Social Welfare History Project Civil Rights Page 9

March on Washington, D.C.: Rev. King’s “I Have a Dream” Speech

On August 28, 1963, more than 250,000 people from across the nation came together in Washington, D.C. to peacefully demonstrate their support for the passage of a meaningful civil rights bill, an end to racial segregation in schools and the creation of jobs for the unemployed. It was the largest demonstration ever held in the nation’s capital, and one of the first to have extensive television coverage. The march is remembered too as the occasion for Reverend Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech.

March on Washington, DC: Lincoln Memorial Program

Original documents for the March on Washington For Jobs and Freedom

March on Washington, DC: Final Organization Plans

Original documents prepared for the March on Washington For Jobs and Freedom

Young, Whitney M. Jr

A noted civil rights leader and statesman, Young worked to eradicate discrimination against blacks and poor people. He served on numerous national boards and advisory committees and received many honorary degrees and awards —including the Medal of Freedom (1969), presented by President Lyndon Johnson—for his outstanding civil rights accomplishments.

Johnson, Cernoria M.

Cernoria Johnson was the director of the Washington office of the National Urban League from the late 1950’s to the early 1970’s where she was a close colleague of Whitney Young. During her years with the Urban League, she was involved with the development and passage of the Great Society legislation and she served on the first advisory committee to the Medicaid Program enacted in 1965.

Obtaining Civil Rights In Baltimore 1946-1960

Looking at the events as a whole there is no pattern in the changes. The differential pace of overcoming obstruction to change for the better continued even in circumstances where it was ordered by court action. As has been already noted, in 1947 the Baltimore School System received the Hollander award for promoting integration in the schools…

Civil Rights Movement

Although the roots of the civil rights movement go back to the 19th century, the movement peaked in the 1950s and 1960s. African American men and women, along with whites, organized and led the movement at national and local levels. They pursued their goals through legal means, negotiations, petitions, and nonviolent protest demonstrations.

American Social Policy in the 1960’s and 1970’s

As the decade of the 1960s began, the United States had the “highest mass standard of living” in world history.1 The strong American postwar economy of the late 1940s and 1950s continued into the 1960s.

Jim Crow Laws and Racial Segregation

Following the end of the Civil War and adoption of the 13th Amendment, many white southerners were dismayed by the prospect of living or working equally with Blacks, whom they considered inferior. In an effort to maintain the status quo, the majority of states and local communities passed “Jim Crow” laws that mandated “separate but equal” status for African Americans.