Nearly half a century has passed since a quarter of a million people peacefully assembled in the nation’s capital for what would be the biggest civil rights demonstration of its time.
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was staged on Aug. 28, 1963, between the U.S. Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his historic “I have a dream” speech. The event was designed to heighten awareness of racial inequality in a country born on the premise that all men and women are created equal.
Among those in attendance were two teenaged girls from different states who would grow up to be civil rights leaders in Delaware County. Linda West Osinupebi, president of the Yeadon NAACP which she founded in 1996, was a 19-year-old Georgia resident when she boarded a bus at an Atlanta church for the long ride to Washington 50 years ago.
Media NAACP President Joan Duvall-Flynn was a 16-year-old resident of Sandusky, Ohio, when she and her sister caught a train in Toledo for the overnight trip to the nation’s capital in 1963.
Osinupebi, who had been subject to some of this country’s worst bigotry including being pummeled with rocks and gravel-packed rotten tomatoes at age 12 when she demonstrated outside the Atlanta capitol building with her big sister, was naturally wary of what she would encounter when she left the bus.
Because she was used to being told that she could not eat or even sit with white people, Osinupebi packed her own food for the trip to Washington. She stuck close to her sister and other church members not only because she did not want to get lost but because, she admitted, she was afraid.
Flynn, who also experienced discrimination in Sandusky where African-Americans were relegated to the poor side of town and not encouraged to advance their educations, was buoyed by the positive spirit on her “freedom train” but aware of the stern scrutiny of National Guardsmen in riot gear who lined Independence Avenue when she arrived in Washington. She said it made her aware of the fragility of life and just how precious it is.
As it turned out, Osinupebi and Flynn had nothing to fear that day in large part because the giant demonstration was so well coordinated by Bayard Rustin, a West Chester native who attended Cheyney University in Thornbury. He knew how it felt to be vulnerable.
Not only was Rustin an outspoken supporter of racial equality, he was an openly gay man who was jailed for his homosexuality in Pasadena, Calif., in 1953 and who was actually spurned by some of his civil rights associates because of his sexual orientation. On Aug. 8, he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama who noted, “As an openly gay African-American, Mr. Rustin stood at the intersection of several of the fights for equal rights.”
Rustin is credited with helping to imbue the concept of nonviolent protest in King who was on staff at Calvary Baptist Church in the city of Chester from 1948 to 1951 while studying at the old Crozer Theological Seminary in Upland. Rustin’s masterful coordination of the 1963 march on Washington provided a powerful platform for King’s historic speech.
Rustin and King essentially passed the torch for social justice onto people like Osinupebi and Flynn, who both have expressed concern that young people are not prepared to receive that torch. While the 1963 march on Washington helped produce such legislation as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, both are in constant danger of erosion as evidenced in June when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down an essential part of the Voting Rights Act.
The 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom should not just be an occasion for celebration, but an opportunity for all Americans to educate themselves about what led this country to mount such a strong stand for social justice. It is up to younger Americans to not let this country backslide into the pitfalls of bigotry and to build on the equal rights so hard won by their ancestors.
-- 21st Century Media:
The Delaware County Daily Times