Anniversary of a dream
On August 28, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous speech.
Thirty-two buses departed from Roxbury just before 11 p.m. on August 27, 1963. The 1,200 Massachusetts residents who boarded the buses were among the more than 5,000 New Englanders traveling to Washington D.C. that evening to participate in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, according to a Boston Globe report.
The march, with Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream’’ speech, would later be pointed to as a pivotal point in the civil rights movement.
The Massachusetts group drove all night. Globe reporter Herbert S. Hadad described the scene on one of the buses:
“As the whistling tires of the speeding coach hummed its own shrill chord, 38 voices insisted ‘we shall overcome.’ The song spilled over into loud hand clapping; then the voices retreated to buzzing, personal conversation.’’
Later, after two pit stops, the mood shifted, according to Hadad, with one singer altering the words of a popular freedom song to, “O, if I had a hamburger…’’
At the request of the Globe, Cambridge artist Calvin Burnett brought his sketchbook with him to capture the scene:
The buses stopped for a scheduled breakfast just after dawn in Baltimore, and then they were on their way.
The Massachusetts contingent arrived in the nation’s capital and joined the throngs at the Washington Monument for the march, making their way from the monument along a planned route to the Lincoln Memorial.
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Photos of the march:
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The day after, the headlines of the Globe proclaimed the march of 210,000 “a triumph.’’ Two days, later it was already being seen as a turning point for the civil rights movement.
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King’s speech was not the only one given that day, but his became the “heart and the emotional cornerstone of the march,’’ according to The New York Times. And years later, his words are those learned in schools.
A Globe reporter named Robert S. Bird approached King a day after his speech and got his “off-the-cuff assessment’’ of the march. He told the reporter:
“The march has already developed a new sense of power, and besides that it has brought about a great deal better spirit of coalition among the various civil rights organizations. They are now working together better than in any time in the past. And the fraternal organizations of Negro people are now brought together as never before.’’
Read King’s full speech here.
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