congress, was a 25-year-old law student working with Rustin to organize the march.
"On the day of the march I positioned myself well — I caught a plane out in the morning from New York City and flew over the assembling crowd. That was one of the most thrilling moments of my life. The notion that as far as the eye could see on the ground there would be people waiting to march peacefully to the Lincoln Memorial was an overwhelming scene."
Andrew Young, then a 30-year-old aide to King, became mayor of Atlanta and ambassador to the United Nations.
"Dr. King had done `I Have a Dream' a month or so earlier in Detroit and no one paid any attention to it. It was just another preacher preaching. In Washington, it became the phrase that helped white people realize that all that Americans needed to do was to live out the meaning of its creed — live up to what Jefferson, Madison and Lincoln had said. I think we knew that this was a special moment — you have to remember that I was 30 and Martin was 33 or 34 — and we were young men. We were like kids that had just won a football game, smiling, laughing and cracking jokes."
Clifford Alexander, former secretary of the Army, was a 29-year-old aide to President Kennedy.
"The White House was in a state of clear apprehension. If you get in a position like the one I was in, you have a responsibility to say to the people in power what you think about race. So I went out to see what was happening. Then the press treated race seriously. They reported on the march and the focus of attention on lack of jobs and economic status."
Courtland Cox, then 20 and working for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, became head of the Commerce Department's minority business development office.
"Kennedy wanted to speak at the march but Rustin didn't want that to happen because he thought J.F.K. would overwhelm it. There was a big discussion about seeing Kennedy before or after the march. If we saw him before then the leaders would be bringing Kennedy's message to the march. Seeing him afterwards would be bringing the march's message to Kennedy. And that is what happened."
Raul Yzaguirre, president of the National Council of La Raza, was then a 23-year-old doctor who helped to organize the march's first-aid station.
"There weren't too many Latinos there but those that were there found it enormously liberating to see that kind of people power for equal rights. I was carrying a litter with a lady who had passed out when Dr. King spoke. When the march ended I was walking back to the lab. The White House was on the way and I saw the civil rights leaders being ushered into the White House. I took a picture of it with my little Brownie camera. I was a witness to history being made."
Juan Williams, senior correspondent for NPR and political analyst for Fox News Channel, is co-author of "This Far by Faith: Stories From the African-American Religous Experience."
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company