Ideas, opinions, and personal essays from respected writers, thinkers, and activists. A project of Beacon Press, an independent publisher of progressive ideas since 1854.
We continue our Black History Month series by looking at Beacon's books covering the Civil Rights Era, in particular the work of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Often applauded as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s most incisive and eloquent book, Why We Can’t Wait recounts the Birmingham campaign in vivid detail, while underscoring why 1963 was such a crucial year for the civil rights movement. During this time, Birmingham, Alabama, was perhaps the most racially segregated city in the United States, but the campaign launched by Fred Shuttlesworth, King, and others demonstrated to the world the power of nonviolent direct action. King examines the history of the civil rights struggle and the tasks that future generations must accomplish to bring about full equality. The book also includes the extraordinary “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” which King wrote in April of 1963.
MLK: A Celebration in Word and Image is an unprecedented collection of black-and-white photographs combined with stirring quotations by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
This treasured collection includes images by legendary photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Bob Adelman, and Flip Schulke, and is an unparalleled photobiography that presents intimate moments from King's personal and public journey. We see King in all his manifestations-as a new father and doting husband, as a civil rights champion leading racial protests, and as a charismatic speaker preaching electrifying sermons. Triumphant events like King delivering his "I Have a Dream" speech and marching in Montgomery are beautifully captured, as are private moments of him reflecting on his Nobel Peace Prize or working in his study.
Threaded together, these words and images chronicle how Dr. King was not only a driving force for change but also a continually evolving individual. A collection to savor and celebrate, these great photographs are an enduring testament to the life and legacy of an international icon.
"The March on Washington was a demand to make the Constitution of the United States work for black people—to cash the blank check, as Dr. King put it that day …Euchner’s superb book brings it all back in vivid detail." -Roger Wilkins, author of Jefferson's Pillow
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Beacon Press has been working with the Estate of Martin Luther King Jr. on "The King Legacy," new editions of previously published King titles and new compilations of Dr. King's writings, sermons, orations, lectures, and prayers with scholarly introductions. In addition, we've just published Nobody Turn Me Around: A People's History of the 1963 March on Washington. So with the anniversary of the March this Saturday, August 28th, we've been thinking about what the March means to American History. This week, we'll publish a series of posts on the March on Beacon Broadside.
Sarah Overton at the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford sent us the following scans of King's program from the March, and they've kindly granted us permission to publish them here.
The image of the map of the March route contains a handwritten note from Clarence Jones, Scholar in Residence at at the King Institute and advisor, speech-writer, and friend to Dr. King. The note says:
Dear Martin--
Just learned that Dr. W. E. B. DuBois died last night in Ghana. Someone should make note of this fact.
Clarence
Transcription:
MARCH ON WASHINGTON FOR JOBS AND FREEDOM
AUGUST 28, 1963
LINCOLN MEMORIAL PROGRAM
1. The National Anthem Led by Marian Anderson (Note: Anderson did not get to the podium in time to perform, and Camilla Williams performed in her place. Anderson later sang "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands," which you can watch here.)
2. Invocation The Very Rev. Patrick O'Boyle, Archibishop of Washington
3. Opening Remarks A. Philip Randolph, Director March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
4. Remarks Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, State Clerk, United Presbyterian Church of the U.S.A.; Vice Chariman, Commission on Race Relations of the National Council of Churches of Christ in America.
5. Tribute to Negro Women Fighters for Freedom Mrs. Medgar Evers Daisy Bates Diane Nash Bevel Mrs. Medgar Evers Mrs. Herbert Lee Rosa Parks Gloria Richardson
6. Remarks John Lewis, National Chairman, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
7. Remarks Walter Reuther, President, United Automobile Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, AFL-CIO; Chairman, Industrial Union Department, AFL-CIO.
8. Remarks James Farmer, National Director, Council of Racial Equality
9. Selection Eva Jessye Choir (Note: Watch here, although this clip shows them singing just before Roy Wilkins speaks.)
10. Prayer Rabbi Uri MIller, President Synagogue Council of America.
11. Remarks Whitney M. Young, Jr., Executive Director, National Urban League.
12. Remarks Mathew Ahmann, Executive Director, National Catholic Conference for Interracial Justice.
13. Remarks Roy Wilkins, Executive Secretary, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
14. Selection Miss Mahalia Jackson (Note: Watch here.)
15. Remarks Rabbi Joachim Prinz, President American Jewish Congress.
16. Remarks The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., President, Southern Christian Leadership Conference. (Note: Watch below or on YouTube.)
17. The Pledge A. Philip Randolph
18. Benediction, Dr. Benjamin E. Mays, President, Morehouse College
"WE SHALL OVERCOME"
Statement by the heads of the ten organizations calling for discipline in connection with the Washington March of August 28, 1963.
