August 30, 2023: Contextualizing the March on Washington: The Big Six

[August 28th marks the60th anniversary of the March onWashington for Jobs and Freedom, one of the single mostimportant events in 20th century American history.So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of contexts for and from thatevent—not including MartinLuther King Jr.’s iconic speech, about which I’ve written agood bit already!]

On acouple inspiring elements of the 1963 March’s leadership, and a frustrating one.

In June1963, with plans for the August march beginning to take form, the leaders of multiplecivil rights organizations came together to form a new one: the Council forUnited Civil Rights Leadership. Those leaders, who became known as the “Big Six,”included two men I’ve written about a good bit already this week, A. PhilipRandolph and Martin Luther King Jr., and four others: Congress of Racial Equalityco-founder and President JamesFarmer; NAACP President RoyWilkins; National Urban League Executive Director WhitneyYoung; and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Chairman John Lewis. The Big Sixwould eventually bring four white leaders aboard to form a group known as the “BigTen”: longtime United Automobile Workers President WalterReuther; National Council of Churches Past President Eugene Carson Blake;National Catholic Conference for Interracial Justice Executive Director MathewAhmann; and American Jewish Congress President Joachim Prinz.

Thepresence and contributions of those white leaders illustrate the fundamentally andinspiringly interracial and cross-cultural nature of the 1963 March on everylevel. But of course we don’t have to look beyond the Big Six to find importantinspiration, and in particular I would highlight their genuinelymulti-generational identities: Randolph was 74 at the time of the march;Wilkins was about to turn 62; Farmer was 43 and Young 42; King was 34; andLewis was 23. Naturally the Civil Rights Movement featured leaders andparticipants from every living generation, but for a group separated by morethan 50 years to work together so closely and successfully is still a strikingand impressive achievement. As JohnLewis later put it, “Somehow, some way, we worked well together. The six ofus, plus the four. We became like brothers.” In thislong-ago post I mentioned the sociological argument that “diversity withincategories far exceeds diversity between categories”; age and generationcomprise significant such diverse factors within a category like “AfricanAmerican,” and clearly they didn’t stop this impressive group from achievingbig things.

They aren’tthe only such diverse identities, however, and when it came to another theMarch’s leadership were much less unified. As I highlighted in Monday’s post,Bayard Rustin had been alongside Randolph throughout the decades of civilrights marches on Washington (planned and actual), and continued to play animportant role in 1963’s. But both Wilkins and Young objected to Rustinserving as an equal planner (which would have made for a Big Seven, of course);they ostensibly did so because of his ties to controversies like communism anddraft resistance, but it seems clear it was Rustin’shomosexuality that was at the heart of the debate. As that hyperlinked articlenotes, Martin Luther King Jr. would likewise sideline Rustin at times due toconcerns over potential responses to his sexuality, so this wasn’t simply aboutthe older generations either. Indeed, the oldest of the Big Six, Randolph, hadlong worked alongside Rustin without these qualms, so we can’t attribute thisattitude to age in any way. It didn’t stop Rustin from working as a crucial strategistand organizer for the 1963 March—but it shouldn’t have been a thing at all, andshouldn’t be absent from our collective memories.

Next Marchcontext tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?