The March On Washington — 20 Years Late : NPR: When the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his thunderous 'I Have a Dream' speech during the March on Washington 45 years ago this week, he did so before the largest political gathering the nation had ever seen. Hundreds of thousands of people had descended on the capital for an event that would later be recognized as the tipping point in the fight for civil rights.
What's often overlooked is the fact that the march was supposed to have taken place more than 20 years earlier.
On the eve of World War II, African Americans in the North had achieved real political leverage. But in the South, they had been almost completely disenfranchised by poll taxes, literacy tests and intimidation. Many blacks also were shut out of government and defense industry jobs. Philip Randolph was the president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, a black labor union. He and union Vice President Milton Webster wanted to put an end to the discrimination.
'Brother Randolph says to me, 'We ought to get 10,000 Negroes and march down Pennsylvania Avenue and protest,'' Webster recalled in independent producer Alan Lipke's documentary series Between Civil War and Civil Rights.
