Courtland Cox
There was a big issue about how the march would start, where, the timing of the starting of the march and making sure that all the leaders were together.
Eleanor Holmes Norton
The crowd was very disciplined but anxious to march. They grew restless.
And so the crowd began to march, with signs reading “We demand jobs for all now!” and “We demand voting rights now!” — and without many of the movement’s leaders, who were coming from Capitol Hill and scrambled to catch up.
At the Lincoln Memorial, the monument honoring the president who issued the Emancipation Proclamation a century before, the speaking program soon would begin.
Lewis’s speech had been lightly edited, but its tone remained too sharp for NAACP chief Roy Wilkins, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Eugene Carson Blake of the National Council of Churches.
Courtland Cox
Bayard brought A. Philip Randolph to us, and Randolph pointed out that this is something that had been in the works for over 20 years, to begin to deal with the discrimination in the United States and make a big statement about it. And he would really appreciate it if we made the changes.
So John Lewis, Jim Forman, myself were in the backstage making changes to John Lewis’s speech so that it would not be disruptive to the March on Washington.
Raymond Kemp
Then: 22, seminary graduate.
Now: 82, Georgetown University adjunct professor and assistant for community engagement.
The role of the faith groups was well represented on the dais. Everybody’s coming out of a church. The Black church and the White churches didn’t really know each other until that march. The amazing thing for me was that they all got together.
Adele Logan Alexander
The crowds were huge. People thick around you.
Elizabeth Young
I remember — actually, clearly remember — seeing the Lincoln Memorial, and I know my dad helped me up on his shoulders.
E.T. Williams Jr.
Then: 25, Peace Corps staffer living in D.C.
Now: 85, retired New York City businessman and art collector.
I angled my way to be as close to [King] as possible. I wasn’t part of the elite. [Yet] I was part of the people who were in front, like Whitney Young, Mahalia Jackson, Sammy Davis Jr., Dorothy Height. I guess I looked important. I had a shirt and tie on. So I was right up there.
William Vodra
Off to one side, a woman collapsed from the heat. Immediately the crowd opened up to create an air space. Some people got down and were fanning her. Nobody was carrying water bottles like today, but somehow they got water. And it just struck me that this was anything but a mob bent on destruction; this was a people engaged in a very civilized, peaceful protest.
Patricia Tyson
Then: 15, D.C. student.
Now: 75, retired Service Employees International Union employee.
We were showing America we were Americans, too.