Tuesday, January 22, 2013

From the archives of the fight against racist injustice


From the archives of the US Civil Rights Movement:

Scene from the March on Washington for Jobs & Freedom, August 28, 1963, where Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous “I have a dream” speech.” Thousands of chartered buses & cars poured into the city from around the country. The crowd was estimated at over 300,000 people but it may well have been much larger since estimating crowds of such a size would have been difficult coming out of the McCarthy witch-hunt era of the 1950s when public protest was minimal. The couple in the foreground were with the New York delegation.

With thousands of Black young people denied employment & railroaded out of schools into prisons for minor offenses, it is long-past time for a new civil rights movement. Studying the heritage of this earlier movement--its achievements & its weaknesses--is part of rebuilding that new movement.

(Photo by Paul Schutzer—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

No comments:

Post a Comment