It was the culmination of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
The march made specific demands (according to Wikipedia): “an end to racial segregation in public school; meaningful civil rights legislation, including a law prohibiting racial discrimination in employment; protection of civil rights workers from police brutality; a $2 minimum wage for all workers; and self-government for the District of Columbia, then governed by congressional committee.”
“More than a quarter of a million people of diverse ethnicities attended the event, sprawling from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial onto the National Mall and around the reflecting pool. At the time, it was the largest gathering of protesters in Washington's history. King's I Have a Dream speech electrified the crowd. It is regarded, along with Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, as one of the finest speeches in the history of American oratory. President Kennedy, himself opposed to the march, met King afterwards with enthusiasm - repeating King's line back to him; "I have a dream", while nodding with approval.”
Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith wrote the must read book on racism in our contemporary world (Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America). It shows how evangelical Christians have failed miserably to move our nation away from racialization.You can read an excerpt of the book here. This short article is required reeading for the students in my Ethics class.
technorati: spiritual formation, social action
Bob, Thanks for sharing this. I read the article by Emerson and Smith. I can see that there can be no solution to a problem in which the two entities involved are not even in agreement on what the problem is. I see our white failure here, as missing both the real world of our African American brothers and sisters, and of missing something very important about sin in Scripture. That it is systemic, and not only individual.
ReplyDeleteI very much admire the work of Michael Emerson and Christian Smith. I knew Emerson back when he taught Sociology at Bethel College for a brief spell, though I didn't have any courses from him. I did get to interact with him some when I was part of the Bethel Urban House in my senior year.
ReplyDeleteI thought you might like reading my integrating motif for my sem-studies.
dlw