January 20, 2015 • 43 mins
1963 was a huge year of conflict and progress for the American Civil Rights Movement and the March On Washington was the high water mark of that eventful year. Join Josh and Chuck as they get into the story behind the story we learned in school.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you stuff you should know from House Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast on
Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, Jerry's over there,
so it's stuff you should know. Hey, Hey, how's it going.
It's going good. It's not going so good for me.
(00:23):
I'm having trouble loading up important pages here, important tabs
on my computer. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know what the
deal is in that riveting podcast. It's like Serial the
second season. Yeah, well Josh's tabs opened. What's the deal
with Josh's computer? Uh? The tabs loaded everybody, by the way,
(00:43):
So thank you for your concern. So you feel good
about this one? Yeah, I do. There's a It was
yet again one of those topics that I knew somewhat
about probably is us the average person, But digging into it,
you really forget how polished and glossy history can become,
and how not necessarily like grittier or anything, but just
(01:07):
definitely more complex and complicated an interkate than the final
story ends up being. Yeah, details matter, Um, no person
exists in a vacuum basically, Yeah, and coincidentally or maybe kismately,
we asked Jerry were like, hey, can we have this
released right around uh the King Holiday? And she said, dude,
(01:30):
it is happens to be scheduled before she even knew
what it was going to be, Like, this episode fell
into that slot. It's the spirit of Doctor King. How
about that? Like it's sort of like our marijuana episode
being the four release, which was a complete accident, completely
happens then, So this is like that, but cooler, right,
you know, because it's historical and it's important. Yes, this
(01:54):
is important history. You know what I'm saying. The invention
a silly putty. Well, I've been really been getting into
uh here in my middle age, the civil rights movement
in history and learning about that stuff. I think maybe
to make up for my uh ancestry in the Deep South,
you know, man. You know what's weird is like I
(02:15):
I hear that like more than ever, just the last
just the events of two thousand and fourteen. Like really
it's not like my eyes were shut or anything or
I was just unaware, but I've become more and more,
um disenchanted and dispirited by the heritage that I have
as well. It's just just that kind of studied obliviousness
(02:40):
that the powers that be have about the plights of
the people who aren't in power has really started to
get to me more and more. Yeah, And I've I've
had talks about this with a bunch of people, and
the consensus I've come to is, I can't be ashamed
of anything here in mean, you didn't do anything, person,
I didn't do anything. And I don't know anything spece
ccific about my family other than they we're you know,
(03:04):
white people living in rural Mississippi since the dawn of
time and miss I don't think they were the ones
knocking on doors trying to uh, you know, encourage black
people to vote. I don't think they were the standouts. Uh.
And so what can you do but just try and
be a good person, to educate yourself and learn from it. Yeah,
(03:25):
and make the Bryant uh name move forward in a
different direction. I think that's great. Yeah, good job. So
anyway I've been getting into I've been reading a lot
of stuff about it, and uh, I saw that play
in New York. I think I mentioned with Brian Cranston,
oh the Lbjay, Yeah, which really kind of got me
reading a bunch of because a lot of stuff I
didn't learn in school at all. They don't teach you
(03:47):
that much in school, not as much as you think
good touring of information. It's a trickle at best. Yeah,
or like you said, it's like a very kind of
one day glossy affair, which we were about to do
right now, right, Well, we're gonna flush it out a
little more. And I have to say this article, for
being a three three page article on how stuff works,
was pretty good. Recognize the author, But lot of beef
(04:09):
in here. Yeah there there, yeah, some good detail. So, um,
we're talking today about the March on Washington, which took
place on August I believe nine three. Yeah, the March
on Washington for Jobs and Freedom is the official full name, yeah,
which a lot of people don't realize that. And that's
kind of a big deal that it has jobs and
(04:30):
Freedom because that title actually represents the marriage of two
separate um Black civil rights movements, Yeah, agendas married together,
um under this common banner, which was at the time
kind of a big deal because there was a lot
of rivalry amongst different the different civil rights groups and
(04:52):
their agendas and to be able to come together that
was kind of huge. Yeah, And you know, when I
first hear about rivalries among the as groups, I get
a little disenchanted. But then when you start thinking about
the task in front of them. Uh, if you assemble
a group of suppressed people, everyone's gonna have their own
idea about the best way to move forward and to
get something done. And so of course there were gonna
(05:14):
be rivalries between these groups because they all felt their
path forward was the righteous one. Yeah, and this was
and and not even necessarily righteous, but right, you know,
like effective. On the one hand, you have say, um,
a Philip um Randolph, yeah man who was the head
of the Brotherhood of Sleeping car Porters. Yeah, I went
(05:35):
into that little bit. H well, well tell me about it. Well,
I didn't even uh know what a Pullman porter was,
because you know, I'm a modern kind of guy. But um,
these were the the people, the essentially butlers and maids
who worked on sleeping trains, sleeping cars and uh George
Pullman in Chicago of the Pullman Company invented the sleeping
(05:59):
train in the eight and eighties. And a Philip Randoff
he was born in eighteen eighty nine, like he was
seventy four years old when the march on Washington took place.
He was not a young guy, but he'd been at
it for decades already, for decades as a civil rights crusader. Uh.
And so basically what the deal was was George Pullman
hired uh Black Americans to work as maids and butlers
(06:21):
on these trains, and it really sort of kind of
entrenched that master servant relationship even further. And uh, even
though the black community said, these are really pretty good
jobs actually, because even though the pay wasn't that great,
it was a steady job. He got to travel. So
it was sort of looked upon as an elite job
until they started to sort of look at the details,
who were like, wait a minute, we don't have job security.
(06:44):
Our salary kind of stinks. We have to pay for
our own uniforms and food and lodging. And so they
got in touch with a Philip Randoff in he organized
the union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and eventually,
even though they refused to go shate with them, they
were able to get that union. In the nineteen thirty seven,
they the Pullman company signed a labor agreement with them,
(07:07):
got them a lot more rights as workers. But that's
just one of the many, many things that he did.
He was big into unions and organizing things and especially
seeing to it that the that the black population got
the same kind of fair treatment as the white population.
And you said that, he became president of the Brotherhood
(07:29):
of Sleeping car Porters in so think about fighting. First
of all, you're a unionizer, which back in that day
you could be gunned down by the state militia. He
was a socialist, he definitely was. He was definitely like
this is all basically of left movement. All of this,
the March on Washington was UM. And he also if
(07:53):
you if you consider at the times as the Jim
Crow era, so he's fighting for workers rights and even
more difficulty, he's fighting for black workers rights. So this
guy was a tough cookie and a smart one too. Yeah.
Martin Luther King called him the Dean of Negro leaders.
And he was forty years older than Kings. So he
was really revered, uh in the black community for sure,
(08:17):
but rightly so. I mean like he'd earned his chops right.
And the March on Washington that that Um came about
in nineteen sixty three was actually the second one that
Randolph proposed. He was the one that said we should
have this march on Washington. We'll we'll get to that.
But in ninety one he also started to organize the
same march UM and it was for crusading for jobs
(08:41):
for Black workers UM to end discrimination among federal hiring
government in defense hiring and UH federal agencies. Yeah, basically,
FDRs new deal was not I mean so favorable for
Black Americans, like it did a lot for the country,
but they were still sort of ignored and pretty much
(09:01):
barred from getting jobs federal jobs and defense jobs. So
FDR saw the writing on the wall basically with the
you don't want to call the threat of a march,
but because it just sounds like militaristic, it was the
threat of a march and UM. So he signed issued
Executive Order a D eight. Oh too, the Fair Employment
(09:23):
Practices Committee was created and two million Black Americans were
employed by the defense industry by which is great. But
nine the FTPC was disbanded and dissolved. So the temporary win,
the temporary win, UM, but a win nonetheless, and they
did not have that march because of that executive order,
(09:45):
which down I mean, imagine the credibility that UM Randolph
got just immediately from that, like he got the President
to create an executive order based on something he was organizing,
so that definitely catapulted his status. But he also learned like, oh,
this is a pretty effective tool. Like this isn't the
big gun you want to bring out every time somebody
(10:07):
pulls a pie shoot around you. But like when stuff
really becomes intractable, march on Washington is not such a
bad idea. Not a bad idea, you don't even necessarily
have to do it. Yeah, he was kind of recruited
UM to head this up by the Negro American Labor Council,
of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Congress of Racial Equality,
(10:27):
and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and so he wrote
a letter to Secretary Stuart Udal in May of nineteen
sixty two. He was the Department of Interior, and UM
basically said can we get our permits like the official request?
And they got nervous immediately because he said we want
to stop at the Lincoln Memorial and finish it up there.
