Beacon Broadside

Nobody Turn Me Around: A People's History of the 1963 March on Washington

Now available in paperback: Nobody Turn Me Around: A People's History of the 1963 March on Washington by Charles Euchner, a dramatic account of the 1963 March on Washington--the demonstration that changed America.

On August 28, 1963, over a quarter-million people-two-thirds black and one-third white-held the greatest civil rights demonstration ever. In this major reinterpretation of the Great Day-the peak of the movement-Charles Euchner brings back the tension and promise of the march. Building on countless interviews, archives, FBI files, and private recordings, this hour-by-hour account offers intimate glimpses into the lives of those key players and ordinary people who converged on the National Mall to fight for civil rights in the March on Washington.

Listen to Charles Euchner talk about his book on Weekend All Things Considered.

Read an excerpt of Nobody Turn Me Around here or on Scribd

Righteous and Open For All To See: The Civil Rights Movement and FBI Informants

Charles Euchner is the author of Nobody Turn Me Around: A People's History of the 1963 March on Washington. He teaches writing at Yale University and was the founding executive director of the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston at Harvard University.

The hearts of veterans of the civil rights community broke this week when the Memphis Commercial Appeal reported that Ernest Withers, the photographer who created some of the lasting images of the movement, was a paid informant for the FBI. 

Withers took some of the pictures that we remember most about that long-ago but still-present era when blacks struggled to break the back of a terrorist state and win their full rights as citizens. They marched and got beaten by mobs and cops. They signed up to vote and they lost their jobs and homes. They sang and they got thrown into jail. They spoke up and their churches and homes got shot at and burned. 

Withers documented the trial in the Emmett Till case in 1955 and the planning for the Poor People's March in 1968. He took pictures of Martin Luther King marching, riding a bus in Montgomery after the boycott, relaxing behind closed doors before his death. He took the iconic picture of sanitation workers marching in Memphis, bearing the signs "I Am A Man," in the days before King's assassination. He recorded demonstrations all over. He took pictures of those quintessential American institutions, jazz and baseball, which gave expression to black aspirations even while holding blacks down. 

And now, after combing documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and matching reports of an informant named in FBI files as ME 338-R with a memo matching Withers to that tag, the Commercial Appeal reveals that Withers gave the FBI hounds information that J. Edgar Hoover and his henchmen could use to disrupt the civil rights and peace movements. The period of Withers's activity is not clear; so far it looks like Withers worked for the FBI from 1968 to 1970. 

Beck, King, and Nonviolence

From the Washington Post's Political Bookworm Blog:

It’s not exactly a memorable anniversary year – not the 25th, or 50th, or 75th year since Martin Luther King’s memorable “I Have a Dream Speech.” It’s the 47th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington on Saturday, and this one may become memorable because in this highly charged election year, the day is being claimed from opposite sides of the political spectrum. Charles Euchner has chronicled the actual day more than 40 years ago (and less than 50) in “Nobody Turn Me Around: A People’s History of the 1963 March on Washington,” released this month by Beacon Press. Here, Euchner, who teaches writing at Yale University and is the author of eight books, reflects on the competing commemorations taking place in Washington this weekend.

Euchner says of the 1963 March:

On that long-ago August afternoon, order prevailed. Americans watching live TV coverage -- the first time anyone ever saw the movement gather together -- witnessed a joyous but determined crowd. One commentator likened it to a church picnic, but it was more than that. With their numbers, marchers presented a “living petition.” Marchers served notice, in King’s words, that they “can never be satisfied” until gaining their full rights as citizens.

But marchers knew they had to avoid responding to violence with violence -- or even returning the vitriol of their foes. When they were attacked or slandered, they were taught to turn away. Only by focusing on higher values -- universal values -- could they succeed.

Read the rest here. And read an excerpt from Nobody Turn Me Around on Scribd.

Excerpt: Roy Wilkins’s Reluctant Tribute to W.E.B. Du Bois

This Saturday, August 28th, marks the 47th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington. Yesterday, we posted a copy of Martin Luther King Jr.'s program from the March, on which was written a note about the death of W. E. B. Du Bois. Today, we post an excerpt from Nobody Turn Me Around: A People's History of the 1963 March on Washington by Charles Euchner.

   W. E. B. DuBois

Western Union had delivered hundreds of telegrams of congratulations to the March on Washington tent. One came from W. E. B. Du Bois.

"One thing alone I charge you, as you live, believe in Life!" Du Bois said in a final message composed two months before, during his final illness. "Always human beings will live and progress to greater, broader and fuller life. The only possible death is to lose belief in this truth simply because the Great End comes slowly, because time is long."

Then came the news that Du Bois had died the day before in Accra, Ghana, at the age of ninety-five. Maya Angelou led a group of Americans and Ghanaians to the U.S. embassy in Accra, carrying torches and placards reading "Down with American Apartheid" and "America, a White Man's Heaven and a Black Man's Hell."

In Washington, the news fluttered through the audience and onto the platform.

Over a seventy-year career, Du Bois took every conceivable approach to the race problem. He was a provocative propagandist and measured scholar. He was for integration and then for separation. He believed in the American dream and disdained it. He believed in the power of politics and the ambiguity of culture. He brawled and he stood aloof. He embraced indigenous liberation and global communism.

Du Bois wrote thirty-eight books on the experience of race—on slavery and reconstruction, rebellion and war, psychology and economics, America and Africa, war and democracy, ideology and crime. He wrote thousands of articles and reports. He debated Booker T. Washington and coined the expression "the talented tenth," to describe the vanguard that could lead the black race out of bondage. As an American facing the cruelty and degradation of Jim Crow, Du Bois embraced the pan-African ideal of a global race.

Lifetimes ago, in 1909, Du Bois helped create the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He left the NAACP in 1948 when he was rebuked for holding a civil rights march in Washington. In 1961 he became a Communist Party member, renounced his American citizenship, and became a citizen of Ghana.

When Bayard Rustin got news of Du Bois's death, he worked his way across the crowded stage to deliver the news to Roy Wilkins. As the head of the NAACP, surely Wilkins would want to say a few words about this historic figure.

Link Roundup

From excerpts to interviews, blog posts to online forums… Here are just a few updates from this week.

Gail Dines, author of Pornland, appeared on CNN News and in the Boston Globe this week, discussing "gonzo" pornography's grip on the young minds of an entire generation. Dines was also mentioned in a recent article on the website Independent Woman which discussed how porn addiction can ruin a marriage.

"It's time for a spiritual awakening in which we turn from obsession with future salvation and begin to savor and save the world that we are in." Rev. Dr. Rebecca Parker, co author of A House for Hope, in "Oil Spill Spirituality" featured on the Washington Post's On Faith.

Charles Euchner received an amazing review in the Boston Globe for his book Nobody Turn Me Around documenting the 1963 march on Washington. "Euchner's true contribution is the panoramic view he affords of this pivotal event."

Are you a pink slip away from being uninsured? Danielle Ofri talks about a new class of patient: recently laid-off without insurance.  

Fred Pearce and his latest book, The Coming Population Crash, were featured on PRI's The World. Join in on the conversation with an online forum with Pearce at PRI's The World Science.

In his book, The Boys from Little Mexico: A Season Chasing the American Dream, Steve Wilson portrays an all-Hispanic boys' soccer team as they push forward to win the Oregon state championship. An excerpt, complete with brilliant photos, can be found at This Is American Soccer, and a wonderful review appeared on the Aztexan blog.

Dylan Edwards, who is at work on a graphic book about genderqueers and FTM transsexuals, had his picture snapped at Comic-Con and is part of this great roundup of LGBT comics folks at the Prism Comics blog.