"The Washington March of August 28th is more than just a demonstration.
"It was conceived as an outpouring of the deep feeling of millions of white and colored American citizens that the time has come for the Government of the United States of America, and particularly for the Congress of that government, to grant and guarantee complete equality in citizenship to the Negro minority of our population.
"As such, the Washington March is a living petition-in the flesh-of the scores of thousands of citizens of both races who will be present from all parts of our country.
"It will be orderly, but not subservient. It will be proud, but not arrogant. It will be nonwiolent, but not timid. It will be unified in purposes and behavior, not splintered into groups and individual competitors. It will be outspoken, but not raucous.
"It will have the dignity befitting a demonstration in behalf of the human rights of twenty millions of people, with the eye and the judgment of the world focused upon Washington, D.C., on August 28, l963.
"In a neighborhood dispute there may be stunts, rough words and even hot insults; but when a whole people speaks to its government, the dialogue and the action must be on a level reflecting the worth of that people and the responsibility of that government.
"We, the undersigned, who see the Washington March as wrapping up the dreams, hopes, ambitions, tears, and prayers of millions who have lived for this day, call upon the members, followers and well wishers of our several organizations to make the March a disciplined and purposeful demonstration.
"We call upon them all, black and white, to resist provocations to disorder and to violence.
"We ask them to remember that evil Persons are determined to smear this March and to discredit the cause of equality by deliberate efforts to stir disorder.
"We call for self-discipline, so that no one in our own ranks, however enthusiastic, shall be the spark for disorder.
"We call for resistance to the efforts of those who, while not enemies of the March as such, might seek to use it to advance causes not dedicated primarily to civil rights or to the welfare of our country.
"We ask each and every one in attendance in Washington or in spiritual attendance back home to place the Cause above all else.
"Do not permit a few irresponsible people to hang a new problem around our necks as we return home. Let's do what we came to do--place the national human rights problem squarely on the doorstep of the national Congress and of the Federal Government."
SIGNED:
Mathew Ahmann, Executive Director of the National Catholic Conference for Interracial Justice.
Reverend Eugene Carson Blake, Vice-Chairman of the Commission on Race Relations of the National Council of Churches of Christ in America.
James Farmer, National Director of the Congress of Racial Equality.
Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Rabbi Joachim Prinz, President American Jewish Congress.
A. Philip Randolph, President of the Negro American Labor Council.
Walter Reuther, President, United Automobile Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, AFL-CIO; Chairman, Industrial Union Department, AFL-CIO.
Roy Wilkins, Executive Secretary, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Whitney M. Young, Jr., Executive Director, National Urban League.
In addition, the March has been endorsed by major religious, fraternal, labor and civil rights organizations. A full list, too long to include here, will be published.
WHAT WE DEMAND*
1. Comprehensive and effective civil rights legislation from the present Congress--without compromise or filibuster-- to guarantee all
Americans
access to all public accommodations
decent housing
adequate and integrated education
the right to vote
2. Withholding of Federal funds from all programs in which discrimination exists.
3. Desegregation of all school districts in 1963.
4. Enforcement of the Fourteenth Amendment--reducing Congressional representation of states where citizens are disenfranchised.
5. A new Executive Order banning discrimination in all housing supported by federal funds.
6. Authority for the Attorney General to institute injunctive suits when any constitutional right is violated.
7. A massive federal program to train and place all unemployed workers--Negro and white--on meaningful and dignified jobs at decent wages.
8. A national minimum wage act that will give all Americans a decent standard of living. (Government surveys show that anything less than $2.00 an hour fails to do this.)
9. A broadened Fair Labor Standards Acts to include all areas of employment which are presently excluded.
10. A federal Fair Employment Practices Act barring discrimination by federal, state, and municipal governments, and by employers, contractors, employment agencies, and trade unions.
*Support of the March does not necessarily indicate endorsement of every demand listed. Some organizations have not had an opportunity to take an official position on all of the demands advocated here.
Many thanks to the King Institute, MLKJP, GAMK, Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers (Series I-IV), Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Inc., Atlanta, Ga. Be sure to visit their resources on the March on Washington on their website.
Listen to Stephen Puleo on WBUR's Radio Boston where he talks about his book, A City So Grand, documenting Boston's drastic changes and achievements between 1850 and 1900.
Say it ain't so, Susan! Our beloved Susan Campbell is shuttering the blog that shares its name with her book, Dating Jesus. You can still catch her on her Fear, Itself blog at the Hartford Courant website, but we'll miss her lively comment streams at DJ.
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."
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.
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About Beacon Broadside
Beacon Broadside, a project of Beacon Press, is an online venue for essays, news items, and dispatches from respected writers, thinkers, and activists about our times.