(10:49):
They're like, well, rerounding traffic is gonna be tough. Why
don't we send you here instead? And they were pretty
adamant about sticking to that route, and so they granted
him the permit, which was the first signed to Kennedy,
like because Kennedy wasn't like, great, let's do this, he
was nervous about it too. And it was I mean,
it was a big deal. You mentioned that what's called
(11:10):
the Big Six, the Brotherhood of Sleeping car Porters, Southern
Christian Leadership Conference, that was Martin Luther King's UM Atlanta
based group UM, the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee, which
was led at the time by Representative John Lewis, our
Representative Lewis, who was still a firebrand in Congress, who
was twenty three at the time, and gave a speech
at the march UM the Conference on Racial Equality which
(11:34):
is known as CORE, the National Urban League, and the
um N double a CP. All of these groups got together,
and we already said like their arrivalries among them, but
not only were these these was it a big deal
that these groups that were fighting for civil rights, like
voting rights and the end of segregation and like civil rights,
(11:56):
but they got together with a Philip Randolph's UM movement
for economic justice and rather than become confused or muddled
or whatever, like remember Occupy Wallster. Everybody's like they have
like ten million different demands. A lot of people were
worried that joining these things together would do the same thing.
It didn't. It actually broadened it, and it brought a
(12:17):
lot of strength to the whole thing. And it all
came down to a black feminist named Anna Arnold Hedgeman,
and she brought Um, King and Randolph together and said,
you guys need to make this happen. It'll make this
march a million times better. I don't think that's a quote,
but basically that's that's what she said. And as a result,
the March on Washington for UM, jobs and freedom was
(12:39):
what the result was. Yeah, and bringing Martin Luther King
on was certainly a master stroke because, um, this article
describes the proposition as tepid to begin with, but um,
the stage was set for August then, uh, right after
this message break, we'll get to a little bit of
how mainstream media feared at this march. Right if it
(13:01):
is so, mainstream media probably thought this was a great idea,
and all of Washington probably rallied around this. Right, they
couldn't wait. Everybody, Um made those needle point samplers that said,
(13:25):
welcome marching black people to our streets. They rolled out
the red carpet. That is not true. This is our
facetious voice. Mainstream media actually was in fear, and they
ran stories about this devolving into a riot. And Kennedy said,
let's let's call this off. And they said no, and
(13:46):
liquor stores closed and bars closed and stores boarded up
their windows, and in the end none of that happened.
Of course, it was very peaceful and amazingly really well organized,
like a quotes where the organizers themselves said that, like
the peacefulness and and dignity of the whole thing seeded
(14:07):
even their expectations. Yeah, it was a colossally successful thing.
And one of the reasons why there was such an
amount of nervousness was not necessarily just because there were
a quarter of a million people marching in Washington all
at once for civil rights. But this thing took place,
and it's considered the pinnacle, the high water mark of
(14:29):
nineteen three, which was an enormous year. The Birmingham Campaign
was going on um down in Alabama. Children were marching
in the streets of Birmingham and police dogs were attacking
them and they were being hit with fire hoses, people
were being clubbed in the streets by Bull Connor and
his police force, and it was being captured on TV.
(14:50):
So like the American psyche was really being affected by
the civil rights movement right now, And there was a
lot of momentum behind the people who were leading the
civil rights movement, especially Martin Luther King, who you know
proved his own chops by being jailed in Birmingham for
protesting um. And he was kept in uh isolation for
(15:13):
like eight days. I think it wasn't able to talk
to anybody, I think, including his lawyer. Finally, his um wife,
Kreta Scott King, got in touch with Jfkin and said,
you've got to do something because I don't know what
they're gonna do to my husband in jail. He's lucky
he survived that, to be honest, right, Well, it took
the President to order the city of Birmingham to free
him for him to get out, yea, um, but it
(15:35):
was it was a big deal by the time this
thing came about, by the time it was even announced,
like nineteen three was a huge watershed year already. Yeah,
and uh, I think I don't think we pointed out
like ten the estimate were white folks joining in for
the rally, and um, I don't know about percentages, but
I do know that a lot of Jewish people were
really involved in the civil rights movement as volunteers, helping
(15:58):
to push that forward because they knew a thing or
two about persecution, So I think they identified with the
plight of the American black people and so um like
Jewish folks from the Northeast, basically a lot of them
came down south, a lot of students to volunteer for
not only this but just the voter rights, going door
(16:20):
to door. I mean those will will do a more
in depth went about voters rights maybe one day. But
I know the two. I think two of the guys
basically were murdered because they were going door to door
trying to help black people registered to vote. Yeah, I
don't know their names, but I've heard about them. I
mean they murdered by the local police. Yea, they just
shot him on the side of the road. Basically, there
(16:41):
was I think in nineteen sixty three there was um
a group of students that were going to Birmingham, which
was like the center of the universe as far as
the civil rights struggle in the US is going Um
and again, Bull Connor, the head of the police department,
gave his his police department the whole thing the day off,
(17:03):
so that there was nobody to protect these students that
were going to protest in Birmingham. It's like, I have
a hard time talking about this stuff. So but but
consider this is the this is the stage that we're setting,
Like this is the state of the country. There's like
on television you can see black kids being attacked by
police dogs in your country. Um, in Washington, d C.
(17:24):
If you live there, you're worried that the same stuff
is gonna go on on your streets. There's like a
lot of turmoil going on. Two months, two months before
this happened, Medgar Evers was shot in his driveway and
killed in Jackson, Mississippi, after coming home from uh going
door to door and encouraging poor African Americans to register
(17:44):
vote and a white supremacist name I don't feel like
reading his name, um uh day La beckwith Byron Della
Beckworth basically pulled up and shot him in the back
with a rifle, got equipment, not acquitted, but there were
two hung juries by all male jurors, and he remained
free until when they finally came back and retried him
(18:07):
as an old man. Remember that found him guilty and
he spent like the last six years of his life
in prison before he died. But he was just human
trash because he remained steadfastly white supremacists till the end.
Was not sorry. His son followed in his footsteps, and
it was just a ugly human being. And uh, I
(18:29):
think James Woods played him in a movie. Was that
was that who he played? I'm pretty sure it was
James Woods. Yeah, he's pretty slimy. He can not real life,
but he can do he can do slimy. But yeah,
so this is two months previous at Medaga Evers was killed,
so it was supercharged time and people were nervous for
(18:52):
good reason. Yeah. And to our white supremacist listeners, if
you're at all offended by Chuck's characters too, don't even
bother emailing. I don't think we have We don't care
at all what you have to say. We have enlightened listeners,
I think so too. Um So nineteen sixty three, huge dear.
They announced in June that they're going to carry out
(19:13):
this march in August, and like you said, JFK was like, no, please,
don't do that. And they said, you know what, Mr President,
you have proven yourself is not very reliable trying to
get the Civil Rights Act through Congress. It was just
languishing there um, and the the black civil rights leaders
were like the Brown versus Board of Education happened in
(19:35):
nineteen fifty five, I believe desegregated schools in nineteen sixty three.
There were plenty of schools that still weren't desegregated. All
of these things that that they have been fighting for incrementally,
bit by bit, every battle um that they'd won was
still not necessarily being fulfilled. And Kennedy didn't really seem
to care that much. So when he asked them as
(19:57):
president not to do the march, they basically said, you
don't really have any clout with us right now, so
we're gonna do this. Yeah, And they did, and they
announced it in June and they marched in August. And
the reason they were able to do that was thanks
almost entirely to a guy named Bayard Rustin. He's my
new hero. I love this guy. There's a documentary on him.
(20:18):
Actually it's called Brother Outsider. Yeah. I was gonna watch
it today, but at that time. Is it on the internet.
I only saw it on DVD. I don't know. Yeah,
I look for it. You could probably get clips. I
bet piece it together on Uh. Yeah. This guy man,
you talk about outsiders, he and this is in nineteen
sixty three, was openly gay. He was walked with the Kane,
(20:41):
walked with the Kane. He was black for fun. He
Uh wasn't really, That's the impression I had from this,
Like he didn't have an injury. No, he just had kane.
He had flair. Uh. He was Um. I don't know
if he was an actual Quaker. His grandmother was a
Quaker and he followed in her footsteps or was at
least informed by her religion. And uh was also I
(21:03):
think a socialist, and most of these people were, if
not like self identified socialists, carried out a lot of
held onto a lot of socialist ideals like workers rights,
like the power of labor too and the right of
labor to unionize and organize in the basic um value
of the of a human being. Yeah, I mean, as
(21:25):
far as outsiders go, though, you could have just stopped
at openly gay in nineteen sixty three, much less everything else.
