Donald Cash was just a teenager in 1963 when he finished his shift at
a downtown clothing store and joined the throngs marching toward the
Mall.
He never got close enough to hear the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. speak but always considered himself a beneficiary of the march as one of the first African Americans hired to cut meat at a Giant supermarket.
Now 68 and a veteran labor and civil rights activist, Cash will be walking toward the Mall again this weekend, to mark the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, the landmark protest remembered most for King’s monumental “I Have a Dream” speech.
But the Supreme Court’s recent ruling that struck down part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the stark racial divide among Americans after a Florida jury acquitted the man who fatally shot black teenager Trayvon Martin have spurred debate about how much has changed and what more there is to do.
“I had hoped when I was a young man that we’d see a lot of progress by now,” said Cash, a resident of Columbia. “But I think we’re going backwards.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/events-marking-50th-anniversary-of-march-on-washington-to-emphasize-dreams-unfulfilled/2013/08/20/674922f0-08e0-11e3-9941-6711ed662e71_story.html?hpid=z5
He never got close enough to hear the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. speak but always considered himself a beneficiary of the march as one of the first African Americans hired to cut meat at a Giant supermarket.
Now 68 and a veteran labor and civil rights activist, Cash will be walking toward the Mall again this weekend, to mark the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, the landmark protest remembered most for King’s monumental “I Have a Dream” speech.
But the Supreme Court’s recent ruling that struck down part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the stark racial divide among Americans after a Florida jury acquitted the man who fatally shot black teenager Trayvon Martin have spurred debate about how much has changed and what more there is to do.
“I had hoped when I was a young man that we’d see a lot of progress by now,” said Cash, a resident of Columbia. “But I think we’re going backwards.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/events-marking-50th-anniversary-of-march-on-washington-to-emphasize-dreams-unfulfilled/2013/08/20/674922f0-08e0-11e3-9941-6711ed662e71_story.html?hpid=z5
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