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Source: The Wisconsin State JournalAug.自存倉 25--Fifty years ago, Milele Chikasa Anana boarded a bus full of strangers in Boston with no real certainty she'd see her husband and two young children again.She was headed to the nation's capital for the March on Washington, a massive civil rights demonstration that many feared would end in violence, as had other events pushing for racial integration. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. would give his now-famous "I Have a Dream" speech there, but at the time, Anana said her motivation to attend was exasperation.She and others on the bus couldn't eat at restaurants along the route -- just one example of the discrimination blacks faced. Black churches fed them for free on the trip."I wasn't trying to make history, I was just tired of being a second-class citizen," said Anana, 79, who has lived in Madison for most of the past 45 years and publishes Umoja magazine, a monthly journal that focuses on positive news in the black community.The 50th anniversary of the march this Wednesday will be marked with a ceremony at the Lincoln Memorial. President Barack Obama is scheduled to speak. Anana plans to be there, too."What that march did for me was show me that democracy could work, because I'd just about lost faith," she said.Organizers of the Aug. 28, 1963, march initially predicted a turnout of about 100,000 people, a number that swelled to an estimated 250,000."It was more than double what was expected, and I think that surprised even those closely connected to the march," said UW-Madison history professor William P. Jones, author of "The March on Washington: Jobs, Freedom and the Forgotten History of Civil Rights," published in July.Local marchersMany traveled hundreds of miles, including a contingent from Madison. Thirty-eight people boarded a bus at Memorial Union the day before the march, each paying $26.90 for a round-trip ticket, according to a report at the time in The Capital Times newspaper.The march was such big news that the 38 travelers were listed by name on the newspaper's front page. Two-thirds were white, the newspaper reported. The Rev. George W. Vann, pastor of St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church, led the delegation, which included members of First Baptist Church and the Madison branch of the NAACP.Other Madison residents arrived at the march by other means. George Allez was a 27-year-old Madison filmmaker working for the summer in D.C. for U.S. Rep. Robert Kastenmeier, a Wisconsin Democrat. Allez remembers the intense chatter about the event in the weeks preceding the march."There was a great deal of opinion being expressed around water coolers and in the press about what kind of event it would be -- would it be a success, would people show up, would there be violence?" said Allez, 77, of Middleton, who took time off from his job to join the protest.The pervasive fear that something bad could happen contrasted sharply with the march's peacefulness, he said."Because of all of the talk of the potential for violence, people were extraordinarily polite and deferential toward each other," said Allez, who is white. "That atmosphere pervaded the entire gathering."Jane Collins, 58, of Madison, a UW-Madison sociology professor, was 8 and living in suburban D.C. when her mom and some of her mom's friends, out of curiosity, loaded all of their children in a car and drove to the march to view it from their vehicle. Her mom made her promise she would not tell her father, now deceased, which she never did."The thought was that it maybe would turn into a race riot," said Collins, who is white. "When we got there, people were dressed like they were going to church. Children wore patent-leather shoes. I think in my own mind, I had thought it could be a little dangerous, so I remember thinking it just didn't compute."Forgotten historyThe intensity of the civil rights movement at the time was such that people迷你倉新蒲崗who were politically aware at all knew the importance of the march and how much was at stake, said David Newby, 71, of Madison, the retired president of the Wisconsin AFL-CIO, who attended the march as a 21-year-old Ohio college student."You really could feel the joy, hope and optimism and the sense that we were all in this together and that we were going to win," Newby said.The strong union presence was apparent and led to Newby's efforts throughout his life to put the labor movement at the center of the struggle for equal rights, he said."The demands of the march were, in part, for the full employment of blacks and whites. That's what made the march so powerful, this alliance between these two movements -- civil rights and economic justice," said Newby, who is white. "Since that time, everything else has been forgotten except King's speech, and that's tragic, because the importance of that march was broader and deeper than just one speech."The book by Jones seeks to restore that forgotten history."In the popular memory, the march was completely focused on racial integration and voting rights in the South, but that wasn't the initial thrust," Jones said. "It actually started out as a march on Washington for jobs, especially given the rising rates of unemployment among minorities and the racial discrimination they faced in employment."An estimated 10 percent to 20 percent of the crowd was white, many of them union members -- teachers, auto workers, garment workers -- from large cities in the Northeast, Jones said.The march would achieve many of its main goals, including passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, which created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, perhaps the march's greatest legacy, Jones said. The legislation outlawed major forms of discrimination based on race, ethnicity, gender or religious beliefs."The march was such an enormous statement of the direction the country needed to go -- that we had to stop discriminating due to race," said former Madison Mayor Sue Bauman, 68, who is white and attended the march before traveling to Madison to attend college.Dr. Gene Farley, 86, retired chairman of the department of family medicine at UW-Madison, still chokes up when recalling the sight of a young African-American boy running through the crowd at the end of the march, waving to people as they boarded buses and yelling, "Today we got our freedom!" Farley was a physician near Ithaca, N.Y., at the time and attended the march with his wife, Linda, now deceased."It had meaning all throughout our lives," said Farley, who is white and executive director of the Farley Center for Peace, Justice and Sustainability in Verona. "It was such a revolutionary day because it awakened so many people."Dr. King's speechKing was the last of 10 speakers that day. While his remarks weren't ignored by the press, he initially was not seen as the most prominent speaker, Jones said. Life magazine put labor leader A. Philip Randolph, considered the dean of black leadership at the time, on its post-march cover, with King getting a relatively small photo inside, Jones said."It doesn't become an iconic speech until after his assassination and into the mid-70s, when efforts to create a national King holiday took off," Jones said.Anana remembers being impressed with King's speech, "but I had no idea he was going to become a world hero," she said. "I don't think any of us did."The march lit a flame in Anana that has kept her fighting for social justice ever since, she said."It is an honor for me to have lived this long and to be physically able and mentally alert enough to return to the very spot that changed my life and the lives of so many others," she said.Copyright: ___ (c)2013 The Wisconsin State Journal (Madison, Wis.) Visit The Wisconsin State Journal (Madison, Wis.) at .wisconsinstatejournal.com Distributed by MCT Information Services迷你倉出租