Plus he apparently had a knack for art collecting attic
I for buying or finding art on the chief that
turned out to be like really great. Well, he was
a renaissance man, used to quote poetry and like, uh
he was he was the guy to organize this thing
(21:46):
because apparently his just skills bringing people together were legendary
and also took Probably the thing that is most remarkable
about Bayard Rustin as far as the lasting legacy goes,
was that he met um Martin Luther King in the
early fifties, the early to mid fifties, I think ninety six,
(22:06):
and at the time MLK had not fully embraced the
idea of complete non violent protests and resistance. He was
still like guarded by armed guards and like that kind
of stuff. It was rust and Bayard who brought this
um Gandhi gandhi is um Yeah, this thought of non
(22:29):
violent protests and and talk dr King into like really
embracing it. Was this guy. Well, he did a great job.
In just two months. He was able to completely organize
this thing from soup to nuts, um coach all the volunteers. Uh,
teach everyone how to have a non violent you know,
(22:52):
protests basically of this size, because it's not just like, hey,
don't be violent like they may have encountered or violence
and how to respond to that in a non violent
way was super important. Uh. He created a twelve page
manual for bus captains apparently on uh I mean handled
everything from where to park, to how to park, to
where the bathrooms are and then maybe most importantly, he
(23:18):
was responsible for putting together the run of show and
getting these very large egos um enough time per person
to where they all felt like they were cared for,
because even though they all had the same goal, these
were people who have big egos. You can't get in
a position like that if you don't have some sort
of ego and you want your time at the podium.
(23:40):
You know, they were singers, speakers, public prayers, and he
was able to navigate those uh ego waters very well. Yeah,
so check, let's um, we'll talk a little bit more
about um rust and Baird and what he did, and
then talk about the actual march itself. Yeah, right after that,
(24:02):
So Chuck, um, we're talking about Rust and Baird and
the job he did putting this whole thing together, but
as well as as well as he organized in, as
well as it was pulled off. Um. Even before it
went down, there was a lot of criticism of it,
especially from the farthest um, I guess, fringes of the
(24:23):
civil rights movement, like um uh, what was the guy
who followed John Lewis in the Student Non Violence Coordinating Committee,
Stokey Carmichael. He was a huge outspoken critic, stoke Stokely Carmichael.
He was a huge outspoken critic of the march. Basically
he said, this is not nearly radical enough. This is
(24:45):
the watered down, um, middle class, sanitized version of the
real civil rights movement, and I'm not gonna have anything
to do with it. Yeah. Malcolm x uh kind of
denounced it as well and called it the farce on
Washington and said told his fellow Nation of Islam members
don't go. Even though he did go, um, I don't
(25:08):
think he necessarily went to support. I think he was
probably just checking things out, you know, but he didn't
like join anyone on stage. He was still denouncing it, right,
and then this, I mean, this is a real criticism
of this that you know, it's as radical as the
white establishment thinks this agenda is who you're asking to
not be discriminated at the polls. You know, like guys
(25:30):
like Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X are saying, you need
to go further than this. If you're going to use
something this big, you need to really carry out a
bigger agenda UM. And one of the one of the
things that added fuel to their arguments was the news
that John Lewis, who again was twenty three and the
head of the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee, had had
(25:52):
his speech watered down by some of the other UM leaders. Yeah,
not just other leaders, but like the Catholic Archbishop of Washington,
d C. Basically it was the speech was circulated to
a bunch of different people and everyone came back and said,
you know, you need to tone this down. You can't
be call out Kennedy quite so plainly because he said
(26:13):
Kennedy's act the Civil Right checked was too little, too late.
And then his most famous quote that was UM, I
guess just deleted pretty much was we want to march
through the South through the heart of Dixie the way
Sherman did. We will pursue our own scorched earth policy huh,
there's a hyphen after that in a non violent way?
(26:35):
Did he say that, how I finished it, but still
there's a hyphen and then like, oh yeah, in a
non violent way. Yeah. So they basically held a caucus
and they all got together and he said that he
was still very proud and it was a very strong speech,
and um, I think everyone has a good point on
the best way to move forward. But for the kind
of press this thing was getting, and at the time
(26:58):
they were probably why is to sanitize it a little
bit for Middle America? Well, yeah, you know, just to
reach more people. I mean, if you think about it,
the for better or for worse? Once John Lewis UM
once his post was taken over by Stokely Carmichael. The
Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee eventually changed its name to
(27:20):
take out the non Violent and was replaced with National
I think UM And it just kept getting more and
more militant, and Stokely Carmichael wrote black Power. He also
coined the term UM. But the militant Black Power movement
it wasn't trying to too, and we should do an
episode just on that. They weren't trying to make themselves
(27:42):
palatable for you know, white Middle America. They were trying
to take over certain their position. However they needed to
UM and I agree with you. I just don't think
the march on Washington, sitting back with this much hindsight,
would have had the pack that it did necessarily had
it had that that much more militant tone to it, Oh, totally.
(28:06):
I mean their goal was progress, not to like scare
white Americans watching this on television, which is exactly what
would have happened, you know. Uh, but that's a pickle though,
you know, I mean, like that is there. Those are
definitely two different ways to achieve an end, and you know,
is the sanitized, watered down version that's palatable to you know,
(28:27):
white Middle America? Is that is that the best way?
Or ultimately you get to a point where you're like,
is this really making things go anywhere? Is this really
just kind of allowing more of the same. Well, and
how hard it must be to temper your anger and
frustration and tamp that stuff down to try and reach
more people, you know, Like, to me, that makes it
(28:49):
even more brave and courageous. Yeah. Well, MLK actually addressed
that a little bit in his UM speech where he
basically says like, if you're sitting there thinking like the
black people are gonna just we're blowing off steam right
now and things will cool off, so I don't really
have to do anything. He says, you're in for rude awakening,
because if things don't change, we're gonna take it back
(29:10):
to the street and we're gonna be like it's gonna
get even worse, Like this is the nice version exactly. Yeah. Um,
all right, so we're at the event, and what civil
rights event in the nineteen sixties would have been complete
without a bunch of white liberal celebrities joining in? Thank
God for them. Uh so, of course you had Marlon
(29:30):
Brando and Charlton Heston, which I don't know if that
surprises me or not. Charlton Heston, Yeah, maybe he wasn't
just across the board one way politically. Maybe he just
happened to be walking around DC at the time of
or maybe he championed civil rights and he loved his guns,
and I don't know enough about him could do both.
I just remember seeing him being berated by Michael Moore. Yeah,
(29:53):
I'm bowling for Columbine and then of course plan of
the apes. But I don't really know that much about him.
You know, as much as I don't know. As as
passionate as I feel about guns and things, I feel
equally passionate about badgering old folks. Yea. And I felt
kind of bad for him. Man, Michael Moore took a
lot of guf was just like an old dude that
(30:14):
you're yelling at in his just old like senile, Yeah,
in his home. Yeah. Uh, but we can laugh about
it now. Um. Bob Dylan, of course was one of
the performers. Johan Bayez, Peter Paul and Mary Yeah, pre
electric Bob Dylan. Uh. And then we had um some
famous black stalwarts like Sydney Poartier and Harry Belafonte and
(30:38):
Josephine Baker, Halliot Jackson saying yeah, and I mentioned James
Garner was there, Yeah, which is pretty cool. I remember
where he died. They mentioned that he was like a
big crusader for civil rights. He was one of the
few that like really you know, put in the leg work,
like it wasn't just lip service. He was Rockford dude. Yeah,
(30:59):
he is all about the leg work. Yes, he would
drive around the Kenning away from getting beat up in
his gold Camaro. Um. So the show opened up basically
with I think Joan Bayez opened up with the song
Oh Freedom and then let us sing along of We
Shall Overcome, and then Peter Poullmry awkwardly covered Bob Dylan
(31:20):
I know Dylan sitting right there with their version of
blowing in the wind, and then Dylan followed up with
paste version paste commercial. Remember that from Mighty Wayne. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
that was funny, and then Um Dylan followed them with
his new song about the murder of Medgar Evers called
(31:40):
only a pawn in their game and um lasted nineteen minutes?
Is that a joke? Okay? Dylan had some long songs,
it may have been. UM what else can contralto? Anderson
Um saying the Negro spiritual He's got the whole world
in his hands. It's a great tune. And Mahalia Jackson
(32:01):
I think closed things right before King's speech with I've
been buked and I've been scorned. So they had people
like fired up basically with great entertainment, meaningful entertainment, and
the stage was set for UH the MC's Ozzy Davis
and Ruby d to introduce UH Martin Luther King for
(32:25):
his now famous speech, which at the time, at least
they say in this article it wasn't the end all
be all, but over time it has gained more and
more steam. It's like sort of the you know, the
watershed moment, right Like Life magazine covered the March on Washington,
and the issue that followed the march didn't have MLK
on the cover. It had Bayard Rustin and a Philip Randolphe.
