The March on Washington of 1963 is remembered most for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech
FILE - The Rev. Martin Luther King, center, speaks with the media at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference convention in Savannah, Ga., on Sept. 29, 1964. The March on Washington of 1963 was the product of sustained activism by broad coalition. The Black Church was not monolithic then nor now. The March on Washington of 1963 is remembered most for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
"The issues are multiracial. It's too simplistic now to say,"Black church/white church,'" said the Rev. William Barber, who in 2018 became co-chair of a national anti-poverty initiative called. It took its name from a movement launched by King and other SCLC leaders in 1968 shortly before King's assassination.
Barber said the new manifestation of the Poor People’s Campaign has drawn active support from thousands of clergy of different races and faiths. Many Black faith leaders in the early 1900s supported Booker T. Washington's call for Black progress to occur through education and economic self-sufficiency, rather than through direct challenges to segregation laws. In later decades, self-sufficiency was touted by the Nation of Islam as part of its advocacy of Black Nationalism. Some other Black pastors — notably Father Divine and Reverend Ike — became wealthy with optimistic promises of heaven-on-earth prosperity for their followers.
“In many respects, they have declared victory, purchased their own buildings,” he said. “There are fewer prophetic sermons and more concern with institutional maintenance. ‘How to do we keep the lights on, pay the bills.’” “There's something in our blood that will never release us from our responsibility to make heaven here on earth,” she said.
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