A full circle moment for young marcher
In the summer of 1963, Suzanne Chandler was 16 and had been looking for a part-time job in the nation’s capital, where she grew up as a member of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish. Then she heard that on Aug. 28, there would be a March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom promoting job opportunities and equality for Black Americans, so she decided to join the rally.
Sixty years later, Chandler who is now 76, remembers what happened next.
“I caught the bus and went down there. When I got there, it was like nothing I had ever seen before. There were so many people, Black and White, everyone was getting along and greeting each other. When they were singing songs, people were holding hands,” she said.
Chandler, who was in the crowd far back from the Lincoln Memorial near the Reflecting Pool, hadn’t taken anything to drink, but she remembered how “anyone with soda and water shared it.”
And although she didn’t get any job leads that day, Chandler said, “When I left, I was so inspired.”
The graduate of Our Lady of Perpetual Help School was a student at Margaret Washington Vocational High School in Washington in 1963.
“Fast forward a year later, I was job hunting,” Chandler said. The 17-year-old happened to be at a bus stop right next to the U.S. Department of Justice and decided to go inside and apply for a job there. “I was hired that day… I could not believe it. Then I found out my appointment was with the Civil Rights Division. I was speechless!”
Chandler, who worked for many years in that division of the U.S. Department of Justice as a clerk and stenographer, said, “I couldn’t help but think when I got that job, everything came full circle. That was my first job, other than babysitting.”
In 1965, she married Richard Chandler. The next year, she became a longtime member of St. Thomas More Parish in Washington, D.C., where over the years she served as an Extraordinary Minister of the Eucharist, has been a member of its outreach committee, and continues to help out at the food pantry. She and her husband of 58 years have three children and five grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
Suzanne Chandler, who later worked as a secretary and retired as a computer systems analyst for the U.S. Postal Service, was asked about what the March on Washington means to her today, on the eve of the 60th anniversary of that gathering.
“It was part of my beginning. It was just an experience that helped me grow,” she said. Seeing so many people of different races there getting along changed her perceptions, she added. “My thought has been since the march, (that) we were all the same… That still comes to mind how everybody came together. Today we can still do that.”
Chandler said that while challenges like the racial divide still exist, her experience at the March on Washington 60 years ago makes her feel that “we can still overcome that. It still makes me hopeful.”
‘We were together’
On the day of the March on Washington on Aug. 28, 1963, a group of about 12-15 seminarians of the Archdiocese of Washington assembled at the chancery building next to St. Matthew’s Cathedral.
Among those seminarians was the future Father Raymond Kemp, who was later ordained to the priesthood in 1967 and now serves at Georgetown University as the special assistant for community engagement in the office of the president there. That summer he was a seminarian preparing to begin his theology studies at St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore.
“It’s the first time I remember wearing clerics,” Father Kemp said, noting that he and his fellow seminarians were wearing clerical black slacks and shirts with Roman collars as they headed off to the march together. The Washington seminarians had been encouraged to join the march by Msgr. Martin Christopher, who then was serving as the director of vocations for men.
The priest was interviewed a few days before the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington.
Remembering that hot summer day, Father Kemp said as they reached the crowded march site, they stopped perhaps “a football field” distance away from the Lincoln Memorial. “We found ourselves under a tree. Wearing black, we found ourselves shade,” he said.
In 1959, Raymond Kemp had graduated from Gonzaga College High School in Washington, where he noted there were only a small number of Black students then, and he added that there were no Black students in his class when he graduated from St. Michael’s School in Silver Spring in 1955.
“I grew up in segregated Washington, D.C.,” said Father Kemp, whose father worked for the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company, and whose mother had earned a business law degree and worked for the U.S. Maritime Commission. “…I knew the country was completely segregated, and I knew it was totally wrong.”
In recent years, Georgetown University has come to a reckoning of its historical connection to slavery and has initiated efforts aimed at reconciliation and healing. In 1838, the Maryland Society of Jesus sold 272 enslaved men, women and children, with the proceeds helping to sustain the then-financially struggling Georgetown College. Father Kemp who works at Georgetown was spurred to investigate his own family history, and found that his paternal great-great grandfather in Virginia owned four enslaved people, and his great grandfather served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War.
Reflecting on his experience at the March on Washington, Father Kemp said, “I was taken by how integrated the crowd was,” and by the great numbers of young people from colleges and universities and workers representing different labor unions.
“The thing that grabbed me about the march itself was how people were there, (of) different races, different ages,” he said, adding that many people in the crowd wore their Sunday best, and the mood was “upbeat and buoyant.”
“Buses came from everywhere, people came from everywhere,” he said, adding that hearing the music and the speakers was an “incredible” experience. “It just lifted our soul.”
Father Kemp said that he and the other seminarians got there in time to hear Archbishop Patrick O’Boyle, the leader of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, give the invocation. Later that day, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, a Baptist minister, gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Another speaker was Rev. Eugene Carson Blake, a Presbyterian Church leader who later served as president of the National Council of Churches.
“The churches were united,” Father Kemp said, noting how Pope Saint John XXIII had been emphasizing the importance of ecumenism, “and this was being played out right in front of my eyes” at the March on Washington.
In an earlier interview, the priest spoke about the enduring message that Dr. King offered with his life and words. “What King did was invite people to a gospel, a Good News, that we’re all one,” Father Kemp said.
