Thursday, August 29, 2013

Fifty Years On


Fifty years ago 

yesterday, 

over 250,000 civil-rights 

marchers came to Washington DC.

To march for jobs, voting rights,

 and social equality.


The marchers, from all over America, 

heard Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s

 “I Have a Dream” speech that day.


But the TV news cameras

 had already left.

 Those famous words were NOT 

in the written speech,

or prominently reported. 

Majorities of white Americans

 around that time told pollsters

 they thought that

 Dr. King 

was a troublemaker. 



 - We would do well to recall
 that day itself also belonged 
to those ordinary people 
whose names never appeared
 in the history books,
 never got on TV.
Many had gone to segregated schools
 and sat at segregated lunch counters,
 had lived in towns where they couldn't vote,
 in cities where their votes didn't matter.
 There were couples in love who couldn't marry, 
soldiers who fought for freedom abroad 
that they found denied to them at home. 
They had seen loved ones beaten 
and children fire- hosed. 
And they had every reason 
to lash out in anger 
or resign themselves to a bitter fate.
And yet they chose a different path. 
In the face of hatred, 
they prayed for their tormentors. 
In the face of violence, 
they stood up and sat in 
with the moral force of nonviolence.

 Because they marched, 
America became more free 
and more fair, 
not just for African-Americans 
but for women and Latinos, 
Asians and Native Americans, 
for Catholics, Jews 
and Muslims, 
for gays, 
for Americans with disabilities.
America changed 
for you and for me.
And the entire world 
drew strength from that example, "

President Obama

Yesterday,

 50th anniversary 

of the March on Washington




50 years. Half a Century.
It has been a long road.

I was glad to be a child,
too young to face the terrors
of a ride a bus through angry counties,
to register voters, to face police dogs,
spittle, shouts, shots, fire, explosion,
like Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney
had. Link

Thank You for sharing my memories,
for listening to my experience
of history;
and thanks for 
sharing Your Own!

Your Friend, cloudia