This week marks the anniversary of the March on Washington in 1963. Here are some clips from the archives of our newspaper with coverage of this historic event.
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The byproducts of every Floridian’s right to vote — a right which exists at the very fabric of our democracy — find themselves suddenly threatened under the weight of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential aspirations. Resent actions by the governor paing a troubling portrait of what could happen in other areas of the United States should his campaign’s goals become realities.
Even beyond the decisions and positions that many have decried as racist in nature, DeSantis’ most recent maneuvering has unveiled a disturbing narrative.
Florida’s State Attorney Monique Worrell was elected in 2020 by her constituents with an overwhelming 67% of the vote, representing a mandate affirming her campaign platform and qualifications. However, Worrell now finds herself suspended by DeSantis, the same man who heralds a promise of equitable leadership.
The Florida governor cited “neglect of duty” as the grounds for her suspension.
“Elected officials are being taken out of office solely for political purposes, and that should never be a thing,” Worrell said during a recent news conference.
“There used to be a very high standard for the removal of elected officials. There used to be a standard that I would have been criminally prosecuted for something, neglecting my duties – meaning that I’d not show up for work and do my job – or that I have some sort of an illness that prevented me from doing my job.”
She continued:
“But under this tyranny, elected officials can be removed simply for political purposes and by a whim of the governor, and no matter how you feel about me, you should not be OK with that.”
Worrell wasn’t alone in surmising that a sitting governor who seeks the highest office in the land but is comfortable with using their office to employ dubious tactics, like unjustly suspending duly elected officials, casts a shadow over the principles upon which the nation was founded.
“For months, this governor has chosen to not only attack but abuse the power of his office to feed red meat to his conservative base and remove elected officials who threaten his agenda,” Florida Democratic Congressman Maxwell Frost stated.
“But once again, it’s our communities and the people of Florida that have become pawns in DeSantis’s long-term plans for total and absolute power,” Frost asserted.
DeSantis, flanked by two local sheriffs – a puzzling absence of overlap with Worrell’s jurisdiction – commandeered the spotlight in a press conference that underscores the partisan narrative at play.
Making a mockery of justice, one of the sheriffs thrust Worrell’s suspension into a meme-worthy spectacle, utilizing a photoshopped image to lampoon her predicament.
“Worrell refused to faithfully enforce the laws of Florida,” DeSantis claimed, failing to offer tangible evidence, and refusing questions from reporters.
He claimed that Worrell routinely avoids minimum mandatory sentences for drug trafficking offenses, allowing juveniles to avoid serious charges and jail time, and avoiding sentence enhancements.
“I have no doubt that today’s decision is not only consistent with the constitution and laws of Florida and that we have a right to act,” DeSantis claimed.
“I know that today’s decision, we had a duty to act to protect the public from this dereliction of duty.”
Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried said, with the suspension of Worrell, DeSantis had pulled a veil over justice and imposed a reign of his own making.
Fried said the voice of democracy had been stifled, replaced by a chorus of self-interest, and the repercussions of the governor’s power play extend beyond state lines.
She said they underscore a dangerous precedent that, if left unchecked, could herald an era where democracy bows to tyranny.
“Ron DeSantis has gone too far,” Fried asserted. “Monique Worrell is a devoted public servant — one who was elected overwhelmingly by her constituents. This political hit job threatens our democracy and undermines the will of the people.”
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The last part of the speech took less time to deliver than it takes to boil an egg, but “I Have A Dream” is one of American history’s most famous orations and most inspiring.
On Aug. 28, 1963, from the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, Martin Luther King Jr. began by speaking of poverty, segregation and discrimination and how the United States had reneged on its promise of equality for Black Americans. If anyone remembers that dystopian beginning, they don’t talk about it.
What is etched into people’s memory is the pastoral flourish that marked the last five minutes and presented a soaring vision of what the nation might be and the freedom that equality for all could bring.
As participants prepare to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, that five-minute piece of King’s 16-minute address is the star of that day and today it is the measuring stick of the country’s progress.How did that memorable moment come to be? Were there other speakers?
