Third Youth March for Integrated Schools
On this day, the NAACP sponsored the third straight March on Washington to demand more progress in desegregation public schools in the south.
Contrary to popular belief, the historic August 28, 1963, March on Washington was not the first African-American civil rights march in the nation’s capital . It was the fourth. In the first African-American march on Washington, 5,000 people conducted a silent march in front of the White House and the U.S. Senate building on June 22, 1922 to protest lynching and to call for a federal anti-lynching law. Three others occurred marking the anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision and demanding more progress on desegregation: on May 17, 1957; October 25, 1958; and the one on this day.
Additionally, civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph had planned a march on Washington in 1941 to demand equal employment opportunities for African-Americans in the defense industries, but cancelled it when he forced President Franklin D. Roosevelt to issue an executive order on equal employment opportunity. See June 18, 1941, for the White House confrontation between Randolph and FDR, and June 25, 1941, for Executive Order 8802.
Read the Original “Why We March” Statement: http://www.crmvet.org/docs/59_youth_march.pdf
And more original documents on civil rights history: http://www.crmvet.org/
Learn more about the history of marching on Washington: Lucy Barber, Marching on Washington: The Forging of an American Political Tradition (2002)
Visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture here