Martin Luther King, Jr. and others addressed more than 250,000 people at the March on Washington in 1963. (Photo courtesy of the National Archives)
Along with 46 freshman students and three peer mentors, Dublin, a native of Bloomfield, N.J., will be traveling to Washington, D.C. early Saturday morning to participate in the 50th anniversary commemoration of the March on Washington.
“This is incredible. I’m so excited about being part of history,” she said.
Among the thousands of people traveling to Washington on Saturday to attend the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, college students such as Dublin are enthusiastically embracing the event as a time to claim their own moment in the American Civil Rights Movement.
“I’m absolutely ecstatic about traveling to Washington to celebrate what is one of the most historic Civil Rights Movement events,” said Travonya Kenly, a junior ecology major at Cheyney State University.
Kenly, also a peer mentor to Cheyney freshman students, explained that participating in the march’s commemoration will represent for her the culmination of many hours of hearing stories from relatives, watching documentaries, and reading books about the Civil Rights Movement. “I’ve been learning about the March on Washington and civil rights since I was really young. Being in D.C. represents the ultimate for me,” she said.
With the March on Washington commemoration being marked by organizations, particularly colleges and universities, all over the nation this and next week, Saturday’s march retracing the historic 1963 route will likely be the nation’s largest anniversary event. An estimated 150,000 people are expected to be in Washington on Saturday for the march. The original march attracted more than 250,000.
