We flew to Washington the day before the march and, early the next morning, walked from Pennsylvania Avenue past the side entrance of the White House and toward the lawn of the Washington Monument, where the marchers were gathering. It was eight o’clock—three and a half hours before the march was scheduled to move from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial—and around the Ellipse, the huge plot of grass between the White House grounds and the lawn of the Washington Monument, there were only about half a dozen buses. Most of them had red-white-and-blue signs saying “Erie, Pa., Branch, N.A.A.C.P.,” or “Inter-Church Delegation, Sponsored by National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Commission on Religion and Race,” or “District 26, United Steelworkers of America, Greater Youngstown A.F.L.-C.I.O. Council, Youngstown, Ohio.” On a baseball field on the Ellipse, three men were setting up a refreshment stand, and on the sidewalk nearby a man wearing an N.A.A.C.P. cap was arranging pennants that said “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Let the World Know We Want Freedom.” Most of the buses were nearly full, and many of the occupants were dozing. Sitting on a bench in front of one of the buses, some teen-agers were singing, “Everybody wants freedom—free-ee-dom.”
On the lawn of the Washington Monument, a group of military police, most of them Negroes, and a group of Washington police, most of them white, were getting final instructions. Women dressed in white, with purple armbands that said “Usher” and blue sashes that said “Pledge Cards,” were handing out cards to everybody who passed. “I’ve already contributed to this,” a man near us told one of the women. But the card asked for no money; it asked instead that the signer commit himself to the civil-rights struggle, pledging his heart, mind, and body, “unequivocally and without regard to personal sacrifice, to the achievement of social peace through social justice.”
Outside march headquarters—a huge tent with green sides and a green-and-white striped roof—workers were setting up a rim of tables. One table held a display of pennants, offering a large one for a dollar and a small one for fifty cents. Inside the tent, a man wearing a CORE overseas cap, a blue suit, an armband with the letter “M” on it, and a badge saying “Assistant Chief Marshal,” was testing a walkie-talkie, and another man was issuing instructions to a group of program salesmen. “Now, everybody report back by nine-fifteen, or whenever they give out,” he said. Two or three Negroes were sorting signs that said “The Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Lynchburg, Virginia.” In a roped-off area near one end of the tent, the official signs for the march were stacked face down in large piles, most of them covered by black tarpaulins. Next to the signs, in an enclave formed by a green fence, half a dozen women sat behind a long table. Two signs on the fence said “Emergency Housing.” Nearby, three or four television crews had set up their cameras on high platforms.
By this time, there were several thousand people on the lawn, many of them gathered around the Monument. An ice-cream truck had managed to drive to within a hundred feet of the Monument and was starting to do an early-morning business. Many of those gathered near the Monument were sitting on the grass, and some were sleeping. Three boys dressed in khaki pants and shirts with button-down collars were using their knapsacks for pillows and had covered their faces with black derbies. There were, we thought, surprisingly few knapsacks and sandals in the crowd. Most of the people were neatly dressed, and as they waited for the pre-march program to start, they acted like ordinary tourists in Washington, or like city people spending a warm Sunday in the park. A man took a picture of a couple standing in front of a sign that said “New Jersey Region, American Jewish Congress;” a policeman was taking a picture of two smiling Negro couples; a woman who was selling programs balanced her programs and her purse in one hand and, with the other, took pictures of the sleepers with derbies over their faces.
By nine o’clock, a group of marchers had congregated outside a green fence surrounding a stage that had been set up several hundred yards from the Monument; they were standing six or eight deep against the fence. More people were arriving constantly—some in couples and small groups, others marching in large contingents. A group of young Negroes walked behind a blue-and-gold banner that said “Newman Memorial Methodist Church School, Brooklyn, N.Y., Organized 1900.” Another group of Negroes—older, and wearing yellow campaign hats that bore the letters “B.S.E.I.U.”—followed four boys who were carrying a long banner that said “Local 144” and two flag-bearers, one carrying the American flag and one carrying a flag that said “Building Services Employees International Union.”
In front of the headquarters tent, a group of young people in overalls and T shirts that said “CORE” were marching around in a circle, clapping and singing.
“I’m going to walk the streets of Jackson,” one girl sang.
“One of these days,” the others answered.
“I’m going to be the chief of police,” another sang.
“One of these days,” the crowd answered.
