No presidents or politicians lined up to speak during the 1963 March on Washington when an interracial crowd gathered to demand equality. Today, President Obama will speak to pay tribute to the marchers, as well as former presidents, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. 
(L-R) John Mbugua and his son Giovanni Mbugua, 6, of San Jose, Calif., and Lavon Johnson and his son Mason Johnson, 2, of Fort Meade, Md., hold hands while marching with thousands of other people from Capitol Hill to the Lincoln Memorial during the 50th anniversary of the historic March on Washington, Aug., 28, 2013, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Hundreds of thousands flocked to the Washington Mall Wednesday to pay tribute to a moment 50 years ago when Americans marched for racial equality and economic justice, and a little known clergyman from Georgia would emerge as the most powerful voice in the movement for black rights.
“The movement was radical, it was unprecedented for there to be such a mass demonstration, an interracial mass demonstration in Washington, D.C. The climate was tense at the time,” Urban League President Marc Morial said on MSNBC Wednesday. “There were critics both from Dixiecrats and Southern right-wingers, as well as those in the civil rights movement and President Kennedy who feared the march would backfire. History tells us another story.”
That march was radical, both in the marchers’ demands for racial equality and their display of interracial solidarity, particularly in the nation’s capital, which had only recently officially desegregated. No presidents or politicians would speak, but Southern Christian Leadership Conference leader Martin Luther King Jr. gave his speech envisioning a society free of racism, a dream of a society where people would “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
A different crowd gathered Wednesday morning, for a different set of speakers. Most of America accepted, at least in principle, the idea of racial equality under the law. Where in 1963 even liberal politicians like Kennedy kept their distance from the march, today President Barack Obama will speak to pay tribute to the marchers. Alongside him will be two other former presidents, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. John Lewis, who spoke in 1963 as a young nonviolent activist, returns as a U.S. Congressman from the state of Georgia. Celebrities like Jamie Foxx and Oprah Winfrey hold speaking slots alongside activists like NAACP President Benjamin Jealous, Children’s Defense Fund president Marian Wright Edelman and Sofia Campos of United We Dream are also slated to speak.
King’s speech described a dream of a society to come, but it also spoke of one deferred. He described the Constitution as a “promissory note,” for “the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” one that came back “marked ‘insufficient funds’” when black Americans came to cash it.
Though the edifice of Jim Crow has been torn down and the campaign of racist terror that protected it is now a thing of the past, speakers at the 2013 commemoration proclaimed that there was still more work to do to secure equality for all Americans regardless of race.
“Fifty years later, we’re still here trying to cash that bad check,” said former Ambassador Andrew Young, one of King’s closest lieutenants, Wednesday morning. “Fifty years later, we’re still dealing with all kinds of problems. And so we’re not here to claim any victory. We’re here to simply say that the struggle continues.”