"We Still Have a Dream"

By William R. Doerner.

Twenty years later, thousands march in Washington for a medley of causes

For many Americans, it remains one of the incandescent moments in living memory. Facing a throng of 250,000 on the capital Mall, with the Washington Monument soaring before him and the white marble figure of Abraham Lincoln brooding behind him, Martin Luther King Jr. turned mere spectacle into a kind of national epiphany. "I have a dream today," he declared. And again, "I have a dream today." And again. He used the words as more than refrain, more than cadence, almost as biblical exhortation. And as his listeners cheered him more loudly each time he repeated them, King built toward his stirring peroration: "When we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: 'Free at last. Free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.' "

Last week, a day short of two decades after that electrifying moment, a throng almost as large assembled in the same spot. The participants were there partly in commemoration, to mark a day and a speech and an idea that had changed America forever, and partly in fresh complaint, to push for dreams that remain unfulfilled. The second March on Washington was thus both an opportunity to measure the sometimes astonishing distances the nation has traveled on the road to racial equality and a time to ponder its new and less certain agenda for the future. King's long-stilled eloquence was missing, of course, but it was not far from anyone's mind. "I can assure you that Martin Luther King Jr. will be marching with us and that he will still be leading the parade," said his widow Coretta Scott King. "We still have a dream."

If the dream was there, the fire was not. The reprise had a forced quality, as if the participants had been jaded by all the marches and speeches of the intervening two decades. Billed as a "March for Jobs, Peace and Freedom," the gathering marshaled proponents of a bewildering variety of causes and organizations, from environmentalists to advocates of a nuclear freeze to gay-rights lobbyists.

Some 4,000 buses carrying the marchers started arriving in the capital Friday evening from 347 cities across the nation. Early Saturday morning, demonstrators began collecting in 29 staging areas, slowly at first and then in ever growing droves. In contrast to the 1963 marchers, more than two-thirds of whom were black, last week's crowd was close to 50% white. As in 1963, the marchers were orderly; the 3,700 city police on hand made fewer than two dozen arrests.

The diversity of causes and interests at times made for a certain cliquishness, with union and church groups, dressed in identical T shirts, sticking together. At one point, a small band of Hare Krishnas moved along the sidewalk, oblivious to a Pennsylvania group a few feet away carrying signs advocating peace in Central America. In the shade of an old beech tree near by, a band of antinuclear activists stood in a circle, hands linked, eyes closed, as a middle-aged woman in braids and a long skirt led them in prayer.

Throughout the sweltering afternoon, the crowd anticipated one speaker more eagerly than anyone else: Jesse Jackson, 41, founder of Operation PUSH (for People United to Serve Humanity), who is in the highly public process of deciding whether or not to make a bid for the presidency. Taking nearly three times the five minutes allotted to speakers, the safari-suited and hoarse-throated Jackson did not tip his hand one way or the other on the presidential question. But as the marchers hushed for one of the few sustained periods of quiet in a long day of oratory, Jackson delivered a spirited and frequently rousing, if occasionally strident, political address.

Using slogans that often crop up in his speeches, he concluded: "Turn on Reagan. Turn to each other. Our day has come. March on! Don't let them break your spirit. We will rise, never to fall again! From slave ship to championship! From the outhouse to the statehouse to the courthouse to the White House! We will march on! March on! March on! Our time has come!" The crowd cheered enthusiastically, breaking into the chant that follows Jackson at black and integrated gatherings almost everywhere these days: "Run, Jesse, run! Run, Jesse, run!" Jackson stepped back to the speaker's stand to acknowledge the ovation, flashing V signs with both hands.

Much of the rhetoric on and off the speaking platform was not so much pro any cause as anti-Ronald Reagan. Lee D. Harris, a retired auto worker from Linden, N.J., said simply that "we are trying to get a message to the President that people need jobs, and this is the way to do it." Even some of the musical entertainment took digs at the President: Veteran Folk Singer Pete Seeger picked away at a ditty with the lyrics: "This old man, he did four, now we're in El Salvador . . . This old man, he did six, he did better in the flicks . . . This old man, he did eight, he helped Nancy decorate..."

The commemorative march was conceived two years ago by Coretta King and officials of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

The inclusion of peace groups was probably the most debated decision, since they added what some civil rights traditionalists view as an unrelated and controversial element to the cause. Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young defends the broadened coalition, pointing out that King, shortly before his death, turned against the Viet Nam War as an impediment to black progress. Says Young: "Without peace, there are no jobs or freedom."

Others disagree. Officials of the National Urban League, one of the eight sponsors of the 1963 march, declined to join in this time, saying they feared that its "focus on a broad range of issues is likely to limit its impact." Bayard Rustin, stage manager of the original event, was another prominent no-show in 1983. Some Jewish organizations, angered by language in an early version of a march manifesto implying disapproval of the level of U.S. arms shipments to Israel, also decided to withhold support. In the end, however, the offending passages were toned down, and one of the march prayers was led by Rabbi Alexander Schindler, head of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations.

Few contrasts between the two demonstrations were more striking than the different political and racial landscape of their setting. In 1963, Washington had no elected city government. The coordinator for the 1983 march was the Rev. Walter Fauntroy, who was once one of King's closest aides and now represents the city in Congress. The official welcome was delivered by Mayor Marion Barry, and march security was directed by Police Chief Maurice Turner, both blacks. Says Turner, who in 1963 worked a twelve-hour shift on the Mall as an ordinary patrolman: "When people get teed off, they want to march, they go to the nation's capital. This is not new for us." Indeed, although the first March on Washington attracted the biggest crowd ever assembled in the city up to that time, it has since been surpassed by several events, including the 1969 Moratorium on the Viet Nam War (300,000) and the AFL-CIO's 1981 Solidarity Day rally (260,000). But it was not the size of the crowd the first time that mattered so much as the force of King's vision. It seared the American consciousness with an impact that almost no one foresaw. Arriving in Washington during a national debate over black civil rights that was anything but decided, King carried the moral credentials of a crusader for a cause that was undeniably just. By peacefully assembling his masses in the nation's capital--and in front of network television cameras--he was able to enlist the sympathy of mainstream America almost in a single day and to win its support in finding remedies for the shame of racial discrimination.

Congress quickly sensed this sea change and responded with the greatest outpouring of human rights legislation in this century: the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Fair Housing Act of 1968. Says Andrew Young: "Up until the March on Washington the civil rights movement had been just a Southern thing and primarily a black thing. The march brought the movement into the North officially, and it became both black and white for the first time."

The new "coalition of conscience," as the marchers called themselves, speaks for segments of the nation whose combined numbers could make a difference on important issues. What remains uncertain, however, is whether they will be able to speak with one voice on any occasion other than a mass conclave in the August sun. The concept of conscience, after all, implies the will to do what is right. It does not necessarily follow, even in a coalition committed to joint action, that everyone agrees on what that is. Especially when many--blacks, peace activists, environmentalists, organized labor--are also competing to win public attention, and public support, for their own agendas. --By William R. Doerner.

Reported by Joseph N. Boyce and Jack E. White/ Washington

With reporting by Joseph N. Boyce, Jack E. White/Washington This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.