La marcha sobre Washington por el empleo y la libertad de 1963, sesenta años después
Abstract
The 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was a highlight of the modern civil rights movement in the United States. On its sixtieth anniversary, the article presents the context of racial segregation typical of Jim Crow in which it took place, the key figures in the organization of the March (who were A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin), the development of the March and its ten formal objectives, the internal conflicts that the organizers had to face (among others, the original speech prepared by John Lewis), the content and significance of Lewis's intervention that August 28, the impact of Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech, especially the part (almost) improvised of the same before the Lincoln Memorial and who has given the title to his intervention as “I have a dream”, and the ups and downs in the evaluation of King and his speech in American society. For this last
point, the article recalls the great importance that graphic images had in the civil rights movement with some iconic moments, and the notable impact produced by the fact that the March on Washington was broadcast by the three television networks that existed at that time in the United States. The article ends by examining the legacy of the March and the passage of the three civil rights laws in the 1960s that formally ended the system of racial segregation, remembering how white supremacism responded to these advances with the so-called “war on drugs” launched by President Nixon in 1971, and pointing out the persistence of systemic racism that is manifested in all areas of the lives of African Americans and that shows that the fight for equality for blacks in the United States is far from over achieved the goals to which the participants in the March on Washington aspired sixty years ago.
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