King was one of several prominent figures speaking to the many tens of thousands gathered on the National Mall that summer day. Others included A. Phillip Randolph, the march director and founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; Roy Wilkins, the NAACP’s executive secretary; Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers; and John Lewis, a 23-year-old who led the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and later was a longtime congressman.
There were memorable moments before King spoke.
Eleanor Holmes Norton, who today is the District of Columbia’s veteran nonvoting delegate to Congress, was a SNCC member who helped organize the march. She remembers that march leaders got Lewis to tone down his planned speech because of concern it was too inflammatory. “He had phrases in there about, for example, Sherman marching through Georgia,” Norton said, a reference to Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman burning most of Atlanta during the Civil War. “So we had to work with the leaders of the march to change a little bit of that rhetoric.”
King had no peer at the microphone, she said, acknowledging she does not remember now what others may have said. “I’m afraid that Martin Luther King’s speech drowned out everything. It was so eloquent that it kind of surpassed every other speech.”Did King deliver the speech off the cuff?
The first two-thirds were from written text. The actual speech he used is on loan now at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, in the “Defending Freedom, Defining Freedom” gallery of the museum, and shows where he broke script.
King lieutenant Andrew Young said in an interview that he worked with King preparing the text and “none of the things that we remember were in his speech. They didn’t give him but nine minutes and he was trying to write a nine-minute speech.”
A King biographer, Jonathan Eig, said King hit the end of his written remarks and kept going because “he was Martin Luther King” and “it was time to do what he loved to do best, and that’s to give a sermon.”Had King talked about a dream before?
Although he set the text aside, his deviation was not extemporaneous in the truest since of the word.
Eight months before the March on Washington, King gave an address in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, with similar themes, including a dream.
In June 1963, King spoke in Detroit and opened with the same recognition of Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation before noting that 100 years later, Black people in the U.S. were not free. He talked of the circumstances and sense of urgency but then moved into what he said was a “dream deeply rooted in the American dream.”
The speech mirrored points he would speak of two months later.
Although King used the theme on several occasions “he always made it sound fresh. That’s kind of how he operated,” said Keith Miller, an Arizona State professor who has studied and written extensively about King’s speeches and addresses.Legend has it that renowned gospel singer Mahalia Jackson prompted King to make the addition?
Whether Jackson was the catalyst or cheered him on after he started, King did not initially intend to speak about a dream and Jackson did say, “Tell them about the dream Martin.” Whatever the close sequence, the two are intertwined now in that moment.
Young said the speech “wasn’t going too well, but everybody was polite listening. But then Mahalia Jackson said, ‘Tell them about the dream Martin’ and he must have heard it or it was in his spirit any way and he took off.”
Arndrea Waters King, King’s daughter-in-law, said Jackson’s suggestion was the moment “that he just really broke out and really started to deliver, if nothing else, what most people remember when they remember the dream.”
Eig, author of “King: A Life,” said he has listened to the master tape made by Motown and she clearly pushes King about the dream, “but it’s only after he has already begun the dream portion of the speech.” Norton, who was nearby and heard Jackson, agrees that was the sequence.How important was the march to the steps toward equality in the 1960s?
The diversity and size of the crowd and energy were major drivers for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as well as the fair housing law, Norton said. “It would have been very hard for Congress to ignore 250,000 people coming from all over the country, from every member’s district.”
Aaron Bryant, curator of photography, visual culture and contemporary history at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, said the impact was immediate in some ways.
“After the March on Washington, you had some of the organizers, some of the leaders of the march actually meeting with (President) John Kennedy and (Vice President) Lyndon Johnson, to talk more strategically about legislation. So it wasn’t just a dream. It was about a plan and then putting that plan into action,” Bryant said.
Historians and other luminaries of that time said tragedies and atrocities fortified those plans. Those include the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed four girls two weeks after the march; the murders of three civil rights workers in Neshoba County, Mississippi, in 1964; and the televised beatings of civil rights activists on Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama, in March 1965.Why the focus on the final five minutes?
Eig believes that focus on hope and not the harsher reality of the day and the lack of progress is due in part to the predominantly white media that chose the inspirational part of the speech over King calling for accountability.
