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23. The 1979 March on Washington: Its Place in History
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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...