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| Civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., speaks at a rally to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday, Aug. 24, 2013, in Washington. Lewis marched in the from line with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on Aug. 24, 2013, the day King gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. |
WASHINGTON
(AP) -- Mary-Pat Hector of Atlanta was operating much like a 1960s civil
rights activist as she laid plans for the 50th anniversary of the March
on Washington. She was constantly on the phone as she confirmed event
details, tweaked the draft of the speech she gave at Saturday's rally at
the Lincoln Memorial and prepared for a presentation.
Mary-Pat is 15 years old.
Just
as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. led the Montgomery Bus Boycott at
age 26, and Rep. John Lewis helped to lead freedom rides at 23, young
Americans like Mary-Pat are not letting age get in the way as they seek
more than a contributing role in the push for social reform.
Young
people are eager to influence this year's March on Washington, says
Jessica Brown, national coordinator for the Black Youth Vote coalition,
which organized several youth events around Saturday's march to the
Lincoln Memorial.
"Of course you have the
seasoned people who are there, and they are always rightfully going to
have their position," Brown said. "But you're starting to see the pickup
of the youth saying, `This is our time, this is our moment, this is the
opportunity we have to show the world and the nation, that we're here
and we're ready to work and organize to get things done.'"
In
1963, those "seasoned people" were A. Philip Randolph and Bayard
Rustin, who birthed the idea of a Washington march to appeal for jobs
and justice, and ultimately attracted 250,000 people. Today, the Rev. Al
Sharpton and Martin Luther King III, who were 8 and 5 years old,
respectively, in 1963, are the veterans who brought thousands to the
Lincoln Memorial on Saturday. The King Center also has organized a
ceremony on Wednesday, the actual march anniversary, when President
Barack Obama will speak.
Friday night,
students and young adults gathered at Howard University in Washington
for a mass meeting and rally ahead of Saturday's march - activity
patterned after the student rallies that were held before major
demonstrations during the civil rights movement.
Anthony
Miller, president of the Howard University Student Association, said
students recognize the historical significance, and some are using this
moment to express their continuing anger over the shooting death of
black Florida teen Trayvon Martin.
"They want
to be able to do something positive and something that will uplift this
situation and really bring it to light," Miller says. Students want "to
effect a positive change and push this country in the right direction,"
he said, "And I think this is an excellent opportunity."
Janaye
Ingram, who runs the Washington office of Sharpton's National Action
Network, spent hours on the phone recruiting students. "This is their
moment to make a change. It's reminiscent of what happened in the '60s,
when the movement was led by them," she said.
Students
and other young people made significant contributions to the civil
rights movement. In 1957 a group of black students, later called the
Little Rock Nine, helped integrate all-white Central High School in
Arkansas. The Freedom Riders challenged segregation by riding buses
through the South in integrated pairs.
There were numerous others who
held sit-ins at restaurant counters, skipped school to participate in
marches and were attacked by police dogs and water cannons during public
demonstrations.
"When you have been sitting
on a lunch counter stool and someone walk up and spit on you or pour hot
water or hot coffee on you and you say you're committed to
non-violence, you have to grow up," Lewis said Sunday on ABC's "This
Week." "To go on the Freedom Rides in 1961, the same year that President
Barack Obama was born? And to be beaten. You had to grow up. So by
the time of the March on Washington, I was 23, but I was an older
person."
Saturday's march included several youth speakers - the youngest, Asean Johnson of Chicago, just 9 years old.
Lewis,
who was chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and
the youngest of the "Big Six" leaders from the 1963 march, represented
the movement's already battle-tested young foot soldiers. His elders
asked him to tone down the more fiery passages of his speech after
seeing a draft; Lewis told MSNBC that he agreed to make the changes, not
wanting to disappoint King and the other leaders.
Now
73 and a Democratic congressman from Georgia, Lewis was under no
pressure to mince his words Saturday. He reminded the crowd of the
vicious beating he endured in the 1965 voting rights march in Selma,
Ala., and encouraged today's youth to resist efforts to erode his
generation's hard-fought victories.
"Back in
1963, we hadn't heard of the Internet. We didn't have a cellular
telephone, iPad, iPod," Lewis said. "But we used what we had to bring
about a nonviolent revolution. I say to all of the young people: You
must get out there and push and pull and make America what it should be
for all of us."
Unlike the narrow focus on
jobs and freedom in 1963, this year's march seeks to address an array of
issues. Sharpton expanded the march's original goals, combatting high
black and youth unemployment, to include a call for action after the
Supreme Court invalidated parts of the Voting Rights Act, and to protest
"stand your ground" laws and stop-and-frisk police tactics.
"We're
looking at the issue that went on in Florida, we're looking at what's
going on with the Voting Rights Act, so youth are really upset, and
they're deciding maybe this is a good point to collectively come
together, continuously build on our network, and take it back to our
community to continue working," Brown says.
Sasha
Costanza-Chock, an assistant professor of civic media at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says young people's willingness
to simultaneously address "multiple dynamics of oppression" shows how
youth activism has matured.
"You have a lot
more young people now talking about ... the ways that different
structures of race, class, gender and sexuality cannot be fought only
one at a time. They have to be looked at together and struggled for
together," Costanza-Chock said.
Today's young
activists are equipped with a tool that older generations didn't have:
social media. It empowers them to rally large numbers of people to a
cause in a very short span of time. Using these methods are Florida's
"Dream Defenders," the student group that held a sit-in outside of Gov.
Rick Scott's office for 31 days, demanding a special session to repeal
the "stand your ground" law.
The group
traveled to Washington for the march anniversary, and encouraged
supporters to follow their journey on USTREAM, an online live video
service.
"It's been easier than ever to
mobilize people, to hold people accountable, and to get attention for
whatever issue you care about. So I think it's just changed the game,"
said Ryane Ridenour from Generational Alliance, an umbrella group of 22
youth organizations.
Mary-Pat, who serves as
national youth director for Sharpton's organization, said working on
multiple issues and leveraging social media in this way "can be
overwhelming," but she understands that this is the nature of working on
intertwined causes.
Ultimately, she wants
this march to serve as a moment in which history will say her generation
showed "we just don't march and make a lot of noise, but we actually
make an impact."
