Unsung Heroes of the March on Washington, 60 Years Later

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, INTERNATIONAL HOST: Now, 60 years ago, hundreds of thousands of people descended on Washington, D.C., demanding racial justice. Martin Luther King Jr. addressed the crowd and said those now iconic words, I have a dream. Thousands gathered at the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday to commemorate the march but to also continue the fight for equality. New York Times bestselling author Michael Eric Dyson joins Walter Isaacson to discuss the historic event and its legacy.

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WALTER ISAACSON, HOST: Thank you, Christiane. And, Michael Eric Dyson, welcome back to the show.

DYSON: Thank you, my friend. Always great to be here.

ISAACSON: Now, we’re celebrating or commemorating the 60th anniversary now of the march on Washington. Its full name was The March on Washington for Jobs and freedom. Tell me about the original mission.

DYSON: Well, the original mission, of course, as you just articulated, was to focus energy and national attention on the African-American quest for equal employment and for racial justice and public institutions, and eventually, of course, to procure the vote. The great A. Philip Randolph in the 1940s that met with President Roosevelt and with his compatriot, Mary McLeod Bethune, to try to force the president to take action. Infamously, perhaps an apocryphal moment, but it is alleged to have occurred that the president looking at Mr. Randolph and looking Ms. McLeod Bethune said, look, I believe in everything you’re telling me, now, go out there and make me do it. In other words, create the particular contagion in the public sphere for the notion of black justice, for the notion of black employment, for desegregating the armed services and et cetera, and then I can act. So, some 25 odd years later, Martin Luther King Jr., A. Philip Randolph, James Farmer, John Lewis were part of the big six — and Roy Wilkins and Whitney Young from the Urban League. So, it was an incredible convocation of leading black figures to try to put before the nation an argument in behalf of black freedom and quality.

ISAACSON: You talk about the six coming together and, of course, it’s led initially by, as you mentioned, by A. Philip Randolph. Tell us a little bit about him, because he was a great union leader and sort of unsung these days.

DYSON: I mean, first of all, let’s start with that stentorian voice, that orator, when he introduces us to Martin Luther King, Jr., I mean, just the authority, he could play the voice of God. He was James Earl Jones before James Earl Jones was James Earl Jones. So — but a great leader, a socialist along with Chandler Owens in the early 1900s, promulgating systemic reform for African-American culture in terms of economic justice, a great union leader. The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters was his significant outlet where he organized thousands upon thousands of black men, many of whom had college degrees, but who found better work in terms of a sleeping car porter than they could even teaching in terms of wage. So, he was great union organizer. He was a great social activist. He was a great writer. He influenced so many figures, not only Martin Luther King Jr., but the great Bayard Rustin as well who eventually came to work with Martin Luther King Jr. along with Ella Baker. So, he was an extraordinarily important leader who should not be forgotten, because Martin Luther King Jr. himself said, the reason we’re having this march in 1963 is to fulfill the great man’s desire in the 1840s.

ISAACSON: Another unsung hero, people who don’t remember much anymore, Dorothy Height.

DYSON: Right.

ISAACSON: The woman involved. Tell me about her and why has she been somewhat forgotten.

DYSON: Well, the first reason she’s been forgotten is the horrible patriarchy that continues to (INAUDIBLE) even social justice movements. You know, that old saying that Susan Taylor came up with, hurt people hurt people. Well, oppressed people oppress people. And the irony is, on that great day, the only women who made it to the stage, one of them, at least, was Josephine Baker an ex-pat from Paris who came on stage with some children and great Mahalia Jackson, the great singer. So, the point is that Dorothy Height was forbidden from participating publicly in the organization of the march and being featured as a speaker on that great day. But what great leader. The National Council of Negro Women, we lift as we climb, started by the great Mary McLeod Bethune, taken over by, of course, eventually the great Dorothy Height, lived to be in her late 90s. Dorothy Height was an extraordinary woman who was a leader, an activist, a spokeswoman for the best interest, not only African-American women but of the general push for justice among African-American people.

ISAACSON: And I guess a third person really involved in getting this march on Washington going was bear Bayard Rustin.

DYSON: Right.

ISAACSON: And he, like A. Philip Randolph, a socialist. So, it’s a march about the economy, not just about civil rights.

