March On Washington Thesis

The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was an event organized by major labor unions, church groups, youth organizations and civil rights groups. The march included several speeches in front of the Lincoln Memorial with over 200,000 people attending and covered on national television. A large purpose of the march was to help pressure the government into passing Kennedy’s Civil Rights Bill. Here, Martin Luther King, Jr. was the keynote speaker where he gave his famous and enduring “I Have a Dream Speech.” Before the event, however, several pamphlets were given out and documents such as the “Preamble to the March on Washington” were produced giving many official reasons and goals to the march, a large part of which included the labor aspect …show more content…
In the preamble, the main body consisted of the concerns of labor unions in terms of unemployment and labor unions. For example, the preamble talked about the “immediate crisis confronting black labor” and “the persistence of racial discrimination on a national scale has closed to Negroes […] the limited opportunities.” The very first point mentioned in the preamble was the auspiciousness of the planned march being 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation and the strides still yet to be made to “terminate the economic subordination of the American Negro.” Two of the five points mentioned in this document related the cause of unemployment to automation. Another point labeled discrimination as another major factor in black unemployment, while integration was also listed as part of the strategies for the “overall progress of the Negro.” In a pamphlet given out prior to the March, stated reasons and goals for the March included the denial of freedom to “millions of Negroes,” the demand for a “national minimum wage,” and “the passage of effective civil rights legislation which will guarantee to all decent housing, access to public accommodations, adequate and integrated education, [and] the right to vote.” Of all these reasons, only a small few were mentioned in King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. King did capitalize on the 100th year since the Emancipation Proclamation fact that was emphasized in the preamble. He did give some mention to the “chains of discrimination” in the beginning of his speech. Similarly, at the end, he painted a visionary picture of a world that included integration as seen through some of his words “little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.” However, throughout his speech, there was no real mention of minimum wage, automation, or even black