WASHINGTON — Tens of thousands of people packed the Lincoln Memorial and the National Mall on Saturday to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream Speech.”
One by one, 50 speakers called attention to contemporary issues like policing tactics and voter disenfranchisement to argue that in so many ways the country continues to struggle, as civil rights activist Reverend Al Sharpton put it, with “issues that have stood in the way” of fulfilling King’s dream.
Sharpton, the co-organizer of the march along with Martin Luther King III, the son of the slain civil rights leader, said that the Supreme Court’s decision in June to strike down a key anti-discrimination provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was an example that the nation is moving in the wrong direction when it comes to civil rights.
“They are changing laws all over this country,” said Sharpton, the MSNBC host and founder and president of National Action Network, the civil rights organization he founded in 1991. “Congress needs to deal with what the Supreme Court has done.”
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder credited King and the civil rights movement with training a spotlight on “a sacred and unmet promise” from America.
“Their march is now our march,” Holder said. “Our focus has broadened to include the cause of women, of Latinos, of Asian-Americans, of lesbians, of gays, of people with disabilities and of countless others across this great country who still yearn for equality, opportunity and fair treatment as we recommit ourselves to the quest for justice.”
Two days before Holder’s appearance at the march, the Justice Department went to court to block Texas’ tough new voter ID law, implemented after the Supreme Court gave its ruling on the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
