Coming A Long Way & Hardly Any Way

A Reflection on the 60th Anniversary of the March on Washington

We’ve come a long way, and hardly anywhere at all.

Today marks the 60th Anniversary of the March on Washington. Most American don’t remember much about the march besides Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, but the march was not about only gathering for a sermon. The march was actually “The March of Washington for Jobs and Freedom.”

Marking the centennial signing of The Emancipation Proclamation, the point of the march was to advocate for civil right in the specific arena of economic justice. These civil rights were not merely for African-Americans, but for all the un- and under-employed. A full 25% of the attendees that day where not African-Americans, but resulted in the passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964

In recent years, that very act, passed nearly 60 years ago, has been attacked and under threat, and in some ways, undo. We’ve come a long way, and hardly anywhere at all.