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August 28, 2003 is the fortieth anniversary of a seminal demonstration for civil rights, the March on Washington. With the passage of four decades, it's a good time to look back at that era and the events that led to the March. After years of struggle that began with Rosa Parks, a black woman, in Montgomery, Alabama who refused to give her seat on a bus to a white man in 1955, a coalition of civil rights groups and labor unions organized the March for Jobs and Freedom. The civil rights organizations wanted Congress to pass President John F. Kennedy's Civil Rights Bill.

The idea of a march was conceived by A. Philip Randolph, founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters Union, to dramatize unemployment among blacks. The goals of the March included:  a $2.00 minimum wage, desegregation of schools, a federal public-works job program, and federal action to end racial discrimination in employment. All of the major civil rights organizations sponsored the March. It was successful beyond anyone's hopes. Tens of thousands of people converged on the nation's capitol from every part of the country. They came by bus, car, train and plane. When assembled at the Washington Monument, they numbered 250,000, and everyone was amazed at the ocean of humanity who had come together to demand equality for all people. 

At the time I was a student at Catholic University which decided to have a contingent join the March. It was the first demonstration I ever attended and I was excited. I wasn't sure what would happen and my mother was a little worried. She said to me, half joking, "If I don't see you again, it's been nice knowing you." The government also was concerned about what might happen with so many people coming to the March. Taylor Branch wrote in Pillar of Fire America in the King Years 1963-65, "D.C. banned all sales of alcoholic beverages, the Pentagon readied nineteen thousand troops in the suburbs, and more than 80 percent of the stores were closed."  

August 28 was a sunny, very hot day. I met the other students and we carried a large red banner that said "The Catholic University of America." Individually, we also carried signs and marched from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial.  Since we were in the first half of the March, we were able to get to the bottom of the steps at the memorial. With about 190,000 black people and about 60,000 white people, the March was well integrated. I wore a black and white skirt and blouse to symbolize racial unity.  

Despite fears of trouble by some, the March was completely peaceful and the feeling of brotherhood and sisterhood among the crowd was palatable.  People were proud to be there and believed they were making history. It was the largest demonstration for human rights that the country had ever seen. Many stirring speeches were given and Mahalia Jackson, Bob Dylan and others sang. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a Baptist minister, was the last speaker. His speech was electrifying. With soaring eloquence he spoke of the terrible anguish of the past and the continuing injustice of the present, and he presented a vision of equality for the future. 

The beauty of the speech was breathtaking. The "I Have a Dream" speech gave America the vision of what the nation should be - a country that exemplifies the principles of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence for all of its citizens equally.

In Bearing the Cross Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, David J. Garrow wrote "Although he did not know it, the speech had been the rhetorical achievement of a lifetime, the clarion call that conveyed the moral power of the movement's cause to the millions who had watched the live national network coverage. White America was confronted with the undeniable justice of blacks' demands." The writer James Baldwin said "that day, for a moment, it almost seemed that we stood on a height and could see our inheritance."

From a historical perspective many well known Americans now acknowledge that speech as the finest oration by an American in the twentieth century. Haynes Johnson, a journalist and author of Beyond Reagan:  the Politics of Upheaval said that Abraham Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address" was the greatest speech by an American in the nineteenth century and King's "I Have a Dream" speech is without question the greatest speech by an American in the twentieth century. 

"The speech has gradually been recognized as a classic American document - a statement of the vision of America shared by all her people.  The March passed into memory as one of the shining moments of the civil rights movement when black and white Americans stood together united in a vision of justice and brotherhood," stated Lloyd E. Rohler in Great Speeches for Criticism & Analysis. 

Hearing Dr. King give the speech was a magnificent moment in my life.  This man, a descendent of slaves, gave the greatest speech of the last century in Washington, D.C., my hometown.  The speech spoke to my mind with the breadth of its ideas and its references to history and our great documents, and it spoke to my soul with the beauty of its poetry and its eloquent vision of equality and justice. William Roger Witherspoon said in Martin Luther King, Jr. ... To The Mountaintop, "It was a stunning, heart-wrenching tour de force."

For decades after slavery ended black Americans had been forced to live in separate neighborhoods, attend separate schools that were inferior, were relegated to low paying jobs, and could not be served in restaurants or rent a room in a hotel. In the South, restrooms and water fountains were segregated as were all public facilities. Lynching and other persecution had bloodied the land with savagery. Segregation was a horrible blight on justice and a disgrace to the country. For black Americans to protest such a racist system required great bravery. With his exquisite oratory Dr. King described the agony that millions of black Americans had suffered under segregation.    

By his courageous actions, his speeches, and his integrity, Dr. King had become the symbol of the civil rights movement to black and white Americans. Generally recognized as the foremost civil rights leader of the twentieth century in the United States, he was the dominant force in the movement during its decade of greatest achievement, from 1957 to 1968. The destruction of white supremacy achieved by the civil rights movement was an incalculable victory for human freedom and dignity.

As anthropologists and biologists are coming to the conclusion that human beings, Homo Sapiens, began in Africa and that race is a social construct, not a biological one, it has become clear that there is only one race, the human race. The struggle for justice for every group continues, but the "I Have a Dream" speech remains the sparkling jewel of idealistic belief in the equality of all people.