March on Washington Anniversary: 50 Years After 'I Have a Dream'
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Although former President George W. Bush, who is recovering from heart surgery, will not be attending today’s events in Washington, he and former First Lady Laura Bush issued a joint statement marking the occasion.
“Laura and I are proud to join our fellow Americans in commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s ‘I Have A Dream’ speech,” Bush said in a statement.
The former president also noted the significance of President Obama presiding over the day’s ceremonies: “[Our] President, whose story reflects the promise of America, will help us honor the man who inspired millions to redeem that promise,” Bush said. “May we continue to march toward the day when the dignity and humanity of every person is respected.” -
ABC's JOAN E. GREVE: One of the first speakers at today's event, civil rights leader and former Ambassador to the United Nations Andrew Young, reflected on the March on Washington, saying, “But we knew that the fight was just beginning.” Young added, “His speech was about poverty, and he said that the Constitution was a promissory note.”
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ABC's CHRIS GOOD reports: Due to a single security checkpoint with bag searches, and a massive, clumped "line" to get in, the crowd on the Mall started small as the program got underway, lining the Reflecting Pool roughly a third of the way to the WWII Memorial. (It's much smaller than the crowd at the 2010 Glenn Beck rally). Thousands -- maybe tens of thousands -- are waiting to enter.
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Actor and singer Jamie Foxx told the crowd: “I’m here to celebrate what Dr. King did 50 years [ago]. I’m probably not going to read from the teleprompter because I’m just going to speak from the heart...It’s time for us to stand up now and renew this dream. That’s what we got to do...The young folks, pick it up now, so that when we’re 87 years old talking to the young folks, we can say it was me--Will Smith, Jay-Z, Kanye, Alicia Keys, Carrie Washington, the list goes on and on”
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ABC’s ABBY PHILLIP and SHUSHANNAH WALSHE: Tylik Hunter, 12 goes to Chamberlain Middle School, a charter in Washington, DC. "I'm here to see Barack Obama and I'm also here to celebrate the 50th anniversary," Hunter said. "I feel excited that I'm here celebrating what happened 50 years ago." Hunter's #IMarchFor: “The Stand Your Ground Law so it can be banned.”
Tylik Hunterby michael.p.falcone -
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ABC's JOAN E. GREVE: Rev. Al Sharpton told the crowd, “Fifty years ago, when they came to Washington...it was in the middle of struggles. Dr. King and those who fought with him, they fought and they beat Jim Crow. We come today to not only celebrate and commemorate, but we come as the children of Dr. King to say that we are going to face Jim Crow’s children because Jim Crow had a son called James Crow, Jr., Esq. He writes voting suppression laws and puts it in language that looks different, but the results are the same.”
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Caroline Kennedy, President Kennedy’s daughter and the nominee to be the next U.S. ambassador to Japan, told the crowd: “Fifty years ago, my father watched from the White House as Dr. King and thousands of others recommitted America to our highest ideals.” She added, “Each generation must rededicate itself to the unfinished work of building a free and just America.”
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#IMarchFor Justice: ErnieGreen drove all nite to be at '63 MOW "The March is not a guarantee. It is an opening." pic.twitter.com/v6yzam5BBj
Aug. 28, 2013- Reply
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More of President Obama’s speech: “On hot summer day, they assembled here in our nation’s capitol, under the shadow of the great emancipator to offer testimony of injustice, to petition their government for redress, to awaken America’s long slumbering conscience. How he gave mighty voice to the quiet hopes of millions, how he offered a salvation path to oppressed and oppressors alike We would do well to recall that that day itself also belonged to those ordinary people whose names never appeared in history books. They’d seen loved ones beaten and children fire-hosed...And yet they chose a different path. In the face of hatred, they prayed for their tormentors...They stood up and sat in with the moral force of nonviolence.”
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In his speech, President Jimmy Carter told the crowd gathered for the March on Washington anniversary that Dr. King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, was with him and his wife in a hotel room when he learned he had been elected president in 1976.
Of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Carter said, “In the Nobel Prize ceremony of 2002, I said that my fellow Georgian was ... ‘the greatest leader that my native state and perhaps my native country had ever produced.’ And I was not excluding presidents and even the founding fathers when I said this.” -
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ABC's MARY BRUCE: President Obama spoke to an estimated crowd of 20,000 -- far fewer than 200,000-plus who attended King's "I Have a Dream" speech 50 years ago -- recalled that historic day in 1963. "On a hot summer day, they assembled here in our nation's capitol, under the shadow of the great emancipator to offer testimony of injustice, to petition their government for redress, to awaken America's long slumbering conscience," he said.
"How he gave mighty voice to the quiet hopes of millions, how he offered a salvation path to oppressed and oppressors alike. We would do well to recall that that day itself also belonged to those ordinary people whose names never appeared in history books." MORE: http://abcn.ws/154AXfl
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