March on Washington Hidden History Quiz
Quiz by Teaching for Change
When most people think of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, what comes to mind is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s iconic statement, “I Have a Dream.” In truth, there was much more to this historic event than these four words in King’s speech. Teaching for Change designed this quiz about the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom to challenge assumptions, deepen understanding, and inspire further learning.
March for Jobs and Freedom: Calculating the Crowd
Lesson by Louise Bock, Susan Guengerich, and Hope Martin
In this lesson, students use representations and computations to estimate the crowd at the 1963 March on Washington. Students strengthen critical thinking and mathematical skills through investigation and problem solving, and gain a deeper understanding of the issues related to protest demonstrations and media representations of events.
Call to Negro America to March on Washington for Jobs and Equal Participation in National Defense, 1941
Primary Document by A. Philip Randolph
In 1941, A. Philip Randolph, the president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, issued a call to African Americans to fight the unjust conditions in the workforce with a March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The threatened mass protest forced President Franklin Roosevelt to sign Executive Order 8802 in June 1941, banning discrimination in the federal government and the defense industry. On June 28, A. Philip Randolph postponed the march.
1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom Statement and Demands
By heads of ten organizations calling for the March of August 28, 1963
The 1963 March on Washington had a list of ten demands. Half of the demands were not about integration or education – they were about labor and economic rights.
Claiming and Teaching the 1963 March on Washington
Reading by Bill Fletcher Jr.
The March on Washington did not begin as a classic civil rights march. It is barely remembered that the March on Washington was for freedom AND jobs, or that the march was initiated by black labor leaders.
The Unknown Origins of the March on Washington: Civil Rights Politics and the Black Working Class
Reading by William P. Jones
“The very decade which has witnessed the decline of legal Jim Crow has also seen the rise of de facto segregation in our most fundamental socioeconomic institutions,” veteran civil rights activist Bayard Rustin wrote in 1965. The March on Washington addressed the economic crisis facing working-class African Americans more effectively than any other mobilization since the Second World War.