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Jobs, Freedom, and the Forgotten History of Civil Rights
W. W. Norton
August 2013
On Sale: July 22, 2013
230 pages
ISBN: 0393082857
EAN: 9780393082852
Kindle: B00AR354BU
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction History | Non-Fiction
A brilliant history that goes beyond the dazzling “I Have a
Dream” speech to explore the real significance of the
massive march and the movement it inspired. It was the
final speech of a long day, August 28, 1963, when hundreds
of thousands gathered on the Mall for the March on
Washington for Jobs and Freedom. In a resounding cadence,
Martin Luther King Jr. lifted the crowd when he told of his
dream that all Americans would join together to realize the
founding ideal of equality. The power of the speech created
an enduring symbol of the march and the larger civil rights
movement. King’s speech still inspires us fifty years later,
but its very power has also narrowed our understanding of
the march. In this insightful history, William P. Jones
restores the march to its full significance.
The
opening speech of the day was delivered by the leader of the
march, the great trade unionist A. Philip Randolph, who
first called for a march on Washington in 1941 to press for
equal opportunity in employment and the armed forces. To the
crowd that stretched more than a mile before him, Randolph
called for an end to segregation and a living wage for every
American. Equal access to accommodations and services would
mean little to people, white and black, who could not afford
them. Randolph’s egalitarian vision of economic and social
citizenship is the strong thread running through the full
history of the March on Washington Movement. It was a
movement of sustained grassroots organizing, linked locally
to women’s groups, unions, and churches across the country.
Jones’s fresh, compelling history delivers a new
understanding of this emblematic event and the broader civil
rights movement it propelled.
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