(32:47):
It's pretty awesome, actually, and I mean that's how a
lot of people viewed the march for a very long time.
I mean, it was a Philip Randolf's idea, Bayard Rustin
planned it, MLK lent a ton of star power to it,
and by signing on a lot of other people signed
on too. But it wasn't until and I've seen this
else where. It's not this article alone, but um supposedly
it wasn't until MLK was assassinated that a lot of
(33:10):
people UM that had formerly been just kind of sympathetic
or whatever like really came to adopt like his viewpoint.
And tragically his death propelled the civil rights movement forwards. Sure, UM,
and one of the by products of that was that
this speech came to become what the March on Washington was,
(33:30):
but for the five years after the march, until MLK
was assassinated, that wasn't really the case. Yeah, And the
main thrust of the speech, even though it's remembered now, um, well,
if you've never listened to the whole thing, you should
do that, by the way, but you you know, it's
best remembered for the famous quote, I have a dream
that my four little children will one day live in
a nation where they will not be judged by the
(33:50):
color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
The main thrust of the script, though, was the or
the script the speech which was scripted to um was
the bad check that America had written, basically with the quote,
instead of honoring the sacred obligation, America has given the
Negro people a bad check, check which has come back
(34:11):
marked insufficient funds. And um, apparently after this you know
a bit about the bad check and basically saying that
you promised everyone freedom and you're not giving everyone freedom. Um.
Mahalia Jackson behind him, one of his friends said, tell
him about the dream, and that's when he improvised that
(34:32):
section at the end, which was so powerful that he
had he improvised it, but it is something he had
used in sermons previous. But he was riffing during this
speech at that point, pretty much quite a riff. I've riffed.
I ain't riffed like that, you know what I'm saying.
And so after that they met with Kennedy and Johnson,
(34:53):
and Kennedy was going to get the votes lined up
to get the Civil Rights Act passed, but was and killed,
as we all know, And so then that fell to Johnson,
which is what that play that Cranston is in covers
is from basically the moment he took office and the
whole rigamarole with trying to get the Civil Rights passed through. Yeah,
(35:14):
which I think Kennedy, I think is I don't think
he was against it. I think he was just a
politician above all else and cared only about being a
politician that gets reelected. Well, apparently he had. He went
through a little bit of a transformation. He wasn't adamantly opposed,
he wasn't a segregationist, but he certainly wasn't like a
(35:36):
black civil rights crusader. Yeah, yeah, um, but yeah, I
think he was. Also there was a certain amount of
ineffectiveness with Congress or whatever, where lb J would just
beat you at the switch until you voted the way
he wanted you to. He just wouldn't leave you alone.
He just kind of did what what he said if
(35:57):
he wanted something done, which is how he managed to
get the Voting Rights Act passed. He had a hard time, though.
They should make a movie version of that play, I
think to get it out the more people. Maybe it
was really fascinating. It was kind of like Lincoln. The
movie wasn't like here's Lincoln's life. It's like, here's a
really important part of Lincoln's Well, here's the act of
trying to get the amendment passed. They probably will, you know,
(36:20):
if it was that good, they will. Yeah, I haven't
seen some Man yet. Have you seen that? No, I
haven't dying to see that. It's supposed to be really good.
So so LBJ gets the Voting Rights Act passed, the
Civil Rights Act passed, and um also, I didn't mention
this anywhere, and I didn't really see it elsewhere. But
the Great Society, the War on Poverty came about in
(36:42):
like n sixty five, and I'm pretty sure that all
of those things. The passage of all those things were
direct result of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
Oh yeah, that march got those things pushed through. Didn't
hurt that Kennedy was assassinated. LBJ definitely played on that
to get Congress to pass through because even called the
(37:03):
passage of those acts of fitting tribute to to JFK.
But um, the the the that show of of agreement
of a quarter of a million people, black and white
and Jewish and who I'm sure they were like Chicano
people there, that's what they call them back then. Um,
there were. It wasn't just black people showing up in
(37:26):
d C. Going to the trouble of driving from all
over the country to get to d C to march
to say this is what we want. That had a
huge effect, a direct impact on this, this legislation change totally,
all kinds of minorities jumping on board. For sure. It's
a beautiful thing. And since those acts were passed, there's
been no more racism in the United States. No, that
(37:47):
was it. It ended right then when LBJ signed those
Everything was cheery after that, still a long way to go.
People still being facetious here. Uh and we would love
to close the show by playing the tirety of that speech.
But I looked it up today to see if it
was in the public domain, and surprisingly it is not.
(38:08):
It is owned by the king family. So where can
you go listen to it? Though, Well, I've listened to
it on YouTube and I've posted it on our Facebook
page last year on YouTube, so I don't know if
they just don't police it as much, but I know
they have gone to court a few times. Doing CBS
USA today, Apparently they are not against educators that have
(38:29):
used the speech, but a king himself obtained the rights
UM one month after he gave the speech. And ah,
some people, a lot of people, in fact of historians
have come out and said, you know what, you should
release this. You're making a big mistake. It can only
help the cause, uh, to get it out to more
and more ears and full because it's one thing to read,
(38:51):
it's another thing to hear it. UH. And they have
declined so far, so we'll see what happens in the future.
Oddly enough, UM E M I Publishing UM, along with
the King family, owns the publishing copyrights and which was
sold off to Sony, so the Sony Corporation technically now
partially owns that I have a dream. Speed's just such
(39:12):
a weird ending progress. Yeah yeah, uh, I think we
can play snippet though, for sure, Oh we can. Yeah,
let's let's we should end with a snippet. All right, Well,
if you want to get do you have a listener
mail in or should we just do the snippet? Um?
I do have a listener mail, and then we'll do
the snippet happen? Okay? All right, Well, if you want
to know more about the March on Washington, you should
(39:35):
check out actually a um an article in Descent magazine
called the Forgotten Radical History of the March on Washington's
from Spring two thirteen. It's online. It's pretty great. UM.
And then also, don't forget to check out our own
article on how stuff works dot com. Just type that
in the search bar and it will bring us up.
And since I said search parts, time for listener mail,
(39:58):
I'm gonna call this from Chris about Jim Henson. Hey, guys,
I really wanted to express my appreciation for yesterday's episode.
I'm a huge fan of Henson. UM so on any
ordinary day it would have been great to hear the
two of you cover such an amazing person. However, it
came at a time when I really needed a positive distraction.
Tuesday was one of the most difficult days of my life.
(40:18):
I had to have my dog put to sleep. Uh.
Jupiter was thirteen and a half years old. She'd been
with me since she was a puppy. She was my
best friend. In imagining life without her is difficult. So
Monday and Tuesday we're full of tears, and your show
really helped take my mind off the sadness. I've been
a fan for years and realized this morning, but I
listened to you guys for the first time while walking Jupiter,
(40:39):
so you've accompanied on many walks since. I'm a huge
fan of Jim Hinson, as I said, managed New England's
only year round nonprofit puppet theater, The Puppet Show Place Theater,
for four years before moving to d C to pursue
a Master's of Fine Arts degree in nonfiction filmmaking. My
thesis project, which I'm currently in pre production on, utilizes
puppets to introduce kids to history. It's kind of cool.
(41:01):
It's called Footnotes, a socumentary see what he did there?
You can find a description at socumentary dot com. The
thesis is partially funded by the Mr Rogers Memorial Scholarship,
which is provided by the Television Academy Foundation. I encourage
you to consider Fred Rogers is a future episode topic because,
like Henson, he was such a talented guy often marginalized
(41:23):
by society. I'd totally love to do one of Mr Rodgers.
I really enjoyed the show. Yeah, man, um, I really
enjoyed the show and appreciate what you guys do. One
day in the future, your talents may be recognized by
a couple of knuckle heads with the podcasts. So I
think he called this knuckle heads. Yeah, and I hope
that someone covered us one day. There's a little bit
(41:44):
of weird backhanded compliment. So that's from Chris Higgins and
email with Chris today. Very sorry to hear about Jupiter
and best of luck with soccumentary dot com. People can
go and check that out them all for puppets, sure,
especially punny named puppets. That's right. Um. Well, if you
want to get in touch with us to let us
know that we're knuckle heads or for whatever reason, you
(42:05):
can tweet to us at s y S k Podcast.
You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff
you Should Know. You can send us an email to
Stuff Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com and has
always joined us at our home on the web, Stuff
you Should Know dot com. And now the Reverend Doctor
Martin Luther King Jr. When we allowed freedom ring, when
(42:27):
we let it ring from every village and ever hamlet,
from every state and every city, we will be able
to speed up. At day when all the thoughts children,
black men and white men, Jews and gent piles, Protostants
and Catholics, we'll be able to join hands and singing
(42:47):
the whites of the old Negro spiritual pre at last, free,
at last, Thank God a light here we'll te
Welcome to you stuff you should know from House Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast on
Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, Jerry's over there,
so it's stuff you should know. Hey, Hey, how's it going.