The priest said that in 1963, he knew how deeply divided the country was over race, and “how this (the march) was the complete opposite of that. We were together… What carried me that day was how great it was that people could come together for a common cause, and they could do it in the name of God, and they could do it in the name of the common good, and they could do it in the name of the Constitution.”
“I was just thrilled to be there,” said the priest, who over the years served as the pastor of St Augustine Parish and Holy Comforter-St. Cyprian Parish in Washington before working at Georgetown University.
Reflecting on the importance of the march 60 years later, Father Kemp said, “What’s pretty clear is that racism, ignorance and fear are still with us. A lot of folks don’t want to talk about white people buying and selling and renting persons. I think the legacy of slavery and racism is manifest in this country when you see crimes of hate and vengeance, and it’s never been clearer that what we need are the voices of churches and workers and owners of companies and students and educators to get involved in creating a just and equal society.”
Continuing the march
Like many residents of the nation’s capital, Alverta Munlyn walked to the March on Washington on Aug. 28, 1963.
“I didn’t live too far from the (Lincoln) Memorial,” said Munlyn, who is now 81.
In an interview 60 years after the march, the lifelong member of Holy Redeemer Parish in Washington, D.C., said she especially remembers “the crowds and crowds of people” that day. “We were fighting for jobs, housing and education,” she said.
Munlyn noted how community members, local clergy and groups like the Urban League worked together to continue the work of the march, as housing developments for low-income and working class families were built in her neighborhood, and tutoring programs were established with volunteers from Georgetown University and Gonzaga College High School.
“Some of the things we wanted to see happen, happened,” she said.
‘Still fighting for the same thing’
Three years ago, Sheila Dunn, who is now 73, became Catholic at the Easter Vigil at St. Thomas More Church in Washington, D.C.
Another momentous event in her life happened 60 years ago, when as a 13-year-old girl attending Jefferson Junior High School in Southwest Washington, she joined fellow members of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in marching together to join the March on Washington on Aug. 28, 1963.
“We got pretty close” to the Lincoln Memorial where Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech that day, she said. “I remember the whole speech. I never saw so many people in my life. The Reflecting Pool, one end to the other, was a mass of people.”
Shortly before the march, Dr. King had visited an elementary school in Southeast Washington where Dunn lived, and she said parents and children had gathered there to see him. “I shook his hand,” she said.
Remembering his words at the March on Washington, she said, “He was a powerful speaker. Everyone was enthralled with how he spoke… Martin Luther King, he stood for nonviolence. I’ll always remember it.”
Over the years, Dunn worked as a security officer for AT&T, the Computer Sciences Corporation, and later at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. She and her husband Bobby Dunn, who died about 15 years ago, have three children and two grandchildren.
Reflecting on the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington, Dunn said, “Sixty years later, we’re still fighting for the same thing.” She pointed to continuing challenges like equal rights, helping the poor and expanding job opportunities, and she added, “All these things are the same things we were fighting for before.”
Joining her father at the march
(Written by freelance writer Mark Pattison)
Barbara Shaw had just turned 14 and was soon to return to McFarland Junior High School in the District when she asked her lawyer father whether she could go to the March on Washington on Aug. 28, 1963. ‘I guess I was seeing it on the news and hearing about it, and wanted to be there. ... Somehow I knew he was going,” she recalled 60 years later, living in the house she grew up in.
Shaw figures her father woke up early, went to his office to do some work, came back home for her, drove somewhere to park the car, and then they walked together to the march.
“Part of me was glad to be there with my father, and just glad to be,” Shaw recalled. “There was just so many people!”
The walking paid off. “I think I was close up to the steps (of the Lincoln Memorial), but I still couldn’t see so much,” she said. Asked whether she could hear the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, she replied, “Yes, I could hear him. I could hear him, but at the time, I don’t know how much I was taking in and understanding.”
Shaw remembered going to the march’s 20th anniversary in 1983. She had intended to be at the 60th anniversary march, but a neighbor’s funeral took precedence.
She added she didn’t recognize anyone she knew at the original march, and its awe and wonderment receded over time . Still, “I was there, and I cherish that,” Shaw said. Today, she tells folks she had been at the original March on Washington “any chance I get!”
A future deacon’s brush with history
(Written by freelance writer Mark Pattison)
Joe Curtis -- not yet a deacon -- went to the March on Washington in August 1963 as a 23-year-old with his brother-in-law, who lived on the same block of old St. Cyprian Church on C Street, S.E., between 12th and 13th streets. The brother-in-law was more the activist type, already having marched in Selma, Alabama.
They walked to the march. “I was actually standing on the curb across the street from the (Lincoln) Memorial where all the speeches were being given,” he recalled. “I was actually standing between (Black sports stars) Wilt Chamberlain and Don Newcombe. That's the one thing I remember.”
As for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech? “I thought it was nice, but I didn't realize it was a history-making affair,” replied Deacon Curtis, a member of Our Lady Queen of Peace Parish in Southeast Washington. “It was really good. It was something special. Yeah.”
Now retired, Deacon Curtis said, “Later in life, I really saw the importance of that march. It bothers me because our young people, they don’t know all what their ancestors and their parents had gone through.”
Deacon Curtis went to the Million Man March in 1995, remembering a planning meeting the preceding Saturday at Archbishop Carroll High School, and a pre-march Mass at St. Joseph Church on Capitol Hill. “But I wouldn't have gone to that,” he said, “if it hadn't been for me going to the March on Washington.”