DYSON: Right. They saw early on that economic inequality was the predicate for so much of the oppression that African-American people faced. And when Martin Luther King Jr. justly so got credit in his later years for pivoting from civil rights to economic inequality, Bayard Rustin had been on that theme from the beginning. He was a black gay man, as open as you could be back in those days. This great man was responsible for organizing the march on Washington. A great social justice leader, a man who was a pacifist out of a quaker tradition and a man who understood the complicated and nuanced perspective of practical politics.

ISAACSON: The nonviolent part of that much, the fact that it was nonviolent was what made it so persuasive.

DYSON: Right.

ISAACSON: Were there — what were the debates though beforehand about how much it such emphasize nonviolent means?

DYSON: Yes. See, this is what happens when you speak to a great historic Ukrainian like Walter Isaacson. Most people don’t know that there were tremendous debates behind the scene. First of all, John Lewis, yes, that August politician, that dean of black American politicians after John Conyard (ph), the conscience of Congress. Well, he was writing a speech at 23 years old when — like Sherman marched to the south, we’re going to tear through –oh, John, you’re going to have to calm that down. And the great Eleanor Holmes Norton was assigned to task of helping him rewrite it so he could articulate his revolutionary ideals and his militant conscience but in a way that would be palatable ultimately to the audience watching. You know, I think one of the great figures in American religious life, some archbishop said, look, I’m not going to participate if John Lewis’ speech goes on. So, they’re arguing behind the scenes. There were snipers placed atop the buildings in Washington, D.C. by the federal government just in case things got out of hand and the negro folk gathered there would be somehow belligerent. None of that was to be concerned about, Martin Luther King Jr. and the other leaders of the civil rights movement were deeply invested in making sure that nonviolence was both a tactic of social change but also a philosophical approach to life. The only violence we have usually had to worry about are white supremacists and redemptionists who refused to acknowledge the fundamental humanity of black people.

ISAACSON: If you look at the program for that march, they have a section in the problem called A Tribute to Negro Women.

DYSON: Right.

ISAACSON: And they sort of would give a shout-out to Rosa Parks, but none of them were allowed to speak. What do they feel about that?

DYSON: I mean, then the women were chomping at the bit, chaffing, of course, by the cruel denial of opportunity in a march for justice, that we are being unjust to black women, that they must seek their level, that they must stay in their place. And many of those women were women were irate, even Coretta Scott King who gave King a sense of what women were able to do when she fought with him about her role as a civil and social activist. Because Coretta Scott King was far ahead of Martin Luther King Jr. when it came to international issues of social justice and the war in Vietnam and peaceful protests against that. So, Martin Luther King Jr. himself owed a debt to his own wife. But yet these women were denied opportunities. They were bitter in some instances about them. They were rightfully outraged at the limit, but they were such good citizens that they were interested in the broader appeal to issues of justice for African-American people. But make no mistake, those kinds of experiences were the seabed for the development of the feminist movement that came right upon on the heels of the civil rights struggle in the 1960s

ISAACSON: The I have a dream ref was something in Jonathan Eig’s book. We learn more about it was said before the march on Washington, King delivers it in Detroit.

DYSON: Right.

ISAACSON: Your beloved Detroit. I think also in Birmingham, Alabama I read.

DYSON: Right.

ISAACSON: He did a version of that speech. Was he really planning to also do it in Washington and is that the key part of the speech for you?

DYSON: So, the point is that he tried it out before. Guess where he heard it? The great Prathia Hall was in a church in Albany, Georgia, praying one night, saying, and I have a dream. And King, like any great Baptist preacher with a great ear said, now, I’m going to use that one day. I don’t know where. So, the point is, King hears Prathia Hall using it and then, that black woman’s word, as she went on, she was an activist in SNCC, but she went on to become one of the greatest preachers in America and a pastor in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. But King hears that from her, snatches that phrase from her. Samples that word from her. All right. Maybe rips it off from her. And then begins to use it. Yes, he used it in Detroit, Michigan. He used it in other places. But he wasn’t quite sure. If you look at the written speech, that’s not something necessarily that King was going to deploy that day. But as you said before, it is true, Martin Luther King Jr. begins that speech reading in a way that his best oratory is David Halberstam says this, is never when he reads. Five score years ago, the great American and who symbolic shadow we stand today signed the emancipation proclamation. Now, it’s beautiful, the euphony of his voice, the rising tide of his oratory, but that’s not King at his best. So, yes, he feels at some point that I got to put in this paper down and I got to free style. I’m John Coltrane. I’m listening to the style of Miles Davis and I’m with my — but I got to — I had to give my own inflection here. So, I think at that point there’s no question that King goes off and delivers one of the greatest speeches in American oratorical history because he had practiced it in his soul and in his mind, not quite in that same way. When you listen to Detroit, it’s not the same word. They are not the same words. So, there’s something about the improvisational character of King but improvisation is built upon thinking ahead about what you might do.

