September 7, 2023
Troy D. Smith
“Two Very Different Marches on Washington”
I want to start this week by telling you that all my columns
from the last two years are now collected in a book, “A Liberal Dose: Communiqués
from the Holler.” If you like what I have to say, or know someone who would, go
online and buy a copy. If you despise what I have to say, buy a copy and burn
it -heck, get together with friends and have a bonfire, long as you pay for ‘em
first. Now, on with the column.
“My friends, let us not forget we are engaged in a serious
social revolution.”
These words were spoken in Washington sixty years ago last
Monday by civil rights leader John Lewis (the same man whose street Paul
Sherrell tried to have renamed for Donald Trump). Yes, this was the same march
where MLK gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, but he was not the only one
there. In addition to the quarter-of-a-million marchers, two-thirds of whom
were Black, there were the two African American leaders who organized the march,
which was the pinnacle of their work over the previous twenty-plus years: A.
Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin. Know who else played a major role? A couple
of white guys: Walter Reuther, president of United Auto Workers, and Stanley
Aronowitz, a union organizer for Amalgamated Clothing Workers (another of their
organizers had been arrested and thrown out of Sparta in the early 1940s for an
early attempt to organize the shirt factory).
Those guys (and others) were involved because what we
normally just refer to as the March on Washington (August 28, 1963) was
officially called “The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.” It was about
economics and poverty as well as civil rights. Most of their demands centered
on basic rights for African Americans, but they were also calling for a minimum
wage increase and job training for the unemployed. That part gets left out, but
labor action and civil rights have often gone together. Remember, MLK was
assassinated in Memphis in 1968 while there to support a sanitation workers’
strike.
Civil rights for minorities and economic relief for poor
people in general. A crowd that may have been majority-Black but which had a
substantial number of white allies (up to a third, or around 80,000+). All
involved in an action that was not only peaceful, it was carried out with an
enormous amount of dignity, solemnity, and spirituality. An action, and a
movement, that sought SOCIAL revolution -a change in society.
Contrast that with what Trump and his legion of
co-conspirators are now on their way to trial for, a conspiracy with a march
(or, more accurately, an assault) on Washington at its center. A horde of
furious rioters, screaming and spouting obscenities and physically attacking
police. Destruction and foul desecration of the Capitol, some smearing feces on
the walls. And people dying. All of it egged on by a man who is, in almost
every way, the polar opposite of Martin Luther King, Jr. -except when it comes
to the ability to inspire some people to action by oratory. And what were they
calling for? Social DEVOLUTION, resurrecting a time and a social order that was
NEVER great for people in the minority. Like the 1963 marchers, they did not
get what they wished for that day -but they may have pulled the country closer
to it.
Look where we are, a week past the 60-year anniversary of
that memorable march. A Florida racist with swastikas on his guns shoots up a
Dollar General in a Black neighborhood, stating it was because he wanted to
kill Black people. Red state legislators and governors, including our own,
pushing rules that restrict the teaching of accurate history where racism is
concerned, and in Florida touting the “economic benefits” of slavery.
We must all remember, in King’s words, “the fierce urgency
of now.”
--Troy D.
Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at
Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.
Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE
You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE
A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE
Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com
The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE
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