Near the singing group, a double line of Negro teen-agers came marching across the lawn. All of them were dressed in black jackets. They had no banners or pennants, and they filed by in silence.
“’Where y’all from?” a Negro girl in the CORE group asked one of them.
“From Wilmington, North Carolina,” one of the boys replied, and the black-jacketed group walked on silently.
We started toward the stage and happened to come across Bayard Rustin, the deputy director of the march, heading that way with Norman Thomas. Following them up to the stage, we found two other members of the march committee—Courtland Cox, of the Student Non-Violent Coördinating Committee, and Norman Hill, of the Congress of Racial Equality—looking out at the people between the stage and the Monument and talking about the crowd.
At exactly nine-thirty, Ossie Davis, serving as master of ceremonies, tried to begin the pre-march program, but it had to be postponed, because Rustin and Thomas were the only two dignitaries on the stage and many more were expected.
“Oh, freedom,” said a voice over a loudspeaker a little later. The program had started, and Joan Baez began to sing in a wonderfully clear voice. “Oh, freedom,” she sang. “Oh, freedom over me. Before I’ll be a slave, I’ll be buried in my grave . . .”
Then came folk songs by Miss Baez; Peter, Paul, and Mary; Odetta; and Bob Dylan. Davis made the introductions, occasionally turning the microphone over to a marshal for an announcement, such as “Mr. Roosevelt Johnson. If you hear me, your child, Larry Johnson, is in the headquarters tent.” By ten-thirty, the expanse of grass that had been visible between the crowd around the stage and the crowd around the Monument had almost disappeared, and more people were still marching onto the lawn, carrying signs and banners. Most of the signs identified groups—such as the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity and the Detroit Catholics for Equality and Freedom—but some had slogans on them, and one, carried by a white woman who marched up and down the sidewalk in back of the stage, said “What We All Need Is Jesus and to Read the Bible.” Another folk singer, Josh White, arrived on the stage while Odetta was singing. White didn’t wait for an introduction. He merely unpacked his guitar, handed the cigarette he had been smoking to a bystander, and walked up to the microphone to join Odetta in singing “I’m on the Way to Canaan Land.” In a few moments, Miss Baez was also singing, and then all the folk singers gathered at the microphone to finish the song.
At about eleven, Davis announced that the crowd was now estimated at ninety thousand. From the stage, there was no longer any grass visible between the stage and the Monument. Next, Davis introduced a representative of the Elks, who presented the organizers of the march with an Elks contribution of ten thousand dollars; a girl who was the first Negro to be hired as an airline stewardess; Lena Horne; Daisy Bates, who shepherded the nine teen-agers who integrated Central High School in Little Rock; Miguel Abreu Castillo, the head of the San Juan Bar Association, who gave a short speech in Spanish; Bobby Darin; and Rosa Parks, the woman who started the Montgomery bus boycott by refusing to move to the back of the bus.
The official march signs had been passed out, and they began to bob up and down in the crowd: “No U.S. Dough to Help Jim Crow Grow,” “Civil Rights Plus Full Employment Equals Freedom.”
At about eleven-forty-five, Davis told the crowd that the march to the Lincoln Memorial was going to begin, and suggested that people standing near the Monument use Independence Avenue and people standing near the stage go down Constitution Avenue. We were closer to Constitution Avenue, and as we got onto the street there was a crush of people that for a moment brought back stories of the dangers inherent in a crowd of such a size. But almost immediately the crush eased, and we walked comfortably down shady Constitution Avenue. We noticed that practically nobody was watching the march from the sidelines, and that in the march itself there was a remarkable lack of noise. Occasionally, a song would start somewhere in the crowd, but to a large extent the marchers were silent. A few hundred yards from the Monument, the march was stopped by a man who was holding a sign that said “Lexington Civil Rights Committee” and wearing an armband that said “Mass. Freedom Rider.” He asked the people in the front row to link arms, and, beginning to sing “We Shall Overcome,” they moved on down the street.
“Slow down, slow down!” the man from Massachusetts shouted as he walked backward in front of the crowd. “Too fast! You’re going too fast! Half steps!”
A few hundred feet farther on, a policeman and an M.P. stood in the middle of the street and split the crowd down the middle. We followed the group to the left, and in a few minutes found ourself standing in a crowd, now even quieter, to the left of the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial. ♦