ISAACSON: You say that the speech begins so famously in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial of him saying, five score years ago. Just echoing the Gettysburg address.

DYSON: Yes. Right.

ISAACSON: That it was symbolic. But the next sentence he says seems to be the core of the speech in which he says, but 100 years later, the negro is still not free.

DYSON: Yes. It was powerful. 100 years later, the negro still is not free. Immediately, the manacles have been removed, he’s talking about the shackles. He said, look, we are marooned on a tiny island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. And he says that revolt will continue in America until the foundations, right, the foundations of revoke will continue to shake the foundations of America until America is free. That’s revolutionary. He begins to talk about police brutality. He talks about the marvelous militancy that is in America. So, that speech, even though he was being calm, was quite revolutionary for its time. And yes, he articulated for America the demands of black people. And then he said this, he said, we’ve got to check, but the check came back, returned to us marked insufficient funds. And he says, we have come to the nation’s capital to cash a check. Reparation. We refuse to believe that the great vaults of democracy are empty. That is powerful rhetoric that has application today as we talk about affirmative action and reparations in our own time.

ISAACSON: But 60 years later, wealth and equality in America is still as great. The difference in wealth and equality of black and white. What does that say to you?

DYSON: It talks about the stunning ability of America to absorb protest and to rearticulate it as the basis of American practice while denying it. In other words, the hypocrisy of America has always been great. Oh, yes, we’re sorry for what happened. It’s horrible. It’s terrible. Every now and again we have episodes of reckoning. But more likely, we have the governor, Ron DeSantis’s of the world who wants to whitewash history. Ron DeSantis isn’t the first person. Right after the civil war, when Lincoln was dead and Johnson was in office, and the south was supposed to pay, all of them get pardons. And they were pardoned not for the sin of slavery, they were pardoned for taking action against the union. And all of the great enslavers were forgiven without reckoning with their great sin. So, the best route to reconstructing America for those white folks was to erase memory of racial fracture in history. And unfortunately, that has continued to this day. We’ve denied the systemic basis of inequality. The banks are still messed up when it comes to giving black people loans. The housing crisis underscores the degree to which there are still rampant segregation there. When we look at education, two-tiered, three-tiered system that assigns people relatively inferior statuses. So, when you look across the board, African-American people continue to struggle as a result of systemic inequities that are deeply entrenched in American political life.

ISAACSON: And we seem to be seeing a backlash, especially against things that you just said, people being able to say it was systemic or the systemic racism. Backlash that comes a few years after the Black Lives Matters marches. Why are we going through this backlash? And is it something that is like a pendulum, it will swing back?

DYSON: It will. It takes a lot of hope to believe that, because the (INAUDIBLE) is so bitter. The contestation of those who are the merchants of amnesia is so powerful. As the late great Gore Vidal said, we live in the United States of amnesia. And that’s where we are. We’re citizens of the kingdom of amnesia. I’m trying to get us to become citizens and as you are so brilliantly trying to get us to become citizens of the kingdom of memory. I think Barbra Streisand supplies the theme song to the amnesiac. What’s too painful to remember, we simply choose to forget. And so, we’re forgetting it. This is why a governor in Florida wants to band books. Books about the history that would tell the truth about how America got where it is. And especially, he said, the problem is linking the past to the present. Oh, you can talk about slavery as a skillset developer for black people, but you can’t talk about the fact that it had an impact upon contemporary social struggle. So, this is a predictable response. But the great prophetic mystic Howard Thurman said, never reduce your dreams to your present event. He said, you’re going to either be a prisoner of an event or you’re going to be a prisoner of hope. He said, I choose to be a prisoner of hope, and I echo the great Howard Thurmon

ISAACSON: Michael Eric Dyson, thank you so much for joining us.

DYSON: Thanks for having me.