Remembering the March on Washington

last updated 8 January 2015

A half-century to the day that Martin Luther King delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington, tens of thousands of people this week reconvened at the Lincoln Memorial to hear America’s first black president address the state of equality in America. “Change does not come from Washington but to Washington,” said President Barack Obama, in tribute to the 250,000 people who marched on the capital 50 years ago to demand equal rights for black Americans. “But we would dishonor those heroes as well to suggest that the work of this nation is somehow complete.” Obama called economic inequality the nation’s “great unfinished business” and asked all Americans to continue King’s fight. “The arc of the moral universe may bend toward justice,” Obama said. “But it doesn’t bend on its own.’’

Obama’s speech capped several days of commemoration of the August 1963 march, which marked a turning point in the battle for civil rights. In an electrifying speech that day, Rev. King spoke of his “dream” that his “four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” At a commemoration of that speech last Saturday, U.S. Rep. John Lewis of Georgia said much progress had been made since he took part in the original march, but that the battle for King’s dream was not over. “We must stand up and fight the good fight, for there are forces, there are people who want to take us back.’’