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The March on Washington
Segregation in the southern states was still in force in 1963: separate schools, separate bus seats, separate doors, and the vote out of reach. The march's full name — for jobs and freedom — is worth holding on to, because the economic half of the demands is the part that most often drops out of the telling. The organiser Bayard Rustin was kept in the background because he was openly gay and a former communist. The "I have a dream" passage was improvised; King's prepared speech was more confrontational, and he set the text aside after Mahalia Jackson called out to him to tell them about the dream.
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