August 28th Remembered 

by David McReynolds
Socialist Web Zine
August 31, 2010
http://www.socialistwebzine.org/2010/08/august-28th-remembered.html

What a difference money makes. Today, Saturday the 28th
of August, 2010, Glenn Beck rallied on the steps of the
Lincoln Memorial with all the majesty of Fox News
behind him. Day after day Fox News had trumpeted the
event, organizing for it, and if Beck doesn't get a
crowd it will be no fault of those who own Fox News and
fund Glenn Beck. (Fox News is one very good reason for
an estate tax which would guarantee that no one could
buy and own networks, newspapers, and control the
media, the way Rupert Murdoch has done). I've never met
Glenn Beck, I don't expect to. He is - pretty much in
common with all the commentators, whether their views
are left or right, - paid to air his views. I suspect
that for the right price Beck would happily change
those views. (I do agree with Beck's attacks on Woodrow
Wilson, who brought segregation back to the White
House, got us involved in the bloody first world war,
and who jailed the Socialist Party's leader, Eugene V.
Debs for the crime of speaking out against that war.
Irony of ironies, Wilson refused to even consider a
pardon for Debs - that remained for the Republican
President, Warren G. Harding, who met with Debs in the
White House and pardoned him).

Let me, as someone who has had the good luck to be a
guest at history's table, turn back more than half a
century to Wednesday, August 28th, 1963 and The March
on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. I was then, at 33,
a young radical working for the War Resisters League,
which had given Bayard Rustin leave so that he could
work in the Civil Rights movement as a special aide to
Martin Luther King Jr., and as the primary organizer of
the August 28th events.

The media gave the event good coverage after it
happened - Life magazine (who can remember the days
when Life magazine, a weekly, was a major cultural
force?) put Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Randolph on its
cover. But there was no advance coverage, no daily
drumbeat on the networks. No commentator who could act
as the organizer for it. Nor did it take place on
Saturday - Bayard knew it had to take place in the
middle of the week, when people would need to take time
off from their jobs. The event was far more than a
weekend outing in the nation's capitol - it was the
largest demonstration of its kind in our history. Much
of the background feeling can be seen in the film about
Bayard, Brother Outsider, which gives one a sense of
how the demonstration was organized with the support of
trade unions, church groups, and the civil rights
movement in the South.

There was profound fear in Washington DC. John F.
Kennedy had tried to get the march called off. The
police were put on special alert. The shops of the city
were largely closed, the streets empty, as "White
Washington" braced for the flood of Blacks and the
inevitable rioting. Bayard had enlisted the support of
the Guardians, the Black police officers in New York
City, who came down in force to provide security.

I don't remember how I got there - I assume I was one
of the many thousands of New Yorkers who took buses
down. But I shall never forget our march toward the
Lincoln Memorial, as thousands and thousands of
citizens, most of them black, but many of us white,
chanted "Freedom, Freedom, Freedom" with a cadence all
its own. Blacks from the South who had never been in a
mass demonstration with whites before. All pouring into
the area around the Lincoln Memorial.

I had been to Washington many times before (and many
times since). I had been to the "Prayer Pilgramages
Bayard had organized, which were a kind of prelude to
the great march. I was used to the endless list of
speakers at these events, a speaker from each of the
sponsoring groups. Usually, after getting to a march,
and making sure I'd be one of those counted by the
counters, I'd take a break for a hamburger or a drink.
This time I was grateful that I stayed and heard King's
I Have a Dream speech, breaking out over the vast
assemblage. To compare the majesty of that rolling
speech, with the cadence of the Black church and the
infinite suffering of Black America, with the
commercial hysteria of Glenn Beck is, almost, to make
one ashamed of being white.

There was a scene that unfolded before King spoke, as
the crowd moved into place. George Lincoln Rockwell,
the American Nazi leader (who was later assassinated by
one of his followers) had set up a small stand from
which to speak, and began to spew hatred of "niggers,
kikes, queers, and commies". I admired Rockwell for his
courage, but he was clearly intending to spark a riot.
I watched with fascination as young Black men moved in,
formed a ring around Rockwell and his supporters, and
locking arms, faced outward, toward any of the marchers
who might be tempted to make a physical assault on
Rockwell. Rockwell and his cohorts found themselves
isolated - and protected - by a ring of young Black
men.

There was no violence in Washington that day. It was a
proud moment for the Civil Rights movement, though
terrible things were to come - on September 16th,
racists bombed a black church in Birmingham, murdering
four children. And in November of that year JFK was
murdered. August 28th was a moment of affirmation for
the best in America, black and white, young and old. It
did not end the struggle for civil rights for Black
America - but it was a crucial point in that struggle.
I wonder if those who follow Glenn Beck so avidly will,
ten years from now, look back to this day, this media-
organized event on a Saturday when no one had to take
off from work, an event funded by the multi-millionares
who stand in the shadows behind Beck, and feel they
were part of history, in the way those of us who were
there in Washington D.C. in 1963 knew we were on the
side of the best America had to offer.

*** David McReynolds is retired, the former chair of
War Resisters International, the Socialist Party
Presidential candidate in 1980 and 2000. He lives on
the Lower East Side of New York with two cats. He can
be reached at: [log in to unmask] This column can
be reprinted without permission.

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