Nation: Beginning of a Dream

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Many Negroes had looked to the march as an end in itself, a massive demonstration that would somehow solve all their problems. It was not that.

Many other Americans, both white and Negro, had looked to the march with dread. It would, they feared, be an occasion for riot and bloodshed.

But it was not that either.

As against the excesses of expectation on both sides, the day began in anticlimax. Overnight, special trains and buses began moving into Washington from all parts of the U.S. Some of the early arrivals went off to picket Bobby Kennedy's Justice Department. But most of those getting off the trains in Washington's Union Station seemed weary, bewildered and subdued.

Only when a "Freedom Special" roared in from Deep Dixie did things get lively. The train, originating in Jacksonville, Fla., carried 785 marchers—many of them youngsters in their teens or early 20s who, as a result of their participation in Negro demonstrations, had spent time in Southern jails or carried on their bodies the scars inflicted by Southern cops. They piled off the train singing the battle hymn of the Negro's 1963 revolution, We Shall Overcome. Their spirit perked up hundreds of other Negroes still wandering aimlessly around the depot.

Overalls & Ivy. Even so, as of 7:30 on the morning of the great day, there were probably more cops than marchers on the assembly grounds around the Washington Monument. The District of Columbia's police chief, Robert V. Murray, had assembled a force of 5,900 men —including 350 club-carrying firemen, 1,700 National Guardsmen and 300 newly sworn-in police reserves. At nearby bases, 4,000 soldiers and marines were ready to cross the Potomac in helicopters if they were needed for riot duty.

Organizers of the march had publicly predicted a throng of 100,000, although they privately felt confident that many more than that would show up. Now, peeking out of the green-and-white circus tent that served as their headquarters on the Monument grounds, the leaders began to worry that the crowd might fall short of their minimal hopes.

But even then, the railroad tracks and highways leading to Washington were clogged. Throughout the day, the marchers poured into the nation's capital—building to a grand total of well over 200,000. Of these, somewhere between 10% and 15% were white. There were, of course, the guitar-toting, goatee-growing beatniks; but for every one of these, there were probably two or three clergymen. There were Negroes in faded blue overalls; there were even more in stylish Ivy League suits. They swirled around the Monument's assembly ground, ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, passed around canteens filled with water (Washington had prohibited the sale of liquor for the day), tried to keep track of their children with no conspicuous success.