Although the "I have a dream" and the "content of their character" bits tend to get top billing in these remembrances, the event was called the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom — and it's worth noting that the word "jobs" comes before "freedom." Martin Luther King, Jr., the NAACP, and the march's organizers were calling for some very specific economic policies they thought would improve the material well-being of black folks in America.
Well, according to a report released by the Census Bureau on the eve of the march's anniversary, the median income of blacks has nearly doubled, the poverty rate has fallen by 14 percent. Twenty-six percent of blacks had high school diplomas in 1964; 85 percent did in 2012. And over that span, the number of black folks who completed four years of college jumped from 4 percent to 21 percent.
