More Than a Dream: Part Four

Only a few hundred were milling about, hardly a good sign, and Rustin panicked a bit, imagining that staff projections were wrong. Yes, they thought more than one hundred thousand marchers would show up, but did they know for sure?

About 4,000 troops at Fort Myer, two miles outside the District, stood ready for quick deployment, and 15,000 paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division, based in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, were prepared to fly into action.

Atop the Lincoln Memorial, Justice Department officials positioned cameras so they could surveil the crowd, and Army officers crouched into secret positions.

And yet there had never been a larger security operation than the one planned for the upcoming march. Some folks cried foul, suggesting that the massive operation was the result of a racist belief that large crowds of Black people would inevitably become unruly.

“Those were crowds of spectators,” he said. “We do not expect any spectators during the march. They will all be participants, on one side or the other, or they would not be there.” Do you find his statement convincing? Or do you believe the massive security operation was a manifestation of racism?

A day earlier, the group had staged a protest in nearby Rockville, Maryland, wearing their full stormtrooper regalia—brown uniforms and hats, black belts and boots, and swastikas—but this morning they were in regular clothes.

Rockwell had applied for a permit to hold a counterdemonstration at the march, but the city promptly denied it, leaving the American Nazis to be nothing more than spectators.

Nevertheless, the Nazi leader claimed that he oversaw about a hundred security troops who would infiltrate the march and be on the lookout for trouble.

“My men will aid the police in suppressing the black mob,” Rockwell said.

But thousands upon thousands of marchers were well on their way—on 2,173 buses, 21 chartered trains, 6 chartered planes, and an unknown number of cars, motorcycles, and bikes.

It will be orderly, but not subservient.

It will be outspoken, but not raucous.

The purpose of the walk was to demonstrate solidarity with the upcoming March on Washington.

At the embassy, the group presented a US official with a fifteen-foot-long scroll signed by hundreds of Americans living abroad. The scroll denounced segregation, endorsed the march, and called for passage of the civil rights bill.

Nearby, transportation director Rachelle Horowitz took calls from travelers who were stranded with broken-down vehicles, or who had some other vexing problem.

On a street near the Monument, Black reporter Malverse Nicholson watched long lines at food trucks and concession stands selling hot dogs, soda, and chips.

He was, by all counts, one of those militant SNCC workers who sacrificed their livelihoods—and their lives—for the sake of Black freedom.

They knew it was legal for drivers to make them surrender their seats in the “whites only” section, but they still resented the injustice.

But your presence here today testifies that no child will have to walk alone through a mob in any city or hamlet of this country because you will be there walking with them.

On the fringes of the massive crowd, American Nazi leader George Lincoln Rockwell ranted and raged about Black people.

Republican Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois said he would not support the bill if it required the elimination of segregation in places like stores, restaurants, and hotels. That type of requirement would infringe on an owner’s right to conduct business as they chose, he claimed.

Jack Roosevelt Robinson—who had cracked the racial barrier in Major League Baseball in 1947—draped his big arm over his son David’s shoulder, and together they made a beeline for Independence Avenue.

There, about sixteen people stood abreast in the front line of marchers.

A somber group carried a coffin draped with the Confederate flag. “Jim Crow Is Dead,” an unofficial sign explained.

At least two hundred domestic workers from New York City—Black women who cleaned the homes of wealthy white people—proudly marched under the banner of the National Domestic and Migrant Workers Association.

Perhaps the people remembered that the Big Ten had called for the march to be “a solemn and dignified tribute” to Medgar Evers, William Moore, Herbert Lee, and thousands of others who had died in pursuit of racial equality.

There were no official signs with the names of the dead, but as marchers drew near the Lincoln Memorial, they could see a crude wooden sign displaying a poem honoring Medgar Evers.

Ole Glory’s tarnished with his blood
For having shabbily allowed
A noble son to be downtrod

Ole Glory’s tarnished with his blood
For having shabbily allowed
A noble son to be downtrod

She got beaten up in jail and sterilized in a Mississippi hospital when she went in for something else entirely.