www.afro.comAugust 31, 2013 - September 6, 2013,
Volume 122 No. 4
The Afro-American A1 $1.00
AUGUST 31, 2013 - SEPTEMBER 6, 2013
Spirit of ‘63 Revived in 2013 Memorial March on Washington
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INSIDE A4, A5 Celebrities at the 2013 March INSERT • Walmart
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The diverse crowd
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Rep. John Lewis, left, the Rev. Al Sharpton, Dr. Martin Luther King III with his family, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and AFSCME president, Lee Saunders, lead the way to realizing the dream.
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Reflecting Pool
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Activists Demand Justice, Jobs as Freedom Movement Continues
By Avis Thomas-Lester AFRO Executive Editor
They came to Washington D.C. from points all around the country, traveling by plane, train and automobile. Others came by bus, much the same way they, their parents and neighbors came 50 years ago. One goal, organizers said, was to commemorate the 50th anniversary of what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called “the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation”—the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. But a greater goal was for the event to become a call to action. On a picture perfect day, a crowd estimated at more than 100,000 men, women
and children convened in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial—the same spot where more than 250,000 gathered on Aug. 28, 1963— for the March on Washington 2013. The event included a pre-march rally and a march from the Lincoln Memorial, Memorial, to the Washington Monument, where the group dispersed. While the audience was predominantly Black, the group also included Whites, Latinos, Asian Americans and Native Americans. Fifty years ago, King, then a young preacher who had been unofficially designated the voice of the Civil Rights Movement, spoke of segregation, racism and job discrimination and
the dream that his people would overcome them in his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. At the Aug. 24 march, whose theme was “Realize the Dream,” the same concerns
Rev. Joseph Lowery, co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, implored the crowd to “agitate” for change, the same message Frederick Douglass used as his rallying cry more than 120 years before. “Everything has changed and nothing has changed,” Lowery said. “We came to Myrlie Evers Washington to commemorate, but we are going home to were echoed by a cadre of the nation’s most respected agitate.” Speakers at the pre-march leaders, who urged the crowd to make jobs and justice rally included U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder; Martin the priority of the freedom movement going forward. Luther King, III; Myrlie
“I ask you today to flip that coin and make ‘stand your ground’ a positive thing for all of us.” –
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Evers-Williams, widow of martyred civil rights activist Medgar Evers; and the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, who drew applause and cheers when he was recognized for his service to the struggle by the Rev. Al Sharpton, one of the event’s organizers. The speakers also included Simeon Wright, a cousin of Emmett Till, the Chicago teenager whose brutal lynching by racists in Money, Miss., in 1955 touched off the Civil Rights Movement and Sybrina Fulton, the mother of slain Florida teenager Trayvon Martin, whose fatal shooting by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman in 2012 sparked protests and activism around the nation. Several people in the crowd
Continued on A2