It's going good. It's not going so good for me.
(00:23):
I'm having trouble loading up important pages here, important tabs
on my computer. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know what the
deal is in that riveting podcast. It's like Serial the
second season. Yeah, well Josh's tabs opened. What's the deal
with Josh's computer? Uh? The tabs loaded everybody, by the way,
(00:43):
So thank you for your concern. So you feel good
about this one? Yeah, I do. There's a It was
yet again one of those topics that I knew somewhat
about probably is us the average person, But digging into it,
you really forget how polished and glossy history can become,
and how not necessarily like grittier or anything, but just
(01:07):
definitely more complex and complicated an interkate than the final
story ends up being. Yeah, details matter, Um, no person
exists in a vacuum basically, Yeah, and coincidentally or maybe kismately,
we asked Jerry were like, hey, can we have this
released right around uh the King Holiday? And she said, dude,
(01:30):
it is happens to be scheduled before she even knew
what it was going to be, Like, this episode fell
into that slot. It's the spirit of Doctor King. How
about that? Like it's sort of like our marijuana episode
being the four release, which was a complete accident, completely
happens then, So this is like that, but cooler, right,
you know, because it's historical and it's important. Yes, this
(01:54):
is important history. You know what I'm saying. The invention
a silly putty. Well, I've been really been getting into
uh here in my middle age, the civil rights movement
in history and learning about that stuff. I think maybe
to make up for my uh ancestry in the Deep South,
you know, man. You know what's weird is like I
(02:15):
I hear that like more than ever, just the last
just the events of two thousand and fourteen. Like really
it's not like my eyes were shut or anything or
I was just unaware, but I've become more and more,
um disenchanted and dispirited by the heritage that I have
as well. It's just just that kind of studied obliviousness
(02:40):
that the powers that be have about the plights of
the people who aren't in power has really started to
get to me more and more. Yeah, And I've I've
had talks about this with a bunch of people, and
the consensus I've come to is, I can't be ashamed
of anything here in mean, you didn't do anything, person,
I didn't do anything. And I don't know anything spece
ccific about my family other than they we're you know,
(03:04):
white people living in rural Mississippi since the dawn of
time and miss I don't think they were the ones
knocking on doors trying to uh, you know, encourage black
people to vote. I don't think they were the standouts. Uh.
And so what can you do but just try and
be a good person, to educate yourself and learn from it. Yeah,
(03:25):
and make the Bryant uh name move forward in a
different direction. I think that's great. Yeah, good job. So
anyway I've been getting into I've been reading a lot
of stuff about it, and uh, I saw that play
in New York. I think I mentioned with Brian Cranston,
oh the Lbjay, Yeah, which really kind of got me
reading a bunch of because a lot of stuff I
didn't learn in school at all. They don't teach you
(03:47):
that much in school, not as much as you think
good touring of information. It's a trickle at best. Yeah,
or like you said, it's like a very kind of
one day glossy affair, which we were about to do
right now, right, Well, we're gonna flush it out a
little more. And I have to say this article, for
being a three three page article on how stuff works,
was pretty good. Recognize the author, But lot of beef
(04:09):
in here. Yeah there there, yeah, some good detail. So, um,
we're talking today about the March on Washington, which took
place on August I believe nine three. Yeah, the March
on Washington for Jobs and Freedom is the official full name, yeah,
which a lot of people don't realize that. And that's
kind of a big deal that it has jobs and
(04:30):
Freedom because that title actually represents the marriage of two
separate um Black civil rights movements, Yeah, agendas married together,
um under this common banner, which was at the time
kind of a big deal because there was a lot
of rivalry amongst different the different civil rights groups and
(04:52):
their agendas and to be able to come together that
was kind of huge. Yeah, And you know, when I
first hear about rivalries among the as groups, I get
a little disenchanted. But then when you start thinking about
the task in front of them. Uh, if you assemble
a group of suppressed people, everyone's gonna have their own
idea about the best way to move forward and to
get something done. And so of course there were gonna
(05:14):
be rivalries between these groups because they all felt their
path forward was the righteous one. Yeah, and this was
and and not even necessarily righteous, but right, you know,
like effective. On the one hand, you have say, um,
a Philip um Randolph, yeah man who was the head
of the Brotherhood of Sleeping car Porters. Yeah, I went
(05:35):
into that little bit. H well, well tell me about it. Well,
I didn't even uh know what a Pullman porter was,
because you know, I'm a modern kind of guy. But um,
these were the the people, the essentially butlers and maids
who worked on sleeping trains, sleeping cars and uh George
Pullman in Chicago of the Pullman Company invented the sleeping
(05:59):
train in the eight and eighties. And a Philip Randoff
he was born in eighteen eighty nine, like he was
seventy four years old when the march on Washington took place.
He was not a young guy, but he'd been at
it for decades already, for decades as a civil rights crusader. Uh.
And so basically what the deal was was George Pullman
hired uh Black Americans to work as maids and butlers
(06:21):
on these trains, and it really sort of kind of
entrenched that master servant relationship even further. And uh, even
though the black community said, these are really pretty good
jobs actually, because even though the pay wasn't that great,
it was a steady job. He got to travel. So
it was sort of looked upon as an elite job
until they started to sort of look at the details,
who were like, wait a minute, we don't have job security.
(06:44):
Our salary kind of stinks. We have to pay for
our own uniforms and food and lodging. And so they
got in touch with a Philip Randoff in he organized
the union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and eventually,
even though they refused to go shate with them, they
were able to get that union. In the nineteen thirty seven,
they the Pullman company signed a labor agreement with them,
(07:07):
got them a lot more rights as workers. But that's
just one of the many, many things that he did.
He was big into unions and organizing things and especially
seeing to it that the that the black population got
the same kind of fair treatment as the white population.
And you said that, he became president of the Brotherhood
(07:29):
of Sleeping car Porters in so think about fighting. First
of all, you're a unionizer, which back in that day
you could be gunned down by the state militia. He
was a socialist, he definitely was. He was definitely like
this is all basically of left movement. All of this,
the March on Washington was UM. And he also if
(07:53):
you if you consider at the times as the Jim
Crow era, so he's fighting for workers rights and even
more difficulty, he's fighting for black workers rights. So this
guy was a tough cookie and a smart one too. Yeah.
Martin Luther King called him the Dean of Negro leaders.
And he was forty years older than Kings. So he
was really revered, uh in the black community for sure,
(08:17):
but rightly so. I mean like he'd earned his chops right.
And the March on Washington that that Um came about
in nineteen sixty three was actually the second one that
Randolph proposed. He was the one that said we should
have this march on Washington. We'll we'll get to that.
But in ninety one he also started to organize the
same march UM and it was for crusading for jobs
(08:41):
for Black workers UM to end discrimination among federal hiring
government in defense hiring and UH federal agencies. Yeah, basically,
FDRs new deal was not I mean so favorable for
Black Americans, like it did a lot for the country,
but they were still sort of ignored and pretty much
(09:01):
barred from getting jobs federal jobs and defense jobs. So
FDR saw the writing on the wall basically with the
you don't want to call the threat of a march,
but because it just sounds like militaristic, it was the
threat of a march and UM. So he signed issued
Executive Order a D eight. Oh too, the Fair Employment
(09:23):
Practices Committee was created and two million Black Americans were
employed by the defense industry by which is great. But
nine the FTPC was disbanded and dissolved. So the temporary win,
the temporary win, UM, but a win nonetheless, and they
did not have that march because of that executive order,
(09:45):
which down I mean, imagine the credibility that UM Randolph
got just immediately from that, like he got the President
to create an executive order based on something he was organizing,
so that definitely catapulted his status. But he also learned like, oh,
this is a pretty effective tool. Like this isn't the
big gun you want to bring out every time somebody
(10:07):
pulls a pie shoot around you. But like when stuff
really becomes intractable, march on Washington is not such a
bad idea. Not a bad idea, you don't even necessarily
have to do it. Yeah, he was kind of recruited
UM to head this up by the Negro American Labor Council,
of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Congress of Racial Equality,
(10:27):
and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and so he wrote
a letter to Secretary Stuart Udal in May of nineteen
sixty two. He was the Department of Interior, and UM
basically said can we get our permits like the official request?
And they got nervous immediately because he said we want
to stop at the Lincoln Memorial and finish it up there.
(10:49):
They're like, well, rerounding traffic is gonna be tough. Why
don't we send you here instead? And they were pretty
adamant about sticking to that route, and so they granted
him the permit, which was the first signed to Kennedy,
like because Kennedy wasn't like, great, let's do this, he
was nervous about it too. And it was I mean,
it was a big deal. You mentioned that what's called
(11:10):
the Big Six, the Brotherhood of Sleeping car Porters, Southern
Christian Leadership Conference, that was Martin Luther King's UM Atlanta
based group UM, the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee, which
was led at the time by Representative John Lewis, our
Representative Lewis, who was still a firebrand in Congress, who
was twenty three at the time, and gave a speech
at the march UM the Conference on Racial Equality which
(11:34):
is known as CORE, the National Urban League, and the
um N double a CP. All of these groups got together,
and we already said like their arrivalries among them, but
not only were these these was it a big deal
that these groups that were fighting for civil rights, like
voting rights and the end of segregation and like civil rights,
(11:56):
but they got together with a Philip Randolph's UM movement
for economic justice and rather than become confused or muddled
or whatever, like remember Occupy Wallster. Everybody's like they have
like ten million different demands. A lot of people were
worried that joining these things together would do the same thing.
It didn't. It actually broadened it, and it brought a
(12:17):
lot of strength to the whole thing. And it all
came down to a black feminist named Anna Arnold Hedgeman,
and she brought Um, King and Randolph together and said,
you guys need to make this happen. It'll make this
march a million times better. I don't think that's a quote,
but basically that's that's what she said. And as a result,
the March on Washington for UM, jobs and freedom was
(12:39):
what the result was. Yeah, and bringing Martin Luther King
on was certainly a master stroke because, um, this article
describes the proposition as tepid to begin with, but um,
the stage was set for August then, uh, right after
this message break, we'll get to a little bit of
how mainstream media feared at this march. Right if it
(13:01):
is so, mainstream media probably thought this was a great idea,
and all of Washington probably rallied around this. Right, they
couldn't wait. Everybody, Um made those needle point samplers that said,
(13:25):
welcome marching black people to our streets. They rolled out
the red carpet. That is not true. This is our
facetious voice. Mainstream media actually was in fear, and they
ran stories about this devolving into a riot. And Kennedy said,
let's let's call this off. And they said no, and
(13:46):
liquor stores closed and bars closed and stores boarded up
their windows, and in the end none of that happened.
Of course, it was very peaceful and amazingly really well organized,
like a quotes where the organizers themselves said that, like
the peacefulness and and dignity of the whole thing seeded
(14:07):
even their expectations. Yeah, it was a colossally successful thing.
And one of the reasons why there was such an
amount of nervousness was not necessarily just because there were
a quarter of a million people marching in Washington all
at once for civil rights. But this thing took place,
and it's considered the pinnacle, the high water mark of
(14:29):
nineteen three, which was an enormous year. The Birmingham Campaign
was going on um down in Alabama. Children were marching
in the streets of Birmingham and police dogs were attacking
them and they were being hit with fire hoses, people
were being clubbed in the streets by Bull Connor and
his police force, and it was being captured on TV.
(14:50):
So like the American psyche was really being affected by
the civil rights movement right now, And there was a
lot of momentum behind the people who were leading the
civil rights movement, especially Martin Luther King, who you know
proved his own chops by being jailed in Birmingham for
protesting um. And he was kept in uh isolation for
(15:13):
like eight days. I think it wasn't able to talk
to anybody, I think, including his lawyer. Finally, his um wife,
Kreta Scott King, got in touch with Jfkin and said,
you've got to do something because I don't know what
they're gonna do to my husband in jail. He's lucky
he survived that, to be honest, right, Well, it took
the President to order the city of Birmingham to free
him for him to get out, yea, um, but it
(15:35):
was it was a big deal by the time this
thing came about, by the time it was even announced,
like nineteen three was a huge watershed year already. Yeah,
and uh, I think I don't think we pointed out
like ten the estimate were white folks joining in for
the rally, and um, I don't know about percentages, but
I do know that a lot of Jewish people were
really involved in the civil rights movement as volunteers, helping
(15:58):
to push that forward because they knew a thing or
two about persecution, So I think they identified with the
plight of the American black people and so um like
Jewish folks from the Northeast, basically a lot of them
came down south, a lot of students to volunteer for
not only this but just the voter rights, going door
(16:20):
to door. I mean those will will do a more
in depth went about voters rights maybe one day. But
I know the two. I think two of the guys
basically were murdered because they were going door to door
trying to help black people registered to vote. Yeah, I
don't know their names, but I've heard about them. I
mean they murdered by the local police. Yea, they just
shot him on the side of the road. Basically, there
(16:41):
was I think in nineteen sixty three there was um
a group of students that were going to Birmingham, which
was like the center of the universe as far as
the civil rights struggle in the US is going Um
and again, Bull Connor, the head of the police department,
gave his his police department the whole thing the day off,
(17:03):
so that there was nobody to protect these students that
were going to protest in Birmingham. It's like, I have
a hard time talking about this stuff. So but but
consider this is the this is the stage that we're setting,
Like this is the state of the country. There's like
on television you can see black kids being attacked by
police dogs in your country. Um, in Washington, d C.
(17:24):
If you live there, you're worried that the same stuff
is gonna go on on your streets. There's like a
lot of turmoil going on. Two months, two months before
this happened, Medgar Evers was shot in his driveway and
killed in Jackson, Mississippi, after coming home from uh going
door to door and encouraging poor African Americans to register
(17:44):
vote and a white supremacist name I don't feel like
reading his name, um uh day La beckwith Byron Della
Beckworth basically pulled up and shot him in the back
with a rifle, got equipment, not acquitted, but there were
two hung juries by all male jurors, and he remained
free until when they finally came back and retried him
(18:07):
as an old man. Remember that found him guilty and
he spent like the last six years of his life
in prison before he died. But he was just human
trash because he remained steadfastly white supremacists till the end.
Was not sorry. His son followed in his footsteps, and
it was just a ugly human being. And uh, I
(18:29):
think James Woods played him in a movie. Was that
was that who he played? I'm pretty sure it was
James Woods. Yeah, he's pretty slimy. He can not real life,
but he can do he can do slimy. But yeah,
so this is two months previous at Medaga Evers was killed,
so it was supercharged time and people were nervous for
(18:52):
good reason. Yeah. And to our white supremacist listeners, if
you're at all offended by Chuck's characters too, don't even
bother emailing. I don't think we have We don't care
at all what you have to say. We have enlightened listeners,
I think so too. Um So nineteen sixty three, huge dear.
They announced in June that they're going to carry out
(19:13):
this march in August, and like you said, JFK was like, no, please,
don't do that. And they said, you know what, Mr President,
you have proven yourself is not very reliable trying to
get the Civil Rights Act through Congress. It was just
languishing there um, and the the black civil rights leaders
were like the Brown versus Board of Education happened in
(19:35):
nineteen fifty five, I believe desegregated schools in nineteen sixty three.
There were plenty of schools that still weren't desegregated. All
of these things that that they have been fighting for incrementally,
bit by bit, every battle um that they'd won was
still not necessarily being fulfilled. And Kennedy didn't really seem
to care that much. So when he asked them as
(19:57):
president not to do the march, they basically said, you
don't really have any clout with us right now, so
we're gonna do this. Yeah, And they did, and they
announced it in June and they marched in August. And
the reason they were able to do that was thanks
almost entirely to a guy named Bayard Rustin. He's my
new hero. I love this guy. There's a documentary on him.
(20:18):
Actually it's called Brother Outsider. Yeah. I was gonna watch
it today, but at that time. Is it on the internet.
I only saw it on DVD. I don't know. Yeah,
I look for it. You could probably get clips. I
bet piece it together on Uh. Yeah. This guy man,
you talk about outsiders, he and this is in nineteen
sixty three, was openly gay. He was walked with the Kane,
(20:41):
walked with the Kane. He was black for fun. He
Uh wasn't really, That's the impression I had from this,
Like he didn't have an injury. No, he just had kane.
He had flair. Uh. He was Um. I don't know
if he was an actual Quaker. His grandmother was a
Quaker and he followed in her footsteps or was at
least informed by her religion. And uh was also I
(21:03):
think a socialist, and most of these people were, if
not like self identified socialists, carried out a lot of
held onto a lot of socialist ideals like workers rights,
like the power of labor too and the right of
labor to unionize and organize in the basic um value
of the of a human being. Yeah, I mean, as
(21:25):
far as outsiders go, though, you could have just stopped
at openly gay in nineteen sixty three, much less everything else.
