Fifty years ago today, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his most famous speech to a crowd of at least 250,000 people during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. After the jump I’ve posted the “I Have a Dream” video and other links related to this moment in American history.

According to the History Channel, King spoke last at the rally because none of the other speakers wanted the final slot, and the “I Have a Dream” refrain was an impromptu addition to his prepared remarks.

The overwhelming response to King’s speech spurred FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to intensify “the bureau’s clandestine war” against King, with the goal of discrediting the civil rights leader.

Two people you’ve probably never heard of made the march happen.

The idea for the 1963 March on Washington was envisioned by A. Philip Randolph, a long-time civil rights activist dedicated to improving the economic condition of black Americans. When Randolph first proposed the march in late 1962, he received little response from other civil rights leaders. He knew that cooperation would be difficult because each had his own agenda for the civil rights movement, and the leaders competed for funding and press coverage. Success of the March on Washington would depend on the involvement of the so-called “Big Six”-Randolph and the heads of the five major civil rights organizations: Roy Wilkins of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); Whitney Young, Jr., of the National Urban League; Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC); James Farmer of the Conference of Racial Equality (CORE); and John Lewis of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

The details and organization of the march were handled by Bayard Rustin, Randolph’s trusted associate. Rustin was a veteran activist with extensive experience in putting together mass protest. With only two months to plan, Rustin established his headquarters in Harlem, NY, with a smaller office in Washington. He and his core staff of 200 volunteers quickly put together the largest peaceful demonstration in U.S. history.

Last month Bill Moyers sat down with Representative John Lewis to discuss the March on Washington.

The March on Washington is largely remembered for King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. The 23-year-old Lewis, newly named to lead the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, was the youngest of the featured speakers, but among the most defiant.

Now a 14-term congressman from Georgia, Lewis shares new insight into how the event unfolded – including last-minute conflicts over his own manuscript. He also discusses the continuing challenges to racial and economic equality, and his unwavering dedication to nonviolence and brotherly love as a means toward a more just end – even when facing inevitable violence and brutality.

Lewis also discussed the event on a recent episode of the public radio program “Here & Now”; you can listen or read the transcript here.

PBS ran an hour-long program about the march and posted a phenomenal collection of 26 first-person accounts of the occasion.

Of the PBS “memories of the march” I’ve watched so far, my favorite is Edith Lee-Payne reflecting on spending her 12th birthday there with her mother. Payne discovered only five years ago that she was featured in an iconic photo from the event. The picture has appeared in numerous publications, and you can see it on this website.

Malcolm X, leader of the Nation of Islam, condemned what he called the “Farce on Washington.” You can read his comments on the march from his 1964 autobiography here. Excerpt:

Any student of how “integration” can weaken the black man’s movement was about to observe a master lesson.

     The White House, with a fanfare of international publicity, “approved,” “endorsed,” and “welcomed” a March on Washington. […]

     The original “angry” March on Washington was now about to be entirely changed. […]

For the status-seeker, it was a status symbol. “Were you there?” You can hear that right today.

     It had become an outing, a picnic. […]

     The marchers had been instructed to bring no signs–signs were provided. They had been told to sing one song: “We Shall Overcome.” They had been told how to arrive, when, where to arrive, where to assemble, when to start marching, the route to march. First aid stations were strategically located–even where to faint!

     Yes, I was there. I observed that circus. Who ever heard of angry revolutionists all harmonizing “We Shall Overcome. . .Suum Day. . .” while tripping and swaying along arm-in-arm with the very people they were supposed to be angrily revolting against? Who ever heard of angry revolutionists swinging their bare feet together with their oppressor in lily-pad park pools, with gospels and guitars and “I Have A Dream” speeches?

This week civil rights leader Gloria Richardson, the co-founder of the Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee in Maryland, reflected on how she and other women were silenced during the March on Washington. Richardson only had a chance to say “hello” before the microphone was pulled away from her. British journalist remembers the occasion fondly but remarked, “Although black women were the backbone of the voting rights movement, none of the official speeches were by women.”

The only woman who did speak at the event was Daisy Bates, former president of the Arkansas chapter of the NAACP who had “led the effort to desegregate Little Rock’s Central High School in 1957.” Bates was asked to speak in place of Myrlie Evers, who was unable to attend the march. Evers was the widow of NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers, who had been assassinated earlier in 1963. Democracy Now posted the full text of Bates’ pledge to

join hands with you. We will kneel-in; we will sit-in until we can eat in any corner in the United States. We will walk until we are free, until we can walk to any school and take our children to any school in the United States. And we will sit-on and we will kneel-in and we will lie-in if necessary until every Negro in America can vote. This we pledge to the women of America.

The March on Washington was billed as a march for jobs as well as civil rights. Fifty years later, the unemployment rate for African-Americans is still roughly double the unemployment rate for whites, and gaps in average household income and wealth have widened. The Pew Center’s recent report on 50 years of demographic trends is worth a read, along with their recent findings on Americans’ perceptions of racial disparities.