All right And in a real sense this afternoon, we can say that our feet are tired, Yes, sir but our souls are rested. And there were those who said that we would get here only over their dead bodies, Well. Yes, sir. Speak [Applause]. Yes, sir Just ten years ago, in this very city, a new philosophy was born of the Negro struggle. Montgomery was the first city in the South in which the entire Negro community united and squarely faced its age-old oppressors. Well Out of this struggle, more than bus [de]segregation was won; a new idea, more powerful than guns or clubs was born.
Negroes took it and carried it across the South in epic battles Yes, sir. Speak that electrified the nation Well and the world. But not until the colossus of segregation was challenged in Birmingham did the conscience of America begin to bleed. White America was profoundly aroused by Birmingham because it witnessed the whole community of Negroes facing terror and brutality with majestic scorn and heroic courage.
And from the wells of this democratic spirit, the nation finally forced Congress Well to write legislation Yes, sir in the hope that it would eradicate the stain of Birmingham. The Civil Rights Act of gave Negroes some part of their rightful dignity, Speak, sir but without the vote it was dignity without strength.
Yes, sir And again the brutality of a dying order shrieks across the land. Yet, Selma, Alabama, became a shining moment in the conscience of man. If the worst in American life lurked in its dark streets, the best of American instincts arose passionately from across the nation to overcome it.
Speak There never was a moment in American history Yes, sir more honorable and more inspiring than the pilgrimage of clergymen and laymen of every race and faith pouring into Selma to face danger Yes at the side of its embattled Negroes. Yes, sir to turn the whole nation to a new course. A president born in the South Well had the sensitivity to feel the will of the country, Speak, sir and in an address that will live in history as one of the most passionate pleas for human rights ever made by a president of our nation, he pledged the might of the federal government to cast off the centuries-old blight.
President Johnson rightly praised the courage of the Negro for awakening the conscience of the nation. Yes, sir From Montgomery to Birmingham, Yes, sir from Birmingham to Selma, Yes, sir from Selma back to Montgomery, Yes a trail wound in a circle long and often bloody, yet it has become a highway up from darkness. Yes, sir Alabama has tried to nurture and defend evil, but evil is choking to death in the dusty roads and streets of this state.
Speak, sir So I stand before you this afternoon Speak, sir. Well with the conviction that segregation is on its deathbed in Alabama, and the only thing uncertain about it is how costly the segregationists and Wallace will make the funeral.
Go ahead. Yes, sir [Applause]. In focusing the attention of the nation and the world today on the flagrant denial of the right to vote, we are exposing the very origin, the root cause, of racial segregation in the Southland. Racial segregation as a way of life did not come about as a natural result of hatred between the races immediately after the Civil War. There were no laws segregating the races then.
And as the noted historian, C. Vann Woodward, in his book, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, clearly points out, the segregation of the races was really a political stratagem employed by the emerging Bourbon interests in the South to keep the southern masses divided and southern labor the cheapest in the land. You see, it was a simple thing to keep the poor white masses working for near-starvation wages in the years that followed the Civil War. Why, if the poor white plantation or mill worker became dissatisfied with his low wages, the plantation or mill owner would merely threaten to fire him and hire former Negro slaves and pay him even less.
Thus, the southern wage level was kept almost unbearably low. Listen to him That is what was known as the Populist Movement. Speak, sir The leaders of this movement began awakening the poor white masses Yes, sir and the former Negro slaves to the fact that they were being fleeced by the emerging Bourbon interests. Not only that, but they began uniting the Negro and white masses Yeah into a voting bloc that threatened to drive the Bourbon interests from the command posts of political power in the South.
Right I want you to follow me through here because this is very important to see the roots of racism and the denial of the right to vote. Through their control of mass media, they revised the doctrine of white supremacy. They saturated the thinking of the poor white masses with it, Yes thus clouding their minds to the real issue involved in the Populist Movement.
They then directed the placement on the books of the South of laws that made it a crime for Negroes and whites to come together as equals at any level. Yes, sir And that did it. That crippled and eventually destroyed the Populist Movement of the nineteenth century. On August 28, , in front of a crowd of nearly , people spread across the National Mall in Washington, D. Martin Luther King, Jr. Organizers of the event, officially known as the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, had hoped , people would attend.
Despite the central role that women like Rosa Parks , Ella Baker, Daisy Bates and others played in the civil rights movement , all the speakers at the March on Washington were men. Bates spoke briefly in the place of Myrlie Evers, widow of the murdered civil rights leader Medgar Evers , and Parks and several others were recognized and asked to take a bow.
A white labor leader and a rabbi were among the 10 speakers on stage that day. King was preceded by nine other speakers, notably including civil rights leaders like A. Philip Randolph and a young John Lewis , the future congressman from Georgia. The most prominent white speaker was Walter Reuther , head of the United Automobile Workers, a powerful labor union.
Kennedy signaled his approval publicly in July when he was assured it would be a peaceful event. The March was not universally supported by activists.
Prominent objectors included Malcolm X and Strom Thurmond. In , organizers were planning a march to demand desegregation in the U. But President Franklin Roosevelt averted the march by signing Executive Order in June, , banning discrimination in the federal government and defense industries.
Almost no one could clearly hear Dr. An expensive sound system was installed for the event, but it was sabotaged right before it. William Edward Burghardt "W. Roy Wilkins asked the marchers to honor Du Bois with a moment of silence. Of the estimated , people who attended the March , about 60, were white. People came from all over the country, and few arrests were reported.
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