I Have a Dream

'The moment we'd all been waiting for': March attendees remember King's historic 'dream' speech

By Tracy Jarrett, NBC News contributor

Fifty years ago, more than 200,000 people gathered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. NBC News asked six African-Americans who attended the march to share their memories of that day and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s "I Have a Dream" speech – and how they’ve passed on King's message to the next generation.

Jack White, 67, Journalist

Richmond, Virginia

In August of 1963, I was just out of high school and had a lot of curiosity about the civil rights movement. I grew up in Washington, a segregated city, and until 1954, I’d attended segregated schools.

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On the day of the March on Washington, I put on a sport coat and a tie; it was sweltering hot. People were just more formal then.

The powers that be were afraid of violence – can’t have all those Negroes there without trouble! – but it was the opposite. People were peaceful, respectful. Joyous and reverent would describe the mood.

When Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his famous speech it was all echoes to me. Still, I knew it was a historic moment because I could feel it in the crowd – this was the moment we’d all been waiting for.

Looking back, the point that resonates with me most is when he talked about the Declaration of Independence being a promissory note that all Americans should be treated equal, but America had given a check to citizens of color saying “insufficient funds.”

That’s what bedevils us today, the contradiction between the magnificent visions that Dr. King outlined and the reality that we have still yet to deliver on that promissory note. How are we going to make America America for everybody who lives in it? That was always the issue.

I started having conversations with my kids about the notion of battling for justice as soon as I thought they were old enough to understand that whatever opportunities they enjoy come about as a consequence of what people did before them.

On one hand, my children and grandchildren have opportunities somebody my age could never conceive. There’s nothing they can’t do. On the other hand, what they don’t have, that people my age had, is this sense of a historic moment when everything is changing.

Anne Ruth Borders-Patterson, 73, Civil rights activist and retired professor

Atlanta, Georgia

As a little girl in Atlanta, I went to segregated schools. We got all our books and desks second-hand from the white schools. I thought, why do we have to have books like this, all torn and tattered? There were all these rules that were supposed to make us think we were second-class citizens, though I never believed that.

In 1960, when I was a junior at Spelman College, I was one of the organizers of the Atlanta student movement. When we sat in at numerous “whites-only” restaurants, I was one of those who went to jail. Three years later, I drove to the March on Washington from Boston University, where I’d attended graduate school.

I never imagined a crowd like that. It looked magical, unbelievable. I remember not being able to move in the crowd. I remember children on their parents’ shoulders. And the number of white people out there -- to see all of them amongst the crowd of black people was amazing.

When King talked about looking forward to his little children being able to grow up in a society where race was no longer defining who they were or who they would become, that stood out to me a lot. I could begin to dream as he dreamed.

To my kids I have said, don’t be lulled by the fact that you can sit where you want on a bus or go to hotels, these are rights that you take for granted. You stand on the shoulders of many people. I think we’ve made progress but I still feel racism is alive and well in the United States today, and that is unfortunate and disappointing. We must continue to be committed to fighting for King’s dream.

Lurline Jones, 68, Basketball coach and educator

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

My mother had told me not to go to the march because she was scared of violence, but I just had to go.

At the time, I was part of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) at Morgan State College in Baltimore and had been on freedom rides to Cambridge, Maryland. I'd also participated in a sit-in with other students at a segregated movie theater in Baltimore. Some of us ended up arrested. I spent five days in jail. Afterwards, they integrated the theater.

The day of the march, the streets of Washington were filled with people coming from every direction, and everybody was going to the same place. We were arm in arm, singing, “We shall overcome.”

The line from Dr. King’s speech that really resounded with us, what we could hear loud and clear, was “free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, we are free at last.” The whole place erupted in cheers, people were jumping up and down, hugging and kissing.

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I knew that I was doing something to let the people in this country know that you can’t continue to treat us the way you’ve been treating us, because we are Americans. We believe in the preamble and the Constitution. We fight in wars. We should be treated right. I felt very strongly that that’s what would happen. I really  <HTML><META HTTP-EQUIV="content-type" CONTENT="text/html;charset=utf-8">believed the dream_

I was with my grandchildren the other day, and I was telling them about the march. I wanted them to know about it, and about Dr. King. I told my son, “Please make sure that my grandchildren will always remember that their grandmother was there, and that their grandmother has always been a fighter and continues to be a fighter for equality.”

All the things that we marched for in 1963 are basically the same problems we face in 2013. In some instances, doors have opened, some doors have been shut, and some doors have been left ajar, but it’s still a process. I don’t think we are all the way there.