Isabel Wilkerson

Isabel Wilkerson Instagram – Sixty years ago today, the largest demonstration in U.S. history to date occurred at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial — officially called the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
No one knew how many people would converge on the nation’s capital. Leaders hoped for 100,000. Fears of rioting ran so high that the government banned all alcohol sales for 24 hours leading up to the march, shifted prisoners to increase jail capacity for mass arrests, prohibited elective surgeries so that hospitals could handle riot casualties and prepared more than 17,000 troops to quell the expected violence. More reporters showed up to cover the march than had covered the inauguration of John F. Kennedy two years before.
Celebrities like Josephine Baker, James Baldwin, Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, Bob Dylan, Charlton Heston, Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, Lena Horne and many others joined in the demonstration. Civil rights leaders like John Lewis, A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins took to the dais. Martin Luther King Jr. would veer from his prepared remarks to give the most famous speech of the 20th Century, concluding with the exhortation to “let freedom ring….”
But perhaps the most important people at the March were the 250,000 people of all creeds and colors, who came on buses and trains and hitchhiked to peacefully ask their country to live up to its creed. The troops were not needed that day.
It was my honor that a photograph from that historic march graces the cover of Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which explores the history of the divisions and injustices that we have inherited as a nation and which the marchers were protesting.
How tragic that, as we commemorate, we are reminded of the enduring urgency of that day’s message, as we reconcile the fateful shootings of Black customers at a Dollar Tree Store in Jacksonville, FL, at the hands of a white supremacist this past weekend.
The hatreds and inequities that were being protested 60 years ago have not gone away and still have not been fully addressed. There is so much more work to be done.
#marchonwashington #castetheoriginsofourdiscontents #caste #history | Posted on 29/Aug/2023 00:14:34