August 29, 2013

By Xavier Higgs

LAWT Contributing Writer

As the nation paid tribute to the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington, Southern California was able to commemorated iconic event in a unique way.

Using the Online Engagement Experience, PBS viewers were able to converse electronically while watching PBS. The 52-minute online event originated from the KOCE studio in Costa Mesa, CA. It gave online participants the opportunity to ask questions of a panel that included Bobby McDonald, President of the Black Chamber Orange County, Dr. Patricia Adelekan, retired educator, and Rev. Elmer Redding, Assistant Pastor Bryant Temple A.M.E. Church.

“We want to highlight the 50th Anniversary of the March, and remind people of that experience,” says McDonald. 

He added that PBS SoCal wanted to use new technology to allow more people to be engaged.

Dr. Adelekan recalled meeting Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who would often visit her hometown of Columbus, Ohio at the Mt. Olivet Baptist Church. She said it was during one of his visits in early 1963 he announced the plan for a March on Washington to bring to the attention a need for justice and equality for minorities in this country.

The scripted program seem to flow including the panel discussions, segments about the creation of the MLK Memorial on the Washington Memorial, as well as questions originating from a companion event at the California African American Museum in Los Angeles.

Rev. Redding and Dr. Adelekan attended the March on Washington in 1963. Both remembered how dissatisfied most African Americans were with the state of affairs in America.

Ironically, at that time, neither of them was fully aware of the historical significance of the March.

Rev. Redding was 11 years old, and was taking to the March by his father who insisted they attend.

“We push our way as close to the Lincoln Memorial as we could, says Rev. Redding.” They arrive just in time to hear Mahalia Jackson singing and just before Dr. Martin Luther King speech.

August 29, 2013

By Kevin Liptak

CNN Wire Service

A jury’s decision in July to acquit George Zimmerman in the murder of Trayvon Martin represented “questionable judgment,” former Secretary of State Colin Powell said in an interview aired Sunday.

But the retired four-star general, who was the first African-American to serve in the top U.S. diplomatic post, went on to suggest the case wouldn’t have a lasting impact on Americans’ lives.

“I don’t know if it will have staying power,” he said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

“These cases come along, and they blaze across the midnight sky and then after a period of time, they’re forgotten,” he said.

Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer who fatally shot Martin in February 2012, was acquitted by a jury in July on state criminal charges. The case sparked a nationwide discussion of race. Martin was an unarmed black teenager, and Zimmerman identifies himself as Hispanic.

After the verdict, President Barack Obama delivered a personal statement about the case, delving deeply into issues of race and justice, and connecting the difficulties facing American-American men to situations he himself had faced.

Powell said Sunday he’d like Obama to “be more passionate about race questions.”

“In my lifetime, over a long career in public life, you know, I’ve been refused access to restaurants where I couldn’t eat, even though I just came back from Vietnam. ‘We can’t give you a hamburger, come back some other time,’” Powell said, adding that while progress has been made toward racial equality, there is still work to be done.

“We’re not there yet,” he said. “And so we’ve got to keep working on it. And for the president to speak out on it is appropriate. I think all leaders, black and white, should speak out on this issue.”

August 29, 2013

By Gregory Dale

Special to the NNPA from the Afro-American Newspaper

At the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington, a host of dignitaries lined the stage situated at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Under clear blue skies, leaders discussed why they’re still marching a half century later.

Martin Luther King Jr. III took the stage roughly at 12:43 pm. In a tone that eerily mirrored his father’s, he discussed how America needs a new plan to provide jobs in the wake of a struggling economy.

He also called for the end of senseless violence around the country.

“My father [Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.] sought the blood of the community. No more Newtowns, no more Columbines and no more violence in Chicago,” he said. “We need to keep on walking, keep on talking and keep on educating.”

Shortly thereafter, National Action Network (NAN) leader Al Sharpton took the stage and opened by discussing the struggles Black participants in the ’63 march faced just to make it to the Nation’s Capital.

“Fifty years ago, some came to Washington and rode on the back of the bus. Some couldn’t stay in hotel rooms and had to sleep in cars,” he said.

He later urged generations young and old to come together and fight for injustices and social ills around the nation.

After Sharpton’s speech the crowd exploded in applause and cheers.

August 29, 2013

By Xavier Higgs

LAWT Contributing Writer

It was probably the most famous mass rally in U.S. history.

A defining moment in the American civil rights movement came in the midst of the long hot summer of 1963, the  “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom,” was a pivotal point for social change in America.

The March on Washington transformed the political climate of this nation. A crowd of more than 250,000 people gathered for the largest demonstration ever seen in the nation's capital. The rally at the National Mall included the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who gave his “I Have A Dream” speech.

The march received extensive media attention, including live international television coverage. The mass protest helped strengthen the most critical social legislation in the nation’s history and was followed by the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

1963 was noted for racial unrest and civil rights demonstrations. A nationwide outrage was sparked by media coverage of police actions against protesters in Birmingham, Alabama and the Ku Klux Klan bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church.

Simeon Booker, first black staff reporter for the Washington Post, was a reporter for Ebony and Jet magazine during the march.

“It was a very inspiring experience,” says Booker.

In retrospect he said it was a terrific assignment.

“But it was a very unusual event and momentous occasion,’ said Booker.

In his book, “Shocking The Conscience, A Report’s Account of the Civil Rights Movement”, he remembers the fears that preceded the march was never realized.

Not everybody who attended the march was fully aware of its significance. It's been a 50 years since Elmer B. Redding, 62, who lived in Baltimore was taken by his father to Washington D.C.

At 11 years old, he had no idea about the march until his father insisted on attending.

“It’s a historical event” he needed to see. Redding recalls, “Where there was grass there were people. We push our way as close to the Lincoln Memorial as we could.”

He also remembered hearing Mahalia Jackson singing. 

But as Martin Luther King, Jr. was introduced there was calm that settled over the crowd. “People gave direct attention to what was going on,” Says Redding. He did not understand what was going on.

Carol Redding, 65, Elmer’s wife grew up in D.C says she also “remembers how mesmerize everybody seem to be as Dr. King spoke.

Meanwhile the march highlighted unrealized goals.

Between 1955 and 1962, African Americans were determined through immense campaigns aimed at dismantling segregation, and the demand for federal civil rights legislation. These efforts were stalled due to political avoidance by the John F. Kennedy administration, southern segregationist influence, and northern apathy.

Dr. Terrence Roberts, one of the Little Rock Nine, was 22 years old in 1963. Since the Littler Rock incident in 1957 the country was beginning to see the emergence of the new civil rights movement.

“It was my understanding that this fight for equality had taken on new life,” says Dr. Roberts.

At that time people were beginning to question the status quo and finding new ways of building opportunities for more people.

Although he didn’t understand at the time, he concludes, “racism isn’t the biggest problem. The biggest problem is the advantage taken by people for their own economic benefit.”

He adds that being in Little Rock or Los Angeles didn’t make any difference because the situation was virtually the same.“It was always the have’s, mainly white, and the have not’s, the people of color.”

As it turns out, the march became more of a show of solidarity and hope, and became the impetus of a long line of Americans taking social change to the streets.