Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63

by Taylor Branch

happen if attackers burned one of the two thousand buses headed toward Washington, as they had burned the Freedom Ride bus, or if any bombs were detonated, as in Birmingham. It was Rustin’s obsession to make sure that no flaw in the arrangements permitted claustrophobia or discomfort to flare up into violence. He drove his core staff of two hundred volunteers to pepper the Mall with several hundred portable toilets, twenty-one temporary drinking fountains, twenty-four first-aid stations, and even a check-cashing facility. Meanwhile, in the great hall of New York’s Riverside Church, volunteers worked in shifts to prepare 80,000 cheese-sandwich bag lunches for overnight transport to Washington—to feed growling stomachs, and thereby to prevent growling people. Over the vast march area, Rustin had signs posted high enough to be read by someone jammed in a crowd. “If you want to organize anything,” he kept saying, “assume that everybody is absolutely stupid. And assume yourself that you’re stupid.”