This worksheet aligns to Common Core Literacy Standards in History/Social Studies:
• RHSS.6-8.6. Identify aspects of a text that reveal an author’s point of view or purpose (e.g., loaded language, inclusion or avoidance of particular facts).
• RHSS.6-8.4. Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including vocabulary specific to domains related to history/social studies.
• RHSS.6-8.2. Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary of the source distinct from prior knowledge or opinions.
In May 1941, as the United States mobilized for World War II, black labor activist A. Philip Randolph threatened an "'all out' thundering march on Washington" to protest ongoing job discrimination in government agencies and defense industries. Randolph, the founder of the nation's first and largest black labor organization, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and fellow activist Bayard Rustin used grassroots techniques to found hundreds of March on Washington Movement chapters around the country. Planners estimated that 100,000 people would converge on the nation's capital in July.Â
Randolph's plan convinced President Roosevelt to issue an executive order on June 25, 1941, six days before the march was to occur. Declaring "there shall be no discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries or government because of race, creed, color, or national origin," Roosevelt also set up the Fair Employment Practices Commission to enforce the order. The planned march was canceled after Roosevelt signed the Fair Employment Act; the armed forces would remain segregated until after the war.Â
Although the 1941 march was never held, the activists involved in its planning remained committed to the idea of a national march in Washington, D.C. as a strategy to draw attention to civil rights issues. In 1963, Randolph and Rustin led a coalition of labor and civil rights organizations to hold a 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Rustin was instrumental behind the scenes to accommodate the competing demands of the march's participants and to ensure the nationwide grassroots planning to ensure that people showed up. In August of that year, 250,000 people marched on Washington. They convened in front of the Lincoln Memorial to hear Martin Luther King, Jr., deliver his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. Shortly after the March, President John F. Kennedy announced his support for a civil rights bill. A year later, following Kennedy's assassination, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Bill, which outlawed discrimination in public accommodations based on race.Â
The legacy of the March on Washington Movement is evident in many post-1963 political and social movements. Throughout the 1960s, anti-war, anti-poverty, and civil rights groups staged marches in Washington, D.C. In 1995, black leaders held a "Million Man March" and called for "unity, atonement, and brotherhood." Two years later, black women's groups staged a "Million Women's March." In 2010, conservative radio and television personality Glenn Beck drew between 78,000 and 96,000 to a "Rally to Restore America" on the anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington.Â
Negro women, historically, have carried the dual burden of Jim Crow and Jane Crow. They have not always carried it graciously but they have carried it effectively... In the course of their climb, Negro women have had to fight against the stereotypes of "female dominance" on the one hand and loose morals on the other hand, both growing out of the roles forced upon them during the slavery experience and its aftermath. But out of their struggle for human dignity, they also developed a tradition of independence and self-reliance...
In the human rights battle, America has seen the image of the Negro evolving through many women... Not only have women whose names are well known given this great human effort its peculiar vitality but women in the many communities whose names will never be known have revealed the courage and strength of the Negro woman. These are the mothers who have stood in school yards with their children, many times alone. These are the images which have touched America's heart. Painful as these experiences have been, one cannot help asking: would the Negro struggle have come this far without the indomitable determination of its women?
Recent disquieting events have made imperative an assessment of the role of the Negro woman in the quest for equality. The civil rights revolt, like many social upheavals, has released powerful pent-up emotions, cross currents, rivalries and hostilities... There is much jockeying for position as ambitious men push and elbow that way to leadership roles...
What emerges most clearly from events of the past several months is the tendency to assign women to a secondary, ornamental or "honoree" role instead of the partnership role in the civil rights movement which they have earned by their courage, intelligence, and dedication. It was bitterly humiliating for Negro women on August 28 to see themselves accorded little more than token recognition in the historic March on Washington. Not a single woman was invited to make one of the major speeches or to be part of the delegation of leaders who went to the White House. This omission was deliberate. Representations for recognition of women were made to the policy-making body sufficiently in advance of the August 28 arrangements to have permitted the necessary adjustments of the program. What the Negro women leaders were told is revealing: that no representation was given to them because they would not be able to agree on a delegate. How familiar was this excuse! It is a typical response from an entrenched power group...
Dear fellow Negro Americans, be not dismayed by these terrible times. You possess power, great power. Our problem is to harness and hitch it up for action on the broadest, daring and most gigantic scale.
In this period of power politics, nothing counts but pressure, more pressure, and still more pressure, through the tactic and strategy of broad, organized, aggressive mass action behind the vital and important issues of the Negro. To this end, we propose that ten thousand Negroes MARCH ON WASHINGTON FOR JOBS IN NATIONAL DEFENSE AND EQUAL INTEGRATION IN THE FIGHTING FORCES OF THE UNITED STATES.
An "all-out" thundering march on Washington, ending in a monster and huge demonstration at Lincoln's Monument will shake up white America.
It will shake up official Washington.
It will give encouragement to our white friends to fight all the harder by our side, with us, for our righteous cause.
It will gain respect for the Negro people.
It will create a new sense of self-respect among Negroes.
But what of national unity?
We believe in national unity which recognizes equal opportunity of black and white citizens to jobs in national defense and the armed forces, and in all other institutions and endeavors in America. We condemn all dictatorships, Fascist, Nazi and Communist. We are loyal, patriotic Americans all.
But if American democracy will not defend its defenders; if American democracy will not protect its protectors; if American democracy will not give jobs to its toilers because of race or color; if American democracy will not insure equality of opportunity, freedom and justice to its citizens, black and white, it is a hollow mockery and belies the principles for which it is supposed to stand. . . .
Today we call on President Roosevelt, a great humanitarian and idealist, to . . . free American Negro citizens of the stigma, humiliation and insult of discrimination and Jim-Crowism in Government departments and national defense.
The Federal Government cannot with clear conscience call upon private industry and labor unions to abolish discrimination based on race and color as long as it practices discrimination itself against Negro Americans.