Civil rights Quote by Stephen M. Ward

““They listened to a series of speeches by civil rights luminaries, capped off by a rousing, crowd-pleasing address by Martin Luther King. While the SCLC named their protest “Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom,” its stated goals of expressing black unity and urging federal action on civil rights made the moniker that Jimmy gave it, “the March on Washington,” equally appropriate. That name, of course, was subsequently claimed by the much larger and more famous civil rights demonstration six years later. The huge crowds and celebrated oratory of the 1963 “March on Washington for Jobs and Justice” completely superseded the Prayer Pilgrimage in both size and importance, but the thousands who attended the 1957 affair made it the largest civil rights demonstration to date and a significant moment in the rising civil rights movement of the mid-1950s. Jimmy concluded his article with this assessment of the impact of the Prayer Pilgrimage: “The southern people went home determined beyond the expectations of even King. No one in the South is big enough to stop this march of people and no one can call it off.” 66””

— Stephen M. Ward