The March on Washington, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Lillian Smith

The following are comments I made in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Some of these comments come from my essay “MLK and Lillian Smith” at Black Perspectives.

On this day sixty years ago, exactly 555 miles from where you are sitting, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous “I Have A Dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. King was the last of ten speakers that day at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. A. Philip Randolph, the director of the march, John Lewis, future United States Congressman from Atlanta, Floyd McKissick, future leader of the Congress of Racial Equality, and others spoke in front of around 300,000 people who gathered on the National Mall.

Lillian Smith lived eight miles from where you are sitting at this moment. Back in 1956, Smith wrote to King voicing her support for the Montgomery Bus Boycotts. She wrote to him, “I, too, am working as hard as I can to bring insight to the white group; to try to open their hearts to the great harm that segregation inflicts not only on Negroes but on white people too.” King replied to Smith in May, thanking her for the two letters she had sent him, saying that they “came as a great consolation.” He continued by telling her, “For many years, I have had the opportunity of…