Thousands of Americans converged on the US capital to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington, a pivotal event in the 1960s civil rights movement at which Martin Luther King Jr gave his galvanising “I have a dream” speech.
The 1963 march brought more than 250,000 people to the nation’s capital to push for an end to discrimination on the basis of race, colour, religion, sex or national origin. Many credit the show of strength with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Organised by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and other civil rights groups, this year’s march takes place at the Lincoln Memorial, the backdrop to King’s impassioned call for equality.
Margaret Huang, the president and CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center nonprofit civil rights advocacy group, told the crowd on Saturday the march 60 years ago opened doors and spurred new tools to fight racial discrimination.
But new laws throughout the country that “claw away at the right to vote” and target the LGBTQ community threaten to erase some of those gains, Huang said.
“These campaigns against our ballots, our bodies, our school books, they are all connected. When our right to vote falls all other civil and human rights can fall too, but we’re here today to say ‘not on our watch.’”
Article from www.aljazeera.com
