My March On Washington

Sixty years ago I was in the summer of my junior year at Morgan State College, Baltimore, Maryland, a southern city below the Mason-Dixon Line, and my home town, the only White boy in a student body of 2,600 Blacks. Many people over the years have told me I should write about it, but I've never been able to because, actually, it all seemed so normal. Coeds dressed in pillbox hats (a la Jackie Kennedy), wore white kid gloves, and carried purses. Sport coats, ties, and briefcases were prominent among the guys. Football, social life, fraternity and sorority activity, and grades were the things most cared about. Black Power was barely an intellectual concept. Stokely and H. Rap would not be center stage until my senior year. Nobody was radicalized, yet, but most of us were in the process of being so. Brave students had sat in at a lunch counter in North Carolina. Rosa Parks had refused to stand up. Civil Rights was brewing but not yet boiling. I didn't consider myself a radical -- I still don't -- but I was no longer able to ignore the criminal injustice of racial relations in my country. I had to be on that march, not just because my life at Morgan would have been untenable if I did not, but because I knew the time had come for me to participate. As the Baptist preacher declared, "I been called."

When the day of the march arrived, Morgan students caravaned by the chartered bus load  from Baltimore to Washington, D.C., although I did not go with them. That morning I dressed in a grey, light weight summer suit, white button down shirt, cordovan wingtips, and thin rep tie, and took a Greyhound bus from Baltimore to D.C. by myself. I was determined to be on that March, but I didn't want to be hidden within a contingent of other students. I wanted to be seen. It was time for me to do my part, and this would be it. So I walked alone. It wasn’t, I don’t think, the ego’s fear of getting lost in the crowd but the inability to make a statement because I’d be invisible, and, if I were invisible, what was the point? I kept distance between the groups in front and back of me so I would be obvious. I wanted to stand up and stand out as a well-dressed white man who could no longer ignore the cruelty of racism. I remember feeling naked and exposed - scared a little, really. It was sweltering - August in D.C. - but I kept my tie neatly around my neck and my suit jacket buttoned with the cuffs of my shirt remaining a proper single inch beyond the jacket sleeve, and still I wondered, foolishly, naively, if this was what it felt like to be stark naked facing a pack of snarling dogs? I went with the crowd as it pushed towards the Lincoln Memorial and found myself in position to see Dr. King quite well while he gave his legendary speech: “I have a dream…” His words snatched those snarling dogs and shut them up quick. I heard the words clearly and knew I had just witnessed something extraordinary. Martin had declared his dream. I felt like I was part of a grand army. I felt so proud. I wasn't alone anymore. 

I rode back to campus with the rest of the Morgan students. We disembarked and, before going our separate ways, formed a circle with our arms around each others shoulders,  closed our eyes, and swayed and sang, "We shall overcome..." It was a different time. 

I’d been cautioned by my mother in Baltimore not to get involved, however, as I’d been lying to her for most of my remembered life, anyway, I had no trouble assuring her not to worry. I had to go to work; I wouldn’t be there. Don’t worry, Ma.

That evening, my mother asked me how my day was in that way she had when she knew she’d nailed you. I said, “Fine.”

“Work was…?” she asked.

“Fine,” I answered.

“You lied to me,” she said, and I knew she knew, though she remained uncharacteristically composed.

“How’d you know?”

“Your cousin, Doris, called from San Diego. Her whole family spotted you today on tv.”

“Yeah?”

“Every network.”

“What’d they say?”

“They said you looked respectable.”

“I guess so,“ I said and wagged my tie.

“Where is this going to lead?” she wanted to know.

“I don’t know,” I answered.

I wasn’t lying. I really didn’t. I still don’t.