Remembering the March on Washington, August 1963

Sebastopol resident Bill Phillips remembers the March on Washington and what it was like hearing Martin Luther King speak in person

The March on Washington, 1963. (Photo: Library of Congress)

By Bill Phillips

Our memories are very strange. It seems we only remember certain things. Some of those things are good, some of the things are not so good. I’ve always wondered why we remember the things that we remember. For example, I don’t really remember much about the year 1963. I was 12. There were a couple of trips I made with my family to visit our Texas relatives. We were just recently returned from a place called West Pakistan which no one in America really knew about at the time. I was going into junior high school. I was young, and I was a new kid in a new school. I didn’t have a lot of friends.

I remember one hot August evening my father said: “We’re gonna go to Washington DC. We’re going to take a trip.” I remember asking him if my younger brother or my Mom were coming too. My father said: “ No, just you and I.” I remember thinking that I didn’t want to go because, if my memory serves me correctly, there were some kind of boyish activity that had been planned with DJ, Bobby, Eric and Tommy and some of the other boys from garden apartments where we lived — probably a stick ball game that I wanted to play in as I was intent on making new friends.

My dad was insistent in a nice way. He wasn’t harsh about it, but he said, “ We’re gonna have fun.” I remember asking him how long the trip would take. He said, “We will go up in the morning and then we’ll come back very late at night.” Then as an afterthought, he said again, “It’ll be a lot of fun.” I remember being very suspicious of the “we’re gonna have fun” part. I figured Dad had said it too many times!

Despite my apprehensions (whatever apprehensions a 12-year-old boy could have), I remember getting up early on the 23rd to get on a bus. It was very dark, and I was sleepy. Once on the bus, people were talking loudly about how excited they were to be going to hear the speech; that the number of people who were going was going to be huge, and what a great moment it was for the country. At that time, I really had no idea what all the fuss was about, so I just stayed close to my Dad, got in our seats on the bus and looked out the window.

There were other kids on the bus presumably with their parents, and there were a lot of poster signs in all kinds of colors, including red, white and blue. Signs saying “Freedom,” “Jobs For All,” “Peace,” “Love is Better,” and other such slogans. People were joyful. I vaguely knew what “Washington” was and let out a groan, I recall, when my Dad said the trip was about 5 or so hours.

Before the bus got started, someone on the bus began to tell us that the event we were all going to was a non-violent event and that if a person could not commit to being non-violent should people spit on them, or call them names, or throw things at them, or even if police attacked them, they would have to remain behind and not participate in the march. Not one single person got off the bus.

Still clueless, I asked my Dad what the march was about, and he explained it was called “The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom” and that a man named Martin Luther King, Jr. was going to deliver a speech. He explained that the march was important to demonstrate the unfairness that happened to Negroes (that was the word used then), the brown people who worked on farms and the poor in America. He said the march was to bring attention to these issues to our government leaders. I distinctly remember my 12-year-old brain thinking that everyone should be able to work. Even a child knows Truth with a capital T when he hears it.

During the long bus ride, people sang songs like “Go Tell it on the Mountain” or “I’ve got a Hammer” or “Let Freedom Ring” or “Jacob’s Ladder”—old Negro spirituals transformed into protest songs, I was told. I learned the words to all of those songs and eventually really got into the singing and clapping. At one point my Dad laughed and commented: “Boy you have a mean bad tone.” I thought it was a compliment. People on the bus laughed and generally were having a good time….like an old-fashioned family get-together.

Once we arrived in Washington and drove down Constitution Avenue, I was stunned at the multitude of people and buses. I was shocked to see the tallness of the Washington Monument and stark beauty of all of the various impressive buildings lining Constitution Avenue. I had never seen anything as majestic, grand and projecting power in America at that time. The buses unloaded. We organized into little groups and marched slowly toward the Reflecting Pool. Once there, people gathered around it and I remember sitting at the edge of the pool near the statue of Abraham Lincoln dangling my feet in the water trying to keep cool.

Other memories flash through my mind. I remember how hot it was by the time we all got settled around the mall — it must’ve been well into the 90s. It was very humid. I remember the smells of the people—there were lots of people there—and I remember looking around and thinking it was an ocean of people. I remember how hot they looked and that they were all sweaty. There were all kinds of smells coming up into my nostrils—seemingly all at the same time but somehow remarkably distinct. I could smell people who didn’t use deodorant. I could smell those who did use it. I could smell tobacco. I could smell perfumes and colognes. Yet one of the most striking things that I remember was the smell of oranges. Because it was so warm that day, there was a tendency for people to get dehydrated. One of the things many of the individual group leaders did was they brought box lunches, water and oranges to give to the groups they were responsible for. I remember our group leader handing out oranges to each one of us. If you can think for a moment what it’s like when you peel an nice, big orange and there’s a little spray of juice that goes up into the air—it’s like a misty spritzer.

So while sitting with my legs dangling in the Reflecting Pool, I was surrounded by hundreds of people peeling oranges, and I smelled that orange mist in the air. Even today decades later, when I peel an orange or when I smell an orange, I get a flashback to that moment on August 28, 1963, at the mall sitting with my feet in the water listening to a Great Man speak.

Another memory comes to mind too. I remember how diverse the makeup of the crowd was—hundreds of thousands. Men and women. Old and young. I heard different languages. I heard Spanish being spoken. I heard English. I heard French and some languages that I didn’t know. I saw all kinds of people there. There were white people, brown people, black people, people of Asian descent. All kinds of religions seemed to be represented, and my Dad explained the importance of that to me. It seemed that there were all the different kinds of people in the world at this particular place at that particular moment, listening to speeches of the Great Man and others.

I remember feeling safe — I didn’t worry about anyone bothering me or pushing me even though we were all standing shoulder to shoulder. I was embraced by the crowd in a feeling of great oneness and comfort. Even now, I can go back to that moment and recall that good feeling. I wish there were more times when others could have those same feelings in the world. I also remember the timbre of the Great Man’s voice when he spoke. It was the way he spoke that made everyone stop talking and made everyone listen — even those people who were farthest away from him as he stood before Lincoln.

When he spoke and addressed the throngs of people, there was a passion and insistency in his voice that made us all feel as if we had an electric circuit running through us and every other person who was in the crowd. We knew, deep within us— as if our very cells knew—what he was talking about. We knew that he was right. We knew that he had a dream, and he was sharing that dream with all of us and the world.

That moment as a young boy on the mall—a boy who didn’t know anything really about life or civil rights or politics — that moment was a key “wisdom” moment for me as a teen growing up, as a young man, as a college student, as a law student, as a father, son and husband and as a representative of our country abroad. That feeling of electricity and power within the crowd and what it meant and what it stood for and how it moved people to action without violence has always been something I have remembered and put into practice. I have called upon that feeling to help me in life and in work.

I feel quite fortunate to have been able to be at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963, and to hear firsthand the voice of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He has given so much to this nation, much of which we don’t recall. Much of it doesn’t make the press, and some of it doesn’t even make the history books. But the impressions Martin Luther King, Jr., made on an unknown, innocent, politically ignorant 12-year-old boy that summer in 1963 is an example of the type of unacknowledged contributions Martin Luther King Jr. has made to the political and social health of this country.

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