alike arose and cheered. In an impassioned speech, UAW president Walter
Reuther criticized president Kennedy for being preoccupied with interna-
tional crises: ‘We cannot defendfreedom in Berlin so long as we denyfreedom
in Birmingham!’
In the culminating address, Martin Luther King, the unofficial ‘President
of the Negroes’ and the conscience of his country, updated Lincoln’s
Gettysburg Address. He declared that blacks had come to Washington ‘to
cash a check’ based on the lofty promises of freedom and equality contained
in the Declaration of Independence. Because the check was returned for
‘insufficient funds,’ King declared to the enormous throng that ‘now is the
time’ to honor that check. Having deviated from his prepared text, King
began speaking extemporaneously and Mahalia Jackson urged him to ‘tell
’em about your dream, Martin!’ The charismatic King then delivered a spine-
tingling peroration that envisioned a color-blind America [Doc. 10, p. 147].
He drew sizeable portions of it from a speech that he had delivered several
times. After a momentary stunned silence, people cheered and wept openly.
James Baldwin, who despaired of improved race relations, remarked that ‘for
a moment, it almost seemed that we stood on a height, and could see our
inheritance; perhaps we could make the kingdom real, perhaps the beloved
community would not forever remain that dream one dreamed in agony.’
The euphoria over King’s masterful speech dissipated quickly. The New
York Timesreported a day later that the demonstration ‘appeared to have left
much of Congress untouched – physically, emotionally, and politically.’ Nor
did the president have much clout to clear his bill, especially since a poll
showed that white southerners strongly disapproved of his tilt toward civil
rights. Black militants chastised King for making a conciliatory gesture to
white America, similar to Booker T. Washington’s Atlanta Compromise.
Malcolm X called King ‘a traitor to his race’ and dismissed the rally as the
‘Farce in Washington... subsidized by white liberals and stage-managed by
President Kennedy.’ He asked sarcastically, ‘Who ever heard of angry revolu-
tionaries swinging their bare feet together with their oppressor in lily-pad
pools, with gospels and guitars and “I have a dream” speeches?’ Real revolu-
tion, Malcolm insisted, was ‘based on bloodshed... and destroys everything
in its way’ [Doc. 11, p. 148].
Nor were Birmingham klansmen swayed by the march, especially when
the city’s schools had just desegregated. A bomb demolished the home of
Arthur Sholes, the black attorney for students now attending the all-white
high school. On Sunday morning, 15 September, a dynamite blast ripped
through the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, wounding twenty-one and
killing four defenseless black girls – Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair,
Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley – who had just completed a lesson
on ‘The Love That Forgives.’ Cynthia, the Wesleys’ only child, had been92 THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT