Monday, August 28th marks the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington for Freedom and Jobs. For those unschooled in the full title and purpose of that day, the march was originally conceived by renowned labor leader A. Phillip Randolph and organized alongside the aid of multiple civil rights organizations. The march drew over a quarter million people to the national mall to peacefully protest the nation’s slow pace of racial and economic progress. Despite what most of us pitifully learned in school, Dr. King’s famous lines of “I have a dream” weren’t the focus of that day. Instead the goal of both the march and Dr. King’s speech was to prod us forward towards true reparative action (both racially and economically).

You can read or listen to Dr. King’s full speech here, where you’ll notice quite immediately similar frustrations with the world that exists and the slow pace of change. He starts by noting that only 100 years prior, Abraham Lincoln signed an executive order that would emancipate slaves across the south, and yet 100 years later “the Negro still is not free, crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination, [living] on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.” He then offers a stinging inditement, comparing the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution bad checks that this country has defaulted on when it comes to its Black citizens.

Dr. King offers then both a call to action and a warning saying,

We refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. 

In this speech Dr. King covers economic inequality, poverty, racial discrimination in affordable housing and schools, voting rights, police brutality, all issues which still persist today in different forms. Following the March on Washington for Freedom and Jobs, the political pressure exerted would lead to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawing legal discrimination on the basis of race along with the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Both made significant change in the outcomes of both Black and non-black citizens lives for generations to come. Yet the fact that many of the same problems remain stubbornly unsolved, or the pace of progress has been increasingly slow is still cause for us to remember the fierce urgency of now.

Progress isn’t linear, and because of that it can sometimes feel frustratingly slow. Consider the black wealth gap which hasn’t actually shifted much since the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s or the fact that since the end of the Civil War, a myriad of legal and systemic race based policies advantaging whites over it’s citizens of color, particularly Black American’s have contributed to this growing wealth gap.

Yesterday evening while talking with my daughters about the upcoming anniversary, we watched a few videos, one of which was about the current economic inequality that exists today. A lot may have changed for a few of us, yet the fundamentals still remain the same for most of us. I thought about the fact that on Monday, they will go to a truly multi-racial school and learn alongside people who share their backgrounds and those who differer from them. And while that is certainly progress worth celebrating, their experience is an anomaly not the norm. It’s also not nearly enough. I wonder what we’ll be saying in 2063…

SDW3