Recommended Reading about a Movement Still Moving
While we’re working on a longer piece about the great March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom of August 28, 1963, we’d like to point you to some writings about the event that we think are worth spending some time with.
• Harold Meyerson at The American Prospect writes a good long piece about how socialists and labor union organized the event, “The Socialists Who Made the March on Washington.”
• Speaking of socialists, John Nichols at The Nation writes a strong piece making many of the same points and also focusing on labor leader A. Philip Randolph and the great organizer Bayard Rustin, “ ‘Timid Supplication for Justice Will Not Solve the Problem’.”
• The Atlantic shows some fine photographs from August 1963 in “An Intimate Look at the March on Washington.”
• Tomorrow (8/28) the Film Forum in New York City will show the 1970 documentary, “King: A Filmed Record . . . Montgomery to Memphis.” We’ve bought our tickets. Described by the Film Forum as “an epic record of the greatest American social movement of the 20th century, focusing on its greatest leader, all taken from news footage of the time. . . . Originally shown just once—across the country in hundreds of theaters in a single day—this unique record has been restored by the Library of Congress. Oscar-nominated for Best Documentary.”
And Also Recommended . . .
See our piece on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Medgar Evers, “In Honor of Medgar Evers and Res Publica” (6/12/13), which was only 2 1/2 months before the March on Washington.
Supreme Conservatives Drag U.S. Ceaselessly into the (Jim Crow) Past
The (GOP-Driven) Decline of Black Power in the South
How the World Has—and Has Not—Changed in 50 Years: Portraits of Courage, Struggle, and Defiance
“There Is a Creative Force in This Universe”: The Poor People’s Campaign, 40 Years before Occupy Wall Street
RFK, MLK: “This mindless menace of violence in America”
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: January 15, 1929–April 4, 1968
“Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam”
Rev. King and Gun Violence: “Study War No More”
*