March On Washington

The U.S. Conference of Mayors is planning a nationwide march on Washington next April to protest what conference President Raymond L. Flynn calls the federal government's "callous neglect of the people of urban America."Flynn, mayor of Boston, called for "a new civil rights movement in America . . . an economic justice movement . . . that will wake people up and turn this country around."The proposed march is scheduled for Saturday, April 4, the anniversary of the death of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.The mayors who joined Flynn yesterday for a news conference, a bipartisan group of about 20, made it clear that they intend to make domestic policy and their urban agenda important political issues in the presidential campaign.

A committee building a new memorial in Annapolis has extended the deadline for names of those who took part in the August 1963 March on Washington, where the Rev. Martin Luther King gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. The committee had initially set a deadline of May 19, but has extended it to May 31. The memorial is scheduled to be unveiled in Whitmore Park in Annapolis, where a bus departed for the march, on Aug. 28 - the 50 t h anniversary of the march. It is being paid for by donations to the committee.

Forty years ago today, more than 225,000 people joined the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave the "I Have a Dream" speech that would from that time on evoke the aspirations of those civil rights protesters. The march was inspired by A. Philip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and vice president of the AFL-CIO, who had first advocated such a march in 1941. He called that one off after President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order prohibiting discrimination in hiring for defense plants.

John R. Burleigh 2d., a civil rights activist who had been chairman of the employment committee of the Congress of Racial Equality and retired from the city housing authority, died July 9 of cancer at Gilchrist Hospice Care in Towson. The longtime Hunting Ridge resident was 86. The son of a foundryman and a homemaker, Mr. Burleigh was born in Baltimore and raised in Dorsey. He was a 1943 graduate of Wiley H. Bates High School in Annapolis, and attended Howard University in Washington.

WASHINGTON -- For Matthew Roberts, one of thousands of Marylanders who attended the gay rights March on Washington yesterday, participation in the event was a simple matter."

WASHINGTON -- Hundreds of thousands of gay rights demonstrators streamed through central Washington yesterday on a march where exuberance and sexual liberation overshadowed anger.Organizers hoped a huge turnout would boost their demands -- primarily for an end to the ban on gays in the military, protection pTC for homosexuals in a rewritten Civil Rights Act, increased funding to combat acquired immune deficiency syndrome and improvements in women's health care."Our demands are important, but what really matters is being here together, just being in the majority," said Rod Greenough of Salt Lake City, one of about 200 activists who had flown in from Utah.

MAYOR KURT L. SCHMOKE, Rep. Kweisi Mfume and other politicians, local and national, are taking a big risk by endorsing Monday's Million Man March that is the brainchild of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan."

The Howard County NAACP plans to take 100 people to the 30th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington tomorrow.The Rev. Bowyer G. Freeman, president of the county branch, was too young to attend the 1963 march but says he's looking forward to attending this one.Mr. Freeman said the focus of this year's march will be on economic empowerment.The original march was billed as a "March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom."Two buses will leave at 8 a.m. from the First Baptist Church, 7504 Oakland Mills Road in Guilford.

Washington. -- Saturday we saw in this nation's capital a pitiably feeble re-enactment of the great civil-rights March on Washington of 1963. That was the occasion on which Martin Luther King Jr. articulated his dream of a new, great America of racial and social justice.The 30th-anniversary ''march'' was for old-timers an embarrassment. So it probably was an honest commentary about what this country has done to King's dream.When that historic protest march occurred 30 years ago, black children were being battered and bloodied simply for trying to buy a hamburger or drink a cola in Jim Crow restaurants or fancy Southern department stores.

The 30th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington by a coalition of civil rights groups will be marked with another march Saturday. It is unlikely that it will be the catalyst the original was. No one expects the 200,000-plus marchers of 1963. One reason for this is that despite the real problems related to race that remain on the nation's agenda, much of Martin Luther King Jr.'s immortal dream has come true.Dr. King was one of several speakers at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963. He concluded his plea for racial justice and harmony by declaring that he dreamed of the children of former slaves and former slave owners sitting together in brotherhood in the South, of his own children not being judged by the color of their skin, and so on.In law, and to a lesser degree in fact, the nation has become color-blind in the past 30 years.

