A. Philip Randolph Announces Plan for “Pilgrimage” to Washington
Civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph on this day announced a plan for a “Pilgrimage” to Washington, D.C., to demand civil rights. This plan evolved into the famous March on Washington on August 28, 1963, which featured the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s famous “I have a Dream” speech.
At a meeting with national civil rights leaders at the White House on June 22, 1963, however, President John Kennedy tried to talk them out of the planned march. He and other congressional Democrats were worried that it would appear as an aggressive lobbying tactic for the pending Civil Rights Bill and alienate a number of Senators. They were also worried about possible disorders and violence. The civil rights leaders bluntly rejected Kennedy’s efforts. A Philip Randolph forcefully told the president “Mr. President, the Negroes are already in the street. It is very likely impossible to get them off.” So Kennedy backed off. But his administration did succeed in taking control of the planning for the march. One result was that it occurred on a Wednesday, not the normal day for a march on Washington.
There had been three smaller civil rights marches on Washington in the 1950s, which are largely ignored in histories of the Civil Rights Movement: May 17, 1957; October 25, 1958; and April 18, 1959.
The 1963 march fulfilled Randolph’s dream of a march in 1941, but which he cancelled after confronting President Franklin D. Roosevelt on June 18, 1941, and winning a major concession. Roosevelt tried to persuade him into cancelling the march, but Randolph refused unless the president prohibited race discrimination in employment in the defense industries. FDR caved and issued Executive Order 8802 on June 25, 1941.
Read the latest biography: David Welky, Marching Across the Color Line: A. Philip Randolph and Civil Rights in the World War II Era (2014)
Watch the 1963 March on Washington: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj-feUZ32wI
Read: Andrew Kersten, A. Philip Randolph: A Life in the Vanguard (2007)
Read about the long history of marching on Washington: Lucy G. Barber, Marching on Washington: The Forging of an American Political Tradition (2002)
The “Sixties” really began in the mid-1950s and ended in the early 1970s. Read: Christopher B. Strain, The Long Sixties: America, 1955-1973 (2016)