Plus he apparently had a knack for art collecting attic
I for buying or finding art on the chief that
turned out to be like really great. Well, he was
a renaissance man, used to quote poetry and like, uh
he was he was the guy to organize this thing
(21:46):
because apparently his just skills bringing people together were legendary
and also took Probably the thing that is most remarkable
about Bayard Rustin as far as the lasting legacy goes,
was that he met um Martin Luther King in the
early fifties, the early to mid fifties, I think ninety six,
(22:06):
and at the time MLK had not fully embraced the
idea of complete non violent protests and resistance. He was
still like guarded by armed guards and like that kind
of stuff. It was rust and Bayard who brought this
um Gandhi gandhi is um Yeah, this thought of non
(22:29):
violent protests and and talk dr King into like really
embracing it. Was this guy. Well, he did a great job.
In just two months. He was able to completely organize
this thing from soup to nuts, um coach all the volunteers. Uh,
teach everyone how to have a non violent you know,
(22:52):
protests basically of this size, because it's not just like, hey,
don't be violent like they may have encountered or violence
and how to respond to that in a non violent
way was super important. Uh. He created a twelve page
manual for bus captains apparently on uh I mean handled
everything from where to park, to how to park, to
where the bathrooms are and then maybe most importantly, he
(23:18):
was responsible for putting together the run of show and
getting these very large egos um enough time per person
to where they all felt like they were cared for,
because even though they all had the same goal, these
were people who have big egos. You can't get in
a position like that if you don't have some sort
of ego and you want your time at the podium.
(23:40):
You know, they were singers, speakers, public prayers, and he
was able to navigate those uh ego waters very well. Yeah,
so check, let's um, we'll talk a little bit more
about um rust and Baird and what he did, and
then talk about the actual march itself. Yeah, right after that,
(24:02):
So Chuck, um, we're talking about Rust and Baird and
the job he did putting this whole thing together, but
as well as as well as he organized in, as
well as it was pulled off. Um. Even before it
went down, there was a lot of criticism of it,
especially from the farthest um, I guess, fringes of the
(24:23):
civil rights movement, like um uh, what was the guy
who followed John Lewis in the Student Non Violence Coordinating Committee,
Stokey Carmichael. He was a huge outspoken critic, stoke Stokely Carmichael.
He was a huge outspoken critic of the march. Basically
he said, this is not nearly radical enough. This is
(24:45):
the watered down, um, middle class, sanitized version of the
real civil rights movement, and I'm not gonna have anything
to do with it. Yeah. Malcolm x uh kind of
denounced it as well and called it the farce on
Washington and said told his fellow Nation of Islam members
don't go. Even though he did go, um, I don't
(25:08):
think he necessarily went to support. I think he was
probably just checking things out, you know, but he didn't
like join anyone on stage. He was still denouncing it, right,
and then this, I mean, this is a real criticism
of this that you know, it's as radical as the
white establishment thinks this agenda is who you're asking to
not be discriminated at the polls. You know, like guys
(25:30):
like Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X are saying, you need
to go further than this. If you're going to use
something this big, you need to really carry out a
bigger agenda UM. And one of the one of the
things that added fuel to their arguments was the news
that John Lewis, who again was twenty three and the
head of the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee, had had
(25:52):
his speech watered down by some of the other UM leaders. Yeah,
not just other leaders, but like the Catholic Archbishop of Washington,
d C. Basically it was the speech was circulated to
a bunch of different people and everyone came back and said,
you know, you need to tone this down. You can't
be call out Kennedy quite so plainly because he said
(26:13):
Kennedy's act the Civil Right checked was too little, too late.
And then his most famous quote that was UM, I
guess just deleted pretty much was we want to march
through the South through the heart of Dixie the way
Sherman did. We will pursue our own scorched earth policy huh,
there's a hyphen after that in a non violent way?
(26:35):
Did he say that, how I finished it, but still
there's a hyphen and then like, oh yeah, in a
non violent way. Yeah. So they basically held a caucus
and they all got together and he said that he
was still very proud and it was a very strong speech,
and um, I think everyone has a good point on
the best way to move forward. But for the kind
of press this thing was getting, and at the time
(26:58):
they were probably why is to sanitize it a little
bit for Middle America? Well, yeah, you know, just to
reach more people. I mean, if you think about it,
the for better or for worse? Once John Lewis UM
once his post was taken over by Stokely Carmichael. The
Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee eventually changed its name to
(27:20):
take out the non Violent and was replaced with National
I think UM And it just kept getting more and
more militant, and Stokely Carmichael wrote black Power. He also
coined the term UM. But the militant Black Power movement
it wasn't trying to too, and we should do an
episode just on that. They weren't trying to make themselves
(27:42):
palatable for you know, white Middle America. They were trying
to take over certain their position. However they needed to
UM and I agree with you. I just don't think
the march on Washington, sitting back with this much hindsight,
would have had the pack that it did necessarily had
it had that that much more militant tone to it, Oh, totally.
(28:06):
I mean their goal was progress, not to like scare
white Americans watching this on television, which is exactly what
would have happened, you know. Uh, but that's a pickle though,
you know, I mean, like that is there. Those are
definitely two different ways to achieve an end, and you know,
is the sanitized, watered down version that's palatable to you know,
(28:27):
white Middle America? Is that is that the best way?
Or ultimately you get to a point where you're like,
is this really making things go anywhere? Is this really
just kind of allowing more of the same. Well, and
how hard it must be to temper your anger and
frustration and tamp that stuff down to try and reach
more people, you know, Like, to me, that makes it
(28:49):
even more brave and courageous. Yeah. Well, MLK actually addressed
that a little bit in his UM speech where he
basically says like, if you're sitting there thinking like the
black people are gonna just we're blowing off steam right
now and things will cool off, so I don't really
have to do anything. He says, you're in for rude awakening,
because if things don't change, we're gonna take it back
(29:10):
to the street and we're gonna be like it's gonna
get even worse, Like this is the nice version exactly. Yeah. Um,
all right, so we're at the event, and what civil
rights event in the nineteen sixties would have been complete
without a bunch of white liberal celebrities joining in? Thank
God for them. Uh so, of course you had Marlon
(29:30):
Brando and Charlton Heston, which I don't know if that
surprises me or not. Charlton Heston, Yeah, maybe he wasn't
just across the board one way politically. Maybe he just
happened to be walking around DC at the time of
or maybe he championed civil rights and he loved his guns,
and I don't know enough about him could do both.
I just remember seeing him being berated by Michael Moore. Yeah,
(29:53):
I'm bowling for Columbine and then of course plan of
the apes. But I don't really know that much about him.
You know, as much as I don't know. As as
passionate as I feel about guns and things, I feel
equally passionate about badgering old folks. Yea. And I felt
kind of bad for him. Man, Michael Moore took a
lot of guf was just like an old dude that
(30:14):
you're yelling at in his just old like senile, Yeah,
in his home. Yeah. Uh, but we can laugh about
it now. Um. Bob Dylan, of course was one of
the performers. Johan Bayez, Peter Paul and Mary Yeah, pre
electric Bob Dylan. Uh. And then we had um some
famous black stalwarts like Sydney Poartier and Harry Belafonte and
(30:38):
Josephine Baker, Halliot Jackson saying yeah, and I mentioned James
Garner was there, Yeah, which is pretty cool. I remember
where he died. They mentioned that he was like a
big crusader for civil rights. He was one of the
few that like really you know, put in the leg work,
like it wasn't just lip service. He was Rockford dude. Yeah,
(30:59):
he is all about the leg work. Yes, he would
drive around the Kenning away from getting beat up in
his gold Camaro. Um. So the show opened up basically
with I think Joan Bayez opened up with the song
Oh Freedom and then let us sing along of We
Shall Overcome, and then Peter Poullmry awkwardly covered Bob Dylan
(31:20):
I know Dylan sitting right there with their version of
blowing in the wind, and then Dylan followed up with
paste version paste commercial. Remember that from Mighty Wayne. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
that was funny, and then Um Dylan followed them with
his new song about the murder of Medgar Evers called
(31:40):
only a pawn in their game and um lasted nineteen minutes?
Is that a joke? Okay? Dylan had some long songs,
it may have been. UM what else can contralto? Anderson
Um saying the Negro spiritual He's got the whole world
in his hands. It's a great tune. And Mahalia Jackson
(32:01):
I think closed things right before King's speech with I've
been buked and I've been scorned. So they had people
like fired up basically with great entertainment, meaningful entertainment, and
the stage was set for UH the MC's Ozzy Davis
and Ruby d to introduce UH Martin Luther King for
(32:25):
his now famous speech, which at the time, at least
they say in this article it wasn't the end all
be all, but over time it has gained more and
more steam. It's like sort of the you know, the
watershed moment, right Like Life magazine covered the March on Washington,
and the issue that followed the march didn't have MLK
on the cover. It had Bayard Rustin and a Philip Randolphe.
(32:47):
It's pretty awesome, actually, and I mean that's how a
lot of people viewed the march for a very long time.
