Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 29, 1993 TAG: 9308290162
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: From The Baltimore Sun and Boston Globe
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
But their numbers did not equal the hundreds of thousands who stood shoulder to shoulder on the Capital Mall in 1963 and listened to the legendary call for justice and equality by King and others.
Although the rally's organizers claimed the attendance matched that of 1963, the National Park Service estimated that 75,000 people braved the stifling and heat and humidity to show their support. About 250,000 demonstrators marched three decades ago.
As in 1963, however, the crowds stood on the steps of the Memorial and lined the meadow along the Reflecting Pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Many sought shelter in the shade of the trees along the Mall's edge.
The message from dozens of prominent speakers was clear: Despite three decades of progress, far too little has changed for working poor people and minorities in this country.
"Thirty years ago we couldn't check into a Hyatt or a Hilton hotel. Today we all have the right to check in but few of us have the means to check out," said the Rev. Joseph Lowery, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, in the most rousing speech of the daylong rally for "Jobs, Justice and Peace."
Jesse Jackson, who was an aide to King, said, "The day is hot, the road is long, the mountain too steep, the people too tired and the powerful too distant. . . . When we came here 30 years ago, we had no right to vote. We've come a long way, but we cannot stop now."
Jackson charged that "once again, the check has bounced," and said, "A young president cannot deliver."
Some demonstrators expressed disappointment that President Clinton, vacationing in Martha's Vineyard, Mass., did not meet with them, as John F. Kennedy did in 1963.
NAACP Executive Director Benjamin Chavis Jr. did not criticize Clinton for taking a break but noted that "Most of the marchers here today voted for you. Mr. President, when you come home from your vacation, there is another vineyard in the `hood. We want you to hear us, Mr. President."
In a statement delivered on his behalf, Clinton said, "As a son of the South, I have seen in my own lifetime how racism held all of us down and how the civil rights movement set all of us free."
In a pointed effort to assuage march organizers, Clinton devoted his entire weekly radio address Saturday to commemorating King's dream for "equality, brotherhood and the need to make real the promises of democracy."
Yet a central part of Clinton's message - the importance of Congress passing the North American Free Trade Agreement - clashed sharply with a dominant theme of Saturday's march: the determined opposition of organized labor and other Democratic groups to the proposed trade pact that would gradually eliminate trade barriers among Canada, Mexico and the United States.
Organized labor fielded one of the largest contingents in the march, with members coming from unions including the United Auto Workers, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the American Federation of State, Federal and Municipal Employees.
Some marchers carried signs demanding statehood for the District of Columbia. Other placards represented gays and lesbians, Asian Americans, Hispanics, animal rights activists and socialists.
In the weeks leading up to the rally, some observers expressed doubts about whether the march's focus was lost as its agenda grew.
Shirley Sears Smith, a Washington resident, was at the 1963 march and said she noticed differences between then and now.
"It was packed then," she said. "There was a hunger, too, and an unspoken assumption that everyone was here for the same reasons - equal rights, equal compensation and job opportunities for black people."
Saturday, Smith said, "the mood isn't the same. The young people don't have the same drive and the same fever." In 1963, she said, "individual groups represented a whole. Today, it's individual groups representing individual concerns."
by CNB