Video Segment

Eyes on the Prize, Volume 165, Chapter 5

Table of Contents

Summary
Questions for Discussion
Activities
Keywords
Profiles
Organizations
Maps
Graphs
Primary Documents

Summary

Eight days after President John F. Kennedy sent a civil rights bill to Congress, A. Philip Randolph, along with SCLC, the NAACP, CORE, and SNCC, announced that a "March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom" would take place in August 1963. More than 200,000 people participated.

The older movement leaders asked SNCC and its speaker, John Lewis, to tone down their anti-Kennedy rhetoric. SNCC reluctantly agreed. King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. But the fight was not over.

In Birmingham, on September 15, 1963, the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, a site of movement rallies, was rocked by a bomb. Four Black girls attending Bible class were killed and fourteen others were injured.

Questions for Discussion

1. Why did Malcolm X call the March on Washington the "farce on Washington"? Do you agree with his assessment? Why or why not?

2. What were the benefits gained from the March on Washington?

3. Why did civil rights leaders ask John Lewis and SNCC to change their speech at the March on Washington? Why did SNCC decide to listen to the request from A. Philip Randolph? If you had been John Lewis, would you have changed the speech? Why or why not?

Activities

Have the class research the 1941 March on Washington proposed by A. Philip Randolph, initiator of the 1963 March on Washington and founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Ask students to write about the issues that the two demonstrations had in common.

Keywords

• Civil Rights Act of 1964
• job discrimination
• coalition

Online Profiles

• W.E.B. Du Bois
• James Farmer
• James Forman
• John F. Kennedy
• Martin Luther King, Jr.
• John Lewis
• A. Philip Randolph
• Bayard Rustin
• Roy Wilkins
• Andrew Young

Organization Descriptions

• Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
• Congress of Racial Equality
• National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
• Southern Christian Leadership Conference
• Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

Maps

• United States. In 1950 the population of the United States was 134,941,622 White and 15,042,692 Black (approximately 9.5 percent of the population).
• Alabama (three frames). Capital: Montgomery. Population in 1950: 2,079,591 White, 979,617 Black. Principal Goods and Crops: iron, steel and saw mill materials; cotton, peanuts and soybeans.

Graphs

• Professionals and Managers
• Family Income
• Unemployment Rates
• "Cycle of Inequality"

Primary Documents

• Plessy Decision Document
• March on Washington Program
• March on Washington Program #2
• March on Washington Program Map

Bibliography

See Eyes on the Prize Bibliography

 

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