Martin Luther King III (center left) and Reverend Al Sharpton (center right) lead the march Saturday to mark the 60th anniversary of the March for Civil Rights in Washington Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP
Politicians and activists warned that Ron DeSantis “will not erase our history” as thousands gathered for the 60th anniversary of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. March in Washington.
GOP policies on reproductive rights, LGBT laws, African American history and book bans were among the policies criticized by speakers at the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday, where 250,000 protesters gathered in 1963 to watch King's rousing “I Have a Dream” speech . . The demonstration was a turning point in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
“We came today to break our silence. We're here today to tell the Governor of Florida that he won't erase our history,” House Democratic House Assistant Leader James Clyburn told the crowd on Saturday.
“We're here today to let the Governor of Texas [Greg Abbott] know he won't cancel our votes. … We came today to reaffirm our commitment to the proposal that we will not be silent.”
House Democratic Minority Leader Hakim Jeffreys listed a number of rights at risk for today's Americans, telling the crowd that they have gathered “to fight to make America the best version of itself,” the Washington Post reported.
Saturday's gathering was the precursor to the actual anniversary of the March on Washington on August 28, 1963.
On Monday, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will meet with the organizers of the 1963 caucus. All of the King children were invited to meet with Biden, White House officials said.
On Friday, Martin Luther King III, the eldest son of the late civil rights icon, and his sister, Bernice King, visited a monument to their father in Washington.
“I see a man still in power saying, 'We still have to fix this,'” Mr. King III said, looking at the granite statue.
Image of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. during the 60th anniversary March on Washington at the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday. Credit: Jacqueline Martin/AP
Margaret Huang, president and CEO of the nonprofit civil rights group Southern Poverty Center, told the gathering on Saturday that the march 60 years ago opened the door to fighting discrimination.
But she said new laws across the country that “trample the right to vote” and target the LGBT community threaten to undo some of those gains.
“These campaigns are against our ballots, our bodies , of our school textbooks – they are all connected. When our right to vote collapses, so can all other civil and human rights, but today we're here to say, “Not before our eyes.”
Kimberl Crenshaw, Executive Director of the African American Policy Forum warned that “the very history that the march marks is not only contested but distorted,” referring to several state bans on books and schooling based on critical racial theory that sees the legacy of racism as shaping American history.< /p>< p>She called this and other moves, such as removing the African American Studies course from Florida and Arkansas public schools, “a concerted effort to silence conversations about this story.”
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