Organizers remember the 'Dream'
By Bryan Long
CNN
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(CNN) -- Memories of the 1963 civil rights march on Washington are still vivid in the minds of its organizers.
Today the event is seen as a historic turning point in the civil rights movement. But on the morning of August 28 success was far from certain.
Civil rights activist the Rev. Walter Fauntroy said Martin Luther King, Jr., worked half the night on his speech. He didn't finish writing it until 4 a.m. and still he awoke with doubts. He was uncertain whether to include his dreams for America's future.
And event organizers were unsure how the local police would treat the crowd, whether the crowd would be peaceful and whether there would be a crowd at all.
John Lewis, 23, was the youngest of the six primary march organizers and represented the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee as president.
The most militant of the march's speakers, he castigated the Kennedy administration.
"In good conscience, we cannot support the administration's civil rights bill. ... This bill will not protect young children and old women from police dogs and fire hoses when engaging in peaceful demonstrations. ... Listen Mr. Kennedy, the black masses are on the march for jobs and for freedom."
He later became a Democratic congressman from Georgia.
"We all thought there would be 50,000 or 60,000 people," Lewis said. "I didn't have any idea that morning when I got up that it would turn out to be such a history making day."
More than 250,000 people gathered on the Mall in the nation's capital for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
'We didn't see too many people and our hearts were heavy'
The Rev. Joseph Lowery was vice president of the Southern Christian Leadership Council and was eventually elected the organization's third president.
Lowery arrived from Chicago early that morning and was nervous.
"We didn't see too many people and our hearts were heavy," he said.
"But when midday came you couldn't see the trees or the cars for the people in the streets, gathering in the city."
King was meeting with leaders of other organizations, who had previously worked separately toward common goals, when, "We looked up and the people were gone. The march had begun -- heading toward the Lincoln Memorial and we had to catch them.
"That was a joyous feeling," Lowery said.
King may have still been thinking about his speech as he marched toward the memorial.
Fauntroy, who was serving as director of the Washington bureau of the SCLC, said he heard King recite the "I have a dream" portion of his speech in Detroit, Michigan, just two weeks earlier where his words brought a crowded arena to its feet.
And Fauntroy wanted to hear King's dreams that day.
But King told his staff that he would not include the "I have a dream" portion when he addressed the Washington crowd.
King needed to trim an already long speech to the eight minutes he had been allotted by event co-chairmen. He finally spoke after dozens of others.
Fauntroy sensed the momentum building in King's speech.
Finally, nearing the end of what would be King's 18 minutes at the podium, Fauntroy yelled with others, "Dream a little Martin!"
"The people were so responsive that he just moved right into it," Fauntroy said.
Dorothy Height remembers the magnitude of the day even before King's speech.
"We had people of all backgrounds coming together -- all races, all creeds, all colors, all status in life," Height said. "And coming together there was a kind of quiet dignity and a kind of sense of caring and a feeling of joint responsibility."
She was the only woman in the inner circle of march planners. But that day she sat on the edges of the raised platform with the wives of other leaders.
She later become president of the National Council of Negro Women.
Lowery remembers a jubilant day.
"I think we were so overjoyed at the fact that people had come out -- black, white, red and brown -- from all around the country to support the civil rights struggle which was primarily mobilized in the South," he said. "It would no longer be a provincial or regional struggle but a national and universal struggle."
The movement had been building for years, but until August 28 even the leaders were not fully aware of the impact it was having.
"When we got to Washington that day and discovered people coming in trucks and buses and on planes, in cars, even some came on bicycles and skates -- we were overwhelmed by that response," Lowery said.
"We knew then that history was being made."
CNN.com writers Christy Oglesby and Thom Patterson contributed to this report.
