This is a very important distinction to recall as one of the main focus of the March was to force the US Government itself to provide jobs to "coloured" in the internal Government Sector.
The speech ( which lasts about 20 minutes) became famous because it was captured in the beginnings of the national Television age.If you analyse the speech it starts of on an economic agenda leading onto the mention of "bad checks" at about the 4min 20sec mark , and from the 5min20sec it becomes a very radical attack against the half-way house agenda argument against gradualism ( the belief that slow piecemeal progress , controlled by Whites ruling the country) , a very robust notice that the time for no-compromise on the immediate right of equality had reached a critical mass on no return.Continuing with this uncompromising theme is a warning if action by legislatures is not taken we hear at 6min40sec the warning....rude awakening if nation returns to business as usual.And the theme gets hotter by 9min20sec by citing the grave injustices met by coloured on a day to day basis..unaddressed the situation will never be satisfied ...police brutality continues.... a negro in Mississippi cant vote , a negro in new york has nothing to vote for".
This was the script of the speech until Martin Luther was prompted by Mahalia Jackson to "Tell them about the Dream" , this is when Martin Luther departed from the scripted theme was to make the most remembered part of the speech which has become one of the most legendary oration ever made.
Scholars contend the speech at that time would have gone down as the "Bad Check Speech" , with an economic theme based on the poverty of inequality , what happened next is what made the speech one of the most famous of the last century.
The speech can be seen in the video below:
The "I have a Dream" segment divides the speech into two distinct portions , the first (scripted) is an unequivocal call to action , the second part ( actually a peroration added to the scripted main address ) has an aspirational feel which has been picked up by the right in recent years and those cultural ( but queasy about affirmative action or major changes to zoning planning laws that cement , to pardon the pun, inbuilt poverty among the blacks even today) lip-servers who want to "show" support without taking the responsibility of doing the lawmaking graft to gravitate to this portion of the speech whilst forgetting the hard-hitting message of the initial two-thirds.This is why it was no irony in Ronald Reagan signing Martin Luther King Day
as a National Holiday after a four year campaign even though he was very Anti-Luther King at the time of the speech and beyond.
One of the successes of the March for freedom and Jobs was that no Politicians spoke at the podium in 1963 , it was a genuine civil grassroots movement occasion recognising Politicians , as a class, are to be lobbied and pressured to act and deliver , not persons to be cheaply given Just Cause platforms which they can use for expedient short term political capital.
The upshot of the March was to set in train the momentum that led to lasting , real Civil Rights , Non-Discrimination and Equality Legislation in Congress.Clearing legal , if not for many decades social obstacles to Kings demands.
To this we can also add the sad spectacle of President Obama commemorating the 50th Anniversary whilst in the same week proposing the bombing of Syria and justifying the Drone attacks in Pakistan , something one would feel would not attract much committed support from King himself.
The March had a chequered History in that it was initially opposed by President Kennedy , a little later Kennedy supported the March and even enlisted Trade Unions and Church Groups to ensure success , but this had the effect of diluting Demands and stifling the hard edged demands for Jobs and opportunities.Instead creating a vacuous sloganed showcase for the same Kennedy who was planning coups and wars as far afield as Brazil , Cuba and Vietnam"As a result, some civil rights activists felt it presented an inaccurate, sanitized pageant of racial harmony".
There seems to be a somewhat misplaced narrative Myth that there were two paths to the civil rights movement , the effective peaceful one of MLK and the ineffective violent one of Malcolm X.In fact , there was a co-joined symbiosis as Kings message only carried weight in that it gave Americans the choice of yielding to legislative peaceful change before hundreds of thousands of Black Americans who were about to serve in Vietnam , getting training in the army and proficiency in use of arms finally took more militant means to redress rights in the late 60's , a time when the Johnson Administration finally took steps more motivated by potential conflict than benevolence to enforce laws passed in the mid-60's.
The effects and legact of MLK was to convince victims that economic "war" does make a difference to the fight for equality.Therefore in the UK , and the wider world the MLK of the Montgomery Bus Boycott
Is a more valuable role model to remember than the "peaceful dreamer".
In the UK we had our own "Montgomery" in 1963 when members of the West Indian community were being denied jobs on the ground of race in Bristol.
"Four young West Indian men, Roy Hackett, Owen Henry, Audley Evans and Prince Brown, formed an action group, later to be called the West Indian Development Council, as they were unhappy with the lack of progress in fighting discrimination by the West Indian Association. Owen Henry had met Paul Stephenson whose father was from West Africa and who had been to college. The group decided that the articulate Stephenson would be their spokesman.[6] Stephenson set up a test case to prove the colour bar existed by arranging an interview with the bus company for a young warehouseman and Boys' Brigade officer, Guy Bailey. When Stephenson then told the company that Bailey was West Indian, the interview was cancelled.[7] Inspired by the refusal of Rosa Parks to give up her seat on a bus in Alabama and the ensuing Montgomery Bus Boycott, the activists decided on a bus boycott in Bristol.[8]
Their action was announced at a press conference on 29 April. The following day they claimed that none of the city's West Indians were using the buses and that many white people supported them.[9] In an editorial the Bristol Evening Post pointed out that the TGWU opposed apartheid in South Africa and asked what trade union leaders were doing to counteract racism in their own ranks.[10] When reporters questioned the bus company about the boycott, the general manager, Ian Patey, said
"The advent of coloured crews would mean a gradual falling off of white staff. It is true that London Transport employ a large coloured staff. They even have recruiting offices in Jamaica and they subsidise the fares to Britain of their new coloured employees. As a result of this, the amount of white labour dwindles steadily on the London Underground. You won't get a white man in London to admit it, but which of them will join a service where they may find themselves working under a coloured foreman? ... I understand that in London, coloured men have become arrogant and rude, after they have been employed for some months."[11][12]"
It was supported by the then MP for the area Tony Benn and ultimately led to the Race Relations Act , the organisers credited and were inspired by MLK and the Montgomery Boycott Campaign.
Tony Benn pictured with one of the committee members of the Bristol Omnibus Company Boycott campaign.
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