I mean, it was a Philip Randolf's idea, Bayard Rustin
planned it, MLK lent a ton of star power to it,
and by signing on a lot of other people signed
on too. But it wasn't until and I've seen this
else where. It's not this article alone, but um supposedly
it wasn't until MLK was assassinated that a lot of
(33:10):
people UM that had formerly been just kind of sympathetic
or whatever like really came to adopt like his viewpoint.
And tragically his death propelled the civil rights movement forwards. Sure, UM,
and one of the by products of that was that
this speech came to become what the March on Washington was,
(33:30):
but for the five years after the march, until MLK
was assassinated, that wasn't really the case. Yeah, And the
main thrust of the speech, even though it's remembered now, um, well,
if you've never listened to the whole thing, you should
do that, by the way, but you you know, it's
best remembered for the famous quote, I have a dream
that my four little children will one day live in
a nation where they will not be judged by the
(33:50):
color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
The main thrust of the script, though, was the or
the script the speech which was scripted to um was
the bad check that America had written, basically with the quote,
instead of honoring the sacred obligation, America has given the
Negro people a bad check, check which has come back
(34:11):
marked insufficient funds. And um, apparently after this you know
a bit about the bad check and basically saying that
you promised everyone freedom and you're not giving everyone freedom. Um.
Mahalia Jackson behind him, one of his friends said, tell
him about the dream, and that's when he improvised that
(34:32):
section at the end, which was so powerful that he
had he improvised it, but it is something he had
used in sermons previous. But he was riffing during this
speech at that point, pretty much quite a riff. I've riffed.
I ain't riffed like that, you know what I'm saying.
And so after that they met with Kennedy and Johnson,
(34:53):
and Kennedy was going to get the votes lined up
to get the Civil Rights Act passed, but was and killed,
as we all know, And so then that fell to Johnson,
which is what that play that Cranston is in covers
is from basically the moment he took office and the
whole rigamarole with trying to get the Civil Rights passed through. Yeah,
(35:14):
which I think Kennedy, I think is I don't think
he was against it. I think he was just a
politician above all else and cared only about being a
politician that gets reelected. Well, apparently he had. He went
through a little bit of a transformation. He wasn't adamantly opposed,
he wasn't a segregationist, but he certainly wasn't like a
(35:36):
black civil rights crusader. Yeah, yeah, um, but yeah, I
think he was. Also there was a certain amount of
ineffectiveness with Congress or whatever, where lb J would just
beat you at the switch until you voted the way
he wanted you to. He just wouldn't leave you alone.
He just kind of did what what he said if
(35:57):
he wanted something done, which is how he managed to
get the Voting Rights Act passed. He had a hard time, though.
They should make a movie version of that play, I
think to get it out the more people. Maybe it
was really fascinating. It was kind of like Lincoln. The
movie wasn't like here's Lincoln's life. It's like, here's a
really important part of Lincoln's Well, here's the act of
trying to get the amendment passed. They probably will, you know,
(36:20):
if it was that good, they will. Yeah, I haven't
seen some Man yet. Have you seen that? No, I
haven't dying to see that. It's supposed to be really good.
So so LBJ gets the Voting Rights Act passed, the
Civil Rights Act passed, and um also, I didn't mention
this anywhere, and I didn't really see it elsewhere. But
the Great Society, the War on Poverty came about in
(36:42):
like n sixty five, and I'm pretty sure that all
of those things. The passage of all those things were
direct result of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
Oh yeah, that march got those things pushed through. Didn't
hurt that Kennedy was assassinated. LBJ definitely played on that
to get Congress to pass through because even called the
(37:03):
passage of those acts of fitting tribute to to JFK.
But um, the the the that show of of agreement
of a quarter of a million people, black and white
and Jewish and who I'm sure they were like Chicano
people there, that's what they call them back then. Um,
there were. It wasn't just black people showing up in
(37:26):
d C. Going to the trouble of driving from all
over the country to get to d C to march
to say this is what we want. That had a
huge effect, a direct impact on this, this legislation change totally,
all kinds of minorities jumping on board. For sure. It's
a beautiful thing. And since those acts were passed, there's
been no more racism in the United States. No, that
(37:47):
was it. It ended right then when LBJ signed those
Everything was cheery after that, still a long way to go.
People still being facetious here. Uh and we would love
to close the show by playing the tirety of that speech.
But I looked it up today to see if it
was in the public domain, and surprisingly it is not.
(38:08):
It is owned by the king family. So where can
you go listen to it? Though, Well, I've listened to
it on YouTube and I've posted it on our Facebook
page last year on YouTube, so I don't know if
they just don't police it as much, but I know
they have gone to court a few times. Doing CBS
USA today, Apparently they are not against educators that have
(38:29):
used the speech, but a king himself obtained the rights
UM one month after he gave the speech. And ah,
some people, a lot of people, in fact of historians
have come out and said, you know what, you should
release this. You're making a big mistake. It can only
help the cause, uh, to get it out to more
and more ears and full because it's one thing to read,
(38:51):
it's another thing to hear it. UH. And they have
declined so far, so we'll see what happens in the future.
Oddly enough, UM E M I Publishing UM, along with
the King family, owns the publishing copyrights and which was
sold off to Sony, so the Sony Corporation technically now
partially owns that I have a dream. Speed's just such
(39:12):
a weird ending progress. Yeah yeah, uh, I think we
can play snippet though, for sure, Oh we can. Yeah,
let's let's we should end with a snippet. All right, Well,
if you want to get do you have a listener
mail in or should we just do the snippet? Um?
I do have a listener mail, and then we'll do
the snippet happen? Okay? All right, Well, if you want
to know more about the March on Washington, you should
(39:35):
check out actually a um an article in Descent magazine
called the Forgotten Radical History of the March on Washington's
from Spring two thirteen. It's online. It's pretty great. UM.
And then also, don't forget to check out our own
article on how stuff works dot com. Just type that
in the search bar and it will bring us up.
And since I said search parts, time for listener mail,
(39:58):
I'm gonna call this from Chris about Jim Henson. Hey, guys,
I really wanted to express my appreciation for yesterday's episode.
I'm a huge fan of Henson. UM so on any
ordinary day it would have been great to hear the
two of you cover such an amazing person. However, it
came at a time when I really needed a positive distraction.
Tuesday was one of the most difficult days of my life.
(40:18):
I had to have my dog put to sleep. Uh.
Jupiter was thirteen and a half years old. She'd been
with me since she was a puppy. She was my
best friend. In imagining life without her is difficult. So
Monday and Tuesday we're full of tears, and your show
really helped take my mind off the sadness. I've been
a fan for years and realized this morning, but I
listened to you guys for the first time while walking Jupiter,
(40:39):
so you've accompanied on many walks since. I'm a huge
fan of Jim Hinson, as I said, managed New England's
only year round nonprofit puppet theater, The Puppet Show Place Theater,
for four years before moving to d C to pursue
a Master's of Fine Arts degree in nonfiction filmmaking. My
thesis project, which I'm currently in pre production on, utilizes
puppets to introduce kids to history. It's kind of cool.
(41:01):
It's called Footnotes, a socumentary see what he did there?
You can find a description at socumentary dot com. The
thesis is partially funded by the Mr Rogers Memorial Scholarship,
which is provided by the Television Academy Foundation. I encourage
you to consider Fred Rogers is a future episode topic because,
like Henson, he was such a talented guy often marginalized
(41:23):
by society. I'd totally love to do one of Mr Rodgers.
I really enjoyed the show. Yeah, man, um, I really
enjoyed the show and appreciate what you guys do. One
day in the future, your talents may be recognized by
a couple of knuckle heads with the podcasts. So I
think he called this knuckle heads. Yeah, and I hope
that someone covered us one day. There's a little bit
(41:44):
of weird backhanded compliment. So that's from Chris Higgins and
email with Chris today. Very sorry to hear about Jupiter
and best of luck with soccumentary dot com. People can
go and check that out them all for puppets, sure,
especially punny named puppets. That's right. Um. Well, if you
want to get in touch with us to let us
know that we're knuckle heads or for whatever reason, you
(42:05):
can tweet to us at s y S k Podcast.
You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff
you Should Know. You can send us an email to
Stuff Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com and has
always joined us at our home on the web, Stuff
you Should Know dot com. And now the Reverend Doctor
Martin Luther King Jr. When we allowed freedom ring, when
(42:27):
we let it ring from every village and ever hamlet,
from every state and every city, we will be able
to speed up. At day when all the thoughts children,
black men and white men, Jews and gent piles, Protostants
and Catholics, we'll be able to join hands and singing
(42:47):
the whites of the old Negro spiritual pre at last, free,
at last, Thank God a light here we'll te
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