Why We Still March!
By the Rev. Steve Baber
Photos courtesy of The National Archives and Records Administration, et. al.
As a young child growing up in the mid-1960s, I spent nearly every summer in Mississippi. Now as an adult, both my appreciation and respect have grown tremendously for my parents, grandparents, and others for their successful work and effort in shielding me from nearly all the vestiges of the Jim Crow south during my youth.
I can still recall watching on television the fire hosing and police dogs being set upon children during civil rights demonstrations in a then segregated park in Birmingham, Ala. However, I recall or remember practically nothing from my youth and adolescence in regards to the 1963 March on Washington, culminated by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s great “I Have A Dream” speech.
Yet so much has unfolded in our nation and world since that monumental event, so as the 50th anniversary celebration of that march approached, and persons and organizations were making plans and asking me if I would travel to our nation’s capital and participate, my response took time. I reflected on the earlier march and what would be the significance of celebrating it some 50 years later.
Though fully aware that the works and efforts of Dr. King have had a profound impact not just on this nation and our lives, but on the entire world for the sake of justice for all, it was only after my thoughtful consideration that I agreed to attend and participate in the March. I and several other clergy would-be participants and supporters of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, an organization founded by the great trade unionist, A. Philip Randolph, who was the principle planner and organizer of the original 1963 march.
It is ironic that the concerns highlighted in the 1963 March still exist today – not just for jobs, but jobs that pay a livable wage, for just treatment of workers, for better healthcare and social justice. We have still not arrived on the shores of a fully just and equable nation for all its citizens.
A. Philip Randolph, planner of the 1963 March, had originally called for a March on Washington in 1941 on the eve of the United States entering World War II. He sought greater working opportunities, as well as fair wages being paid to black workers, and integration of the segregated armed services.
Randolph’s March On Washington Planning Committee had local organizing units around the country, as well as a national planning committee. That committee included representatives from unions, the National Urban League, the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), the National Association for Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) as well as many women leaders such as Mary McLeod Bethune, Dorothy Height of the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW), and Jeanetta Welch of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.
A week before the planned 1941 March, President Roosevelt issued an Executive Order outlawing discrimination in hiring and training. The order created a Fair Employment Practices Committee to enforce the order and recommend any measures deemed necessary or proper to effect its provisions.
Some 22 years later, as plans developed for the 1963 March on Washington, President Kennedy had drafted a civil rights bill which he had submitted to Congress. Kennedy felt the march would threaten passage of his bill, but it was eventually passed after his assassination as a tribute to our slain president. That eventual bill bore the markings of the 1963 March on Washington all over it.
It made discrimination based on race, gender or sex illegal. It raised the numbers of persons allowed to immigrate, and opened immigration to persons outside of Europe, an area that had been favored in prior immigration policies. It established the Federal Employment and Housing Agency, something that A. Philip Randolph had fought to establish with every Congress since 1941.
So why do I march? Why did I attend this celebratory occasion marking the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington? I march because we’ve yet to arrive at that juncture where all God’s children are indeed free. Dr. King in one his earliest speeches at Holt Street Baptist Church in 1955 concerning social justice stated these words:
“…my friends there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled by the iron feet of oppression…if we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong, if we are wrong the Constitution of the United States is wrong, and if we are wrong God Almighty is wrong…If we are wrong, justice is a lie, and love has no meaning. We are determined to work, to fight until justice runs down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
Jesus said to the righteous:
I was hungry and you gave me food to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you gave me clothes to wear. I was sick and you took care of me. I was in prison and you visited me.
And they replied:
When did we see you hungry, and feed you, or thirsty and give you a drink? When did we see you as a stranger and welcome you, or naked and give you clothes to wear? When did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?
Jesus responded “When you have done it for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you have done it for me.”
The question before each of us is not so much if we will march, but where will we stand in the judgment of time. Will you stand on the side of justice and righteousness or will you stand against it?
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Rev. Baber, I found it interesting that you hold up President Roosevelt as a champion of civil rights. Less than a year after issuing the executive order you site, on February 19, 1942, FDR issued another order. Executive Order 9066 set in motion the forced incarceration of roughly 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry. In fact, many of those internees came from your area, Seattle. They were never charged with any crimes but were forced to serve the duration of the war in remote camps under armed guard behind barbed wire. Was that “fair” to them? I encourage you to keep marching if you are so moved. Though it is important to keep focus forward, don’t neglect to look from side to side once in a while too. You could overlook some interesting items- right under your feet. Shalom.
Hi Greg – thanks for reading and thanks for your response! Also, thank you for sharing about Executive Order 9066. You may be interested in knowing that next year, Annual Conference will take place at the Puyallup Fairgrounds – a place that is marked with the history of Japanese internment. I encourage more discussion on this issue – and stay tuned with Channels to hopefully see stories related to social justice issues within the JA community! -Jesse N. Love, Print & Publications Manager, PNWUMC.
Hi Channels – I echo your words — there needs to be more stories related to social justice issues within the JA and Asian American communities. I also appreciate Greg’s earlier comment. Just to clarify, the Puyallup Fairgrounds was not an internment camp. It was an assembly center, big difference. The assembly centers, frequently located at horse tracks are where they rounded up and “housed” the Japanese Americans before shipping them off to one of the 10 internment camps. People weren’t typically in the assembly centers longer than three months. The internment centers were in isolated areas and the Japanese Americans would be there for an undetermined amount of time. There were 18 assembly centers and what you know as the Puyallup Fairgrounds, was one of the 18.