MEMPHIANS MARCH
Mid-South participants say they’re ‘energized’
Mid-Southerners inspired by scene, speeches.
WASHINGTON — Retired Memphis steelworker Kermit Moore said Saturday he will return home “energized” to fight for justice because commemorating a speech made 50 years ago “is not enough.”
Moore, the A. Philip Randolph Institute’s local chapter president, spoke after hours of speechmaking at the Lincoln Memorial site of the 1963 March on Washington where tens of thousands gathered on a warm, sunny day.
“We have to go back and fight, not just celebrate, but reclaim what the march was all about 50 years ago,” Moore said. “It was not about a dream. It was about jobs and justice.”
Many Mid-Southerners in the friendly, relaxed atmosphere of what was by turns a revival meeting and a political rally said they came away inspired by both the diversity of the crowd and the wide array of issues raised — from “Stand Your Ground” laws and votersuppression efforts to the minimum wage, fracking, privatized prisons, drones, poverty and hunger.
“It was all so awesome,” said Glynn Reed, who watched it unfold sitting up under some shade
trees near the Reflecting Pool.
“I wasn’t supposed to be here, and I’m in tears right now,” said Reed, who is in her mid- 60s and lives in both Raleigh and New Orleans.
She suffers from pancreatic cancer and said she may be dead by Christmas because of it. “But I’m here. I made it. If I don’t do anything else, I made it to this one.”
Others were similarly overwhelmed.
“My impression was, and I’ve been to several, this was the most eventful, attitude- and spiritual-changing experiences I’ve ever had,” said the Rev. John Douglass Gray, the pastor of a progressive Baptist church in Holly Springs.
“I really believe the majority of the crowd will leave here and go back to their homes and communities and at least attempt to make a policy change,” Gray added. “People who have been casual about things will be more engaged” in issues such as voter registration. And he predicted they’ll be “more understanding of other cultures,” including those of Muslims and homosexuals.
Just a sampling of causes raised on placards in the crowd included “End Mass Incarceration,” “Dr. King’s Legacy: Jobs Not War,” “No Uranium Mining,” “D.C. Statehood,” “I AM A MAN” from the Memphis sanitation workers strike, and “Justice for Trayvon” Martin, whose mother spoke toward the end of the proceedings Saturday.
Brothers Noah and Giles Foster, 10 and 9, from Cleveland, Ohio, sold $10 “Don’t Shoot. I Have a Future” T-shirts “’cause young African Americans like us, like Trayvon Martin,” are getting killed, Giles explained.
In an effort to keep to a tight schedule, many of the speeches by labor leaders and politicians were cut off mid- sentence with “wrap-it-up” music from a live band. But not for Georgia Congressman John Lewis, who spoke at the 1963 march and thundered, among others, a demand to restore the Voting Rights Act.
Al Sharpton’s fiery rhetoric got the crowd to its feet. Many said they were favorably impressed by a sometimes-lackluster speaker named Martin Luther King III. Others said they were happy to see the Rev. Joseph Lowery, a Civil Rights icon and King contemporary, who got the crowd chanting, “We come to Washington to commemorate. We’re going back home to agitate.”
Taylor Davis, 19, a Bolton High School graduate and now a junior at Howard University, marched from the campus with 500 others and guessed the group picked up another 500 by the time it reached Constitution Avenue. They sang their alma mater’s song, with the refrain, “I’m so glad I go to Howard U … Glory hallelujah.” She said the march was “motivating, inspiring and humbling.”
Teacher David Johnson returns to Melrose High School with this message to his students: “I’m going to tell them they still have the opportunity to dream as big as they want but they have to work to have it.”
Fifty-five Mid-Southerners came up on a bus from the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel, including 82-year-old Velma Jones, who attended the 1963 event. Neither she nor Johnnie R. Turner, who also was here that year, could be reached immediately after Saturday’s events.
Grace Stewart, Ziara Smith and Anastasia Horton from the museum’s staff, wearing identical “It Was More Than a March” T-shirts, had a good view of the event from the south side of the Reflecting Pool and had their picture taken with an unfurled museum banner.
Smith, 25, from Bartlett, was making her first trip to the nation’s capital.
“Just to see all the different people, different races, different genders from all over the world to me is amazing,” said Smith. “It’s mind-blowing.”