One was a Quaker, a nurse involved in the civil rights movement, sitting among the tens of thousands gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial. One was a New Yorker who had made a last-minute pilgrimage. Another was a seminary classmate of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., standing near him on the platform, stepping closer as King strode to the podium - a sign of support for a man who was a lightning rod for controversy. And then there was the Rev. Vernon Dobson, a civil rights activist who worked with King, stunned as 250,000 people were hushed into silence by a sermon that revolved around four simple words.

Using a classic American tactic, immigrants have been demonstrating across the country, seeking changes in law and policy. They've been coming out by the tens of thousands - last week and again Monday - in cities such as Washington, New York, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Los Angeles and Phoenix. And they are forcing local and national politicians as well as their constituents to sit up and take notice, while Congress struggles to come to some agreement on meaningful immigration reform. Some organizers of the recent demonstrations are comparing their efforts to the civil rights struggle and the pivotal 1963 March on Washington.

WASHINGTON - For all of the administration's insistence that its war in Iraq is not a rerun of Vietnam of 40 years ago, more signs are emerging that we're seeing, as eminent philosopher Yogi Berra once put it, "dM-ijM-` vu all over again." Belatedly but inexorably, the rash of American deaths this month - more than 30 so far, bringing the total to 1,823 - has hit the home front as seldom before in this war of President Bush's choice. The concentration of most of the victims in one Marine Reserve unit in Ohio has generated stories and interviews on television and in newspapers that further remind Americans of the price being paid.

WASHINGTON -- It's a little known fact that Martin Luther King Jr. didn't really lead the March on Washington. What actually happened is that the marchers, a quarter-million strong, grew impatient waiting for the event to begin and stepped off the curb ahead of schedule. When they found out what had happened, Dr. King and other march "leaders" had to scramble to catch up. Freedom was in the air and the marchers saw no need to wait for permission to move. Forty-one years later, that vignette from another era offers an irresistible analogy to frame what has been happening these last few days in San Francisco.

I WASN'T yet born when the original March on Washington drew 250,000 people to the Mall in 1963, seeking jobs and racial equality. But like so many African-Americans, I grew up with a special appreciation of this seminal event, grasped early on its historic gravity for our nation, and the world. So on Saturday, I hopped a train to Washington for the 40th anniversary of the march. It's hard to describe my mood that day, my exact feelings, only that an inexplicable stirring in my soul drew me. I knew I had to be there.

Forty years ago today, more than 225,000 people joined the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave the "I Have a Dream" speech that would from that time on evoke the aspirations of those civil rights protesters. The march was inspired by A. Philip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and vice president of the AFL-CIO, who had first advocated such a march in 1941. He called that one off after President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order prohibiting discrimination in hiring for defense plants.

WASHINGTON -- A broad spectrum of civil rights leaders who rarely appear together gathered here yesterday for a discussion of racism in America and worked hard to project an image of unity. But they didn't succeed in eliminating the tensions among them.Assembled on a Washington stage were two-time presidential candidate Jesse L. Jackson; Benjamin Chavis, the new leader of the NAACP; and Louis Farrakhan, controversial leader of the Nation of Islam, along with Rep. Kweise Mfume, the Baltimore Democrat who is chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, and Rep. Maxine Waters of California, who is a member of the Black Caucus.

Rodney G. King has joined the NAACP and will "work in Los Angeles in the 'hood with us," the Rev. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr. told a group of Baltimore ministers yesterday.Dr. Chavis, who convened the ministers to promote an NAACP-sponsored 30th anniversary March on Washington, called Mr. King a "worldwide symbol of why we need to march."Mr. King, who is black, was the victim of an infamous beating in 1991 by white Los Angeles police officers.The executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People said he met Mr. King, a former convict who led Los Angeles police on a chase before the beating, at a dinner in New York on Saturday and asked him to join the nation's oldest civil rights group.

Sherman Howell grew up in the segregated town of Arlington, Tenn., participated in civil rights marches in the 1960s and helped organize the March on Washington in 1963. When he was shopping for a home in 1971, he was looking for a place "that represented equality and respect." When Howell arrived in Columbia, he called off the search. "This is the place for me," said Howell, vice president of the African American Coalition of Howard County. "This is the type of place we were fighting and marching for."