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190 k 23 The 1979 March on Wash­ ing­ ton Its Place in His­ tory Ever since the 1963 March on Wash­ ing­ ton, ­ protest ­ marches in the ­ nation’s cap­ i­ tal have held an al­ most mag­ i­ cal al­ lure. What­ ever the issue that pro­ vokes the event—ra­ cial jus­ tice, re­ pro­ duc­ tive free­ dom, op­ po­ si­ tion to war—par­ tic­ i­ pants tend to re­ mem­ ber the ­ events ­ fondly and make big ­ claims for them. Nine­ teen ­ seventy-nine was the year of the first of sev­ eral na­ tional ­ marches for gay and les­ bian (later ex­ panded to in­ clude bi­ sex­ ual and trans­ gen­ der) ­ rights. In 2004, on the oc­ ca­ sion of its ­ twenty-fifth an­ ni­ ver­ sary, I pre­ sented these re­ marks at a panel dis­ cus­ sion at the Ger­ ber/Hart Li­ brary and ­ Archives in Chi­ cago. My goal was to move be­ yond the nos­ tal­ gia and the hyper­ bole in order to grasp what the march had ac­ tu­ ally ac­ com­ plished. k How we all seem to love an­ ni­ ver­ sar­ ies! Think about the ­ masses of folks who show up each year for Pride ­ Marches in June, for St. ­ Patrick’s Day pa­ rades, for Cinco de Mayo cel­ e­ bra­ tions. An­ ni­ ver­ sar­ ies pro­ vide mo­ ments for civic re­ flec­ tion. In May 2004, news­ papers were ­ filled with sto­ ries This essay first ap­ peared in The Gay and Les­ bian Re­ view 10, no. 2 (March–April 2005): 33–34. The 1979 March on Washington 191 as­ sess­ ing the mean­ ing of Brown v. Board of Ed­ u­ ca­ tion on its fif­ ti­ eth an­ ni­ ver­ sary. Au­ di­ ences sat in uni­ ver­ sity lec­ ture halls, com­ mu­ nity meet­ ing­ spaces, and ­ houses of wor­ ship to think about the strug­ gle for ra­ cial jus­ tice. Com­ memora­ tions like this can pro­ pel ­ change in the ­ present, as in­ di­ vid­ u­ als draw les­ sons from the vic­ to­ ries and strug­ gles of the past. So it is im­ por­ tant that we are tak­ ing time today to re­ call the 1979 March on Wash­ ing­ ton on its ­ twenty-fifth an­ ni­ ver­ sary. How­ ever, the more I have ­ thought about what I want to say, the more I have found my­ self skep­ ti­ cal that the march is any­ thing more than a foot­ note in his­ tory. This is per­ haps a he­ ret­ ical com­ ment to make on a panel like this, but maybe I can il­ lus­ trate my ­ doubts by com­ par­ ing the 1979 event with two other fa­ mous ­ marches: • In Au­ gust 1963 ap­ prox­ i­ mately 250,000 peo­ ple from every part of the coun­ try as­ sem­ bled in Wash­ ing­ ton for an event that has be­ come so ­ iconic that we often sim­ ply refer to it as “the March on Wash­ ing­ ton.” The march was a major story in every news out­ let of con­ se­ quence in the ­ United ­ States. Large na­ tional or­ ga­ n­ iza­ tions with mem­ ber­ ship in the hun­ dreds of thou­ sands—in­ deed, in the mil­ lions—­ backed the ven­ ture. In the ­ months be­ fore the march, local dem­ on­ stra­ tions ­ erupted in hun­ dreds upon hun­ dreds of com­ mu­ nities ­ around the coun­ try. Pres­ i­ dent Ken­ nedy sent na­ tional civil ­ rights leg­ is­ la­ tion to Con­ gress. Ag­ i­ ta­ tion for ra­ cial equal­ ity was at such a high level that it took only seven weeks for or­ ga­ niz­ ers to pull such a large crowd to Wash­ ing­ ton. In other words, con­ tin­ u­ ing ag­ i­ ta­ tion for black free­ dom, a na­ tional infra­ struc­ ture of or­ gan­ iza­ tions, and a re­ al­ iz­ able na­ tional goal to­ gether made it a stra­ te­ gic time to march on Wash­ ing­ ton. • In No­ vem­ ber 1969 more than 400,000 ­ Americans gath­ ered in Wash­ ing­ ton to ­ protest the Viet­ nam War. Just a month be­ fore, anti­ war ac­ ti­ vists had or­ ga­ nized co­ or­ di­ nated ­ events in cit...

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