People on the Program: March on Washington 1963

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People on the Program: March on Washington 1963

Photos: The program for the original March on Washington on Aug. 28, 1963, listed the speakers. This gallery shows who many of them were.

The program for the original March on Washington on Aug. 28, 1963, listed the speakers. This gallery shows who many of them were.

American concert and opera singer Marian Anderson (1897-1993) led the National Anthem on the Mall for the March on Washington. She was the first African-American singer to perform at the New York Metropolitan, and was made a delegate to the United Nations in 1958 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

A. Philip Randolph (1889-1979), director of the March on Washington, gave the opening remarks and led the Pledge of Allegiance on the Mall on Aug. 28, 1963. He organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first predominantly black labor union. In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson presented Randolph with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Dr. Eugene Carson Blake (1906-1985), shown in a 1964 photo, was listed on the program. He was Stated Clerk of the United Presbyterian Church of the USA; vice chairman of the Commission on Race Relations of the National Council of Churches of Christ in America. He was elected head of the World Council of Churches (WCC) Feb. 11, 1966, at a meeting in Geneva, Switzerland. He once said he was "the first white clergyman to be arrested in the civil rights movement."

Myrlie Louise Beasley arrived on the Alcorn campus in 1950 as an education major. On her first day on campus, she met Medgar Evers. The couple married on Christmas Eve of 1951 and she became a mother and wife of a Mississippi civil rights activist. Just hours after her husband was killed in 1963, Evers addressed 700 people at the Pearl Street AME church vowing that her husband's murder would not be in vain.

Daisy Bates (1914-1999), shown in a late-1950s photo standing in front of her house, was listed on the program for the March on Washington. She played a leading role in the Little Rock, Ark., integration crisis and was state president of the NAACP.

Rosa Parks (1913-2005) was listed on the program for the March on Washington. Congress called her "the first lady of civil rights." After she refused to give up her seat to a white person on a segregated bus in 1955, she became a central figure in the resistance to segregation. On Feb. 27, 2013, a statue of Rosa Parks commissioned by Congress was unveiled in National Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol, close to what would have been her 100th birthday.

Gloria Richardson (1922-) was listed on the program for the March on Washington. In this 1964 photo, as chairman of the Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee, she met with Brig. Gen. George M. Gelston in Cambridge, Md. Richardson told the general that if African Americans couldn’t meet for entertainment then whites shouldn't be permitted to either.

John Lewis (1940-) was national chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee when he spoke at the March on Washington. He was one of the primary leaders of the civil rights movement. On March 7, 1965, known as Bloody Sunday, he was among those injured at Selma's Edmund Pettis Bridge, suffering a skull fracture when state troopers ordered the peaceful demonstrators to disperse. He has served as U.S. Representative for Georgia's 5th Congressional District since 1987.

Walter Reuther (1907-1970), president of the United Auto Workers, was listed on the program from the March on Washington. He is in the far right of this photo during a visit to the Capitol in Washington on Aug. 28, 1963. From left: Whitney Young, National Urban League; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Southern Christian Leadership Conference; Roy Wilkins, rear, NAACP; and Walter Reuther.

James Farmer (1920-1999), national director of the Congress of Racial Equality, was listed on the program for the March on Washington. In this 1965 photo, President Lyndon B. Johnson presents one of the pens used to sign the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to him on Aug. 6, 1965.

Whitney M. Young Jr., (1921-1971), center, executive director of the National Urban League, was listed on the program for the March on Washington. He is shown with President Kennedy, left, and Henry Steeger, right, president of the National Urban League, in the White House on Jan. 23, 1962. Young was president of the National Association of Social Workers from 1969-71. When he died of a heart attack in 1971, President Richard Nixon delivered his eulogy.

Mathew Ahmann (1931-2001), shown in this photo just to the left of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and with John Lewis at the far left, spoke at the iconic March on Washington in 1963. Ahmann was executive director of the National Catholic Conference for Interracial Justice, which he founded in 1960.

Roy Wilkins (1901-1981) was executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and listed on the program for the March on Washington, which he helped organize. He also helped organize the Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965 and the March Against Fear in 1966.

Gospel singer Mahalia Jackson (1911-1972) sang at the March on Washington in 1963. She performed "I Been 'Buked and I Been Scorned" before Martin Luther King Jr. gave his speech. She also sang "Precious Lord" at his funeral in 1968. Pictured in a photo taken in 1963, she was referred to as "The Queen of Gospel."

Rabbi Joachim Prinz, president of the American Jewish Congress, was listed on the program for the March on Washington. In this photo taken at the March, he stands behind the two seated people. Others shown are from left: Mathew Ahmann, executive director of the National Catholic Conference for Interracial Justice; (seated with glasses) Cleveland Robinson, chairman of the Demonstration Committee; (beside Robinson is) A. Philip Randolph, organizer of the demonstration and veteran labor leader who helped to found the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, American Federation of Labor (AFL), and a former vice president of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO); (standing behind the two chairs) Rabbi Joachim Prinz; (wearing a bow tie and standing beside Prinz) is Joseph Rauh Jr., a Washington, D.C., attorney and civil rights, peace and union activist; John Lewis, chairman, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; and Floyd McKissick, national chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality.

Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968) delivers his "I Have a Dream" speech during the March on Washington. Earlier in the year, he had written his "Letter from the Birmingham Jail." In 1964, he would receive the Nobel Peace Prize. He was assassinated 45 years ago, in April 1968, in Memphis. His birthday is a national holiday.

Benjamin Mays was the president of Morehouse College from 1940 to 1967. He gave the benediction at the March on Washington and was a mentor to Martin Luther King Jr., giving the eulogy at King's funeral.

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