Fifty Years On

A  L  O  H  A !

Fifty years ago 

yesterday, 

over 250,000 civil-rights 

marchers came to Washington DC.

To march for jobs, voting rights,

 and social equality.

The marchers, from all over America, 

heard Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s

 “I Have a Dream” speech that day.

But the TV news cameras

 had already left.

 Those famous words were NOT 

in the written speech,

or prominently reported. 

Majorities of white Americans

 around that time told pollsters

 they thought that

 Dr. King 

was a troublemaker. 

"  - We would do well to recall

 that day itself also belonged 

to those ordinary people 

whose names never appeared

 in the history books,

 never got on TV.

Many had gone to segregated schools

 and sat at segregated lunch counters,

 had lived in towns where they couldn't vote,

 in cities where their votes didn't matter.

 There were couples in love who couldn't marry, 

soldiers who fought for freedom abroad 

that they found denied to them at home. 

They had seen loved ones beaten 

and children fire- hosed. 

And they had every reason 

to lash out in anger 

or resign themselves to a bitter fate.

And yet they chose a different path. 

In the face of hatred, 

they prayed for their tormentors. 

In the face of violence, 

they stood up and sat in 

with the moral force of nonviolence.

 Because they marched, 

America became more free 

and more fair, 

not just for African-Americans 

but for women and Latinos, 

Asians and Native Americans, 

for Catholics, Jews 

and Muslims, 

for gays, 

for Americans with disabilities.

America changed 

for you and for me.

And the entire world 

drew strength from that example, "

President Obama

Yesterday,

 50th anniversary 

of the March on Washington

50 years. Half a Century.

It has been a long road.

I was glad to be a child,

too young to face the terrors

of a ride a bus through angry counties,

to register voters, to face police dogs,

spittle, shouts, shots, fire, explosion,

like Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney

had. Link

Thank You for sharing my memories,
for listening to my experience
of history;
and thanks for 
sharing Your Own!

Your Friend, cloudia