Charles Euchner: “The Day Represented More Than Just Those Iconic Words”

Posted on August 20, 2010 by Charles Euchner
 
The March on Washington was about many things -- the right to sit in a restaurant or go to school, vote, get protection from mob violence, get a job, get training, find a decent home. But if the March only presented a list of demands -- even basic demands -- it would not have offered such a lasting inspiration to us all.

I decided to write "Nobody Turn Me Around: A People's History of the 1963 March on Washington" (Beacon Press, August 2010) because I knew that the day represented more than Martin Luther King's iconic words "I have a dream." King's speech was one of the greatest orations in American history. Like Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, it gave Americans a new way of understanding themselves and finding their way from violence to community. Over the years, the speech's power has not waned. I have read it and listened to it probably hundreds of times and I am deeply moved every time. The real brilliance of King's address is his tough but loving understanding of his people and his nation. He stated the movement's demands as clearly as anyone. But he also understood that real change comes only when people sacrifice. Oppressors do not yield power and privilege without a fight. And so, for me, the hinge of King's speech -- and the whole day -- was his statement that "unearned suffering is redemptive." That's a tough statement, but it also offers a vision of what sacrifice might one day bring.

For me, though, the most moving part of that day was the streaming together of blacks and whites, factory laborers and sharecroppers, housewives and ministers, students and elderly folks, from all over. I still get chills when I think about three teenaged boys from Gadsden, Alabama, who hitchhiked to Washington and then volunteered for a week. On their way they passed the site where William Moore -- a white postman who was marching from Chattanooga to Jackson to deliver a letter to segregationist Governor Ross Barnett to "be gracious and give more than is demanded of you" -- was shot down in cold blood. Moore's killer, known to all, was never indicted or tried. But at that spot, in the pitch black night, the three boys decided they would not turn around. And that's what the movement is all about, not turning around. And I am full of gratitude for what they gave to me and the millions of other heirs of the movement.

For more stories from the March, you can order "Nobody Turn Me Around: A People's History of the 1963 March on Washington" on Amazon.

 

 
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