That focus has done a “disservice to King” and his overall message, Eig said, because “we forget about the challenging part of that speech where he says that there are insufficient funds in the vaults of opportunity in this nation.”Has the dream been achieved?
Bryant said the answer to that probably varies within generations, but a democracy “is always going to be a work in progress. I think particularly as ideas of citizenship and democracy and definitions among different groups change over the course of time.”
Bryant said history shows the progress that followed the march. “The question is how do we compare where we were then to where we are now?”
In the eyes of King’s older son, Martin Luther King III, “Many of us, and I certainly am one, thought that we would be further.” He referred to the rewriting of history today and the rise in public hate and hostility, often driven by political leaders.
“There used to be civility. You could disagree without being disagreeable,” he said.
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US Open unveils 2023’s new celebrity chefs to media at Aces tasting US Open Tennis Championships
TMZ reports that Rihanna and Harlem native A$AP Rocky are parents to a second child. Sources tell the outlet that the billionairess entertainer/businesswoman gave birth to another baby boy on August 3 in Los Angeles, California. Like his older brother RZA, the baby’s name starts with an “R,” just like his parents’ names, although the full name is unknown …
In other baby news, Serena Williams and her husband, Alexis Ohanian, welcomed their second baby girl, Adira River Ohanian. The proud mother and father announced the news on TikTok on August 21. “Welcome my beautiful angel,” Williams captioned a video of herself and Alexis with their 5-year-old daughter, Olympia, before presenting the new bundle of joy. Ohanian posted, “Welcome, Adira River Ohanian. I’m grateful to report our house is teeming with love: a happy & healthy newborn & healthy mama. Feeling grateful,” reported US Weekly …
It has been awhile since anyone has seen Arnelle Simpson, O.J. Simpson’s daughter, in public or had knowledge of what she’s up to these days. On August 20, the gorgeous Howard University alumna was spotted at the Black Party Tour in Nashville, Tennessee, which features Jodeci, SWV, and Dru Hill. A source told Go with the Flo that Arnelle is the wardrobe stylist for Jodeci and has been on tour with them throughout the entire tour. Working as a stylist for artists and actresses is what she has always loved to do. Other celebs in that night’s audience included Jill Scott and Taj from SWV’s husband, former NFL star Eddie George, who is currently head football coach at Tennessee State University …
“CBS Mornings” host Gayle King jetted to Martha’s Vineyard recently, where she hung out with the bigwigs. Sources tell Go with the Flo on August 19, King watched the elite community’s annual fireworks with former President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama, along with DJ Nice, at the home of Obama’s former senior advisor, Valerie Jarrett …
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TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — New Jersey will require school districts to offer free menstrual products for grades six through 12 under a new law Gov. Phil Murphy signed Wednesday.
Murphy, a Democrat, said in a statement that the measure is aimed at promoting equity “at every level” in the state.
“When students can’t access the menstrual products they need for their reproductive health, the potential stress and stigma too often distracts them from their classes or forces them to skip school entirely,” he said.
Under the bill, school districts are required to ensure that students in schools with students from grade six through 12 have access to free menstrual products in at least half of the female and gender-neutral bathrooms.
The state will bear any costs incurred by schools under the legislation. The legislature’s nonpartisan Office of Legislative Services estimated the requirement will cost between $1.8 million and $3.5 million for the first full school year and from $1.4 million to $2.9 million in subsequent years. The cost is a fraction of the state’s $54.3 billion budget.
The requirement will affect about 1,400 schools. Total enrollment of female students in grades six through 12 in these schools approximated 354,497, according to the Legislature.
New Jersey joins at least 10 other states and the District of Columbia that have established or expanded requirements for free menstrual products in schools since 2010, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Among the states that passed similar measures recently include Alabama, Delaware and Utah.
The bill passed the Democrat-led Legislature nearly unanimously, with only one “no” vote.
“Menstrual hygiene products are a necessity, not a luxury. When this becomes an obstacle and decisions are made to not attend school, the loss is greater than just the one day,” Senate Majority Leader Teresa Ruiz said.
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