As fate would have it, Senator Barack Obama will receive his party’s presidential nomination on the anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington. The symbolism of the moment has not been missed by the Democratic Party’s leadership and rank-and-file. Even mainstream news pundits have gone out of their way to connect Senator Obama’s nomination to the Civil Rights Movement. The expectation is that Obama will deliver an acceptance speech that will carry the gravitas of King’s historic address in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
In most potted histories of the Civil Rights Movement, Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech is treated as the watershed moment in the movement—as if the movement came to a grinding halt and racial integration was fully achieved when all left the lawn that hot afternoon in August of 1963. In reality for King and many black leaders in this country, the March on Washington only put into critical focus the difficulty they faced in the struggle for racial and social justice in this country.
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