60 years after March on Washington, America needs honest talk on racial equality

In a nation where some extremists would like to distort the truth by referring to the transatlantic slave trade as “involuntary relocation of African people” and Rosa Parks’ arrest had nothing to do with her race, how will the story of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom be told?

Even now, the legendary words that Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke that day are repeatedly twisted into a perverse defense of systemic racism. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis invoked King’s dream in defense of his “Stop W.O.K.E.” law that is being used to stifle discussion of racism in classrooms. Long before “anti-woke” hysteria began sweeping through statehouses, President Ronald Reagan cited King’s dream in opposition to affirmative action in 1985.

If extremists succeed in purging our textbooks and our collective memory of the factual history of white supremacy, it’s not hard to imagine the March on Washington characterized as a congenial celebration of racial equality and harmony, and King’s “I Have a Dream” speech as a description of contemporary reality.

In the face of this grim but very possible future, the Saturday, Aug. 26 observance of the 60^th anniversary of the March on Washington — Not A Commemoration, A Continuation — takes on an even sharper urgency.

As a successor to one of the original “Big Six” architects of the 1963 march, Whitney M. Young, Jr., it is my honor to be among the featured speakers on this upcoming Saturday. Young said back then that our national leaders will be measured “by the speed and sincerity with which they pass necessary legislation, with which they admit to the tragic injustice that has been done our country, and its Negro citizens, by historic discrimination and rejection.”

Far from admitting the tragic injustice of historic discrimination, the goal of “anti-woke” extremists is to preserve the advantage that systemic racism affords them by denying that it exists. Proposed “anti-woke” legislation in Illinois and other states including Texas, Iowa, South Carolina, Missouri and South Dakota would stifle the suggestion that racial gaps in wealth or income, educational attainment, home ownership, civic engagement or political representation are the result of anything other than “meritocracy” and “a hard work ethic.”

There is no greater threat to this goal than an honest discussion of the March on Washington, or an honest appraisal of the relative progress the nation has made since then.

Economic equity all but forgotten

The Economic Policy Institute report, “Chasing the dream of equity,” released this month to commemorate the anniversary of the 1963 march, finds that little progress has been made in removing barriers to the full equitable integration of Black Americans into the U.S. economy. Among its key findings: The racial wealth gap — a typical white family has eight times the wealth of the typical Black family — is a long-standing vestige of centuries of government policies that explicitly denied African Americans the opportunity to build wealth.

The March on Washington galvanized support for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed overt racial discrimination and segregation in schools and public accommodations. But the economic demands of the march not only remain unmet, they are all but forgotten. Among them were “A massive federal program to train and place all unemployed workers — Negro and white — on meaningful and dignified jobs at decent wages” and “a national minimum wage act that will give all Americans a decent standard of living.” The organizers of the march noted that “Government surveys show that anything less than $2.00 an hour fails to do this.”

Instead, the value of the federal hourly minimum wage has shrunk. The minimum wage in 1963, $1.15, is worth $11.45 in 2023, when the minimum wage remains stagnant at an appalling $7.25.

On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28, 1963, King said that he had come to the nation’s capital to cash a check, “a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.”

On Saturday, we will march to present that check, once again, to what King called “the great vaults of opportunity of this nation,” and we will not stop until the promise of equality is satisfied.

Marc H. Morial is president and CEO of the National Urban League and former mayor of New Orleans from 1994 to 2002. He writes a twice-monthly column for the Sun-Times.

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