The March on Washington Message

My musings after 50 years

I was two years-old and in a stroller when my parents took me to the original March on Washington. I often wish I was old enough to grasp the enormity and gravity of the event. I wish I could have absorbed the magnitude of the sea of America's diverse races converging as equals before the Lincoln Memorial. I wish I could have fully enjoyed Mahalia Jackson's voice boom over the reflection pool and ricochet off the Washington Monument. Most of all, I wish I could have watched Martin Luther King's face change, as observers recall, when he went off-script and spoke the piercing words God gave him that day. 

I was 23 when I walked down the mall during the March's 20th anniversary. The solemnity of the original march gave way to hordes of groups representing their interests. Hari Krishna's danced. African dance troops performed. Gay Pride groups plugged their platform. And, this time, I was old enough to understand the March's original message had been co-opted. 

Edith Lee Payne

At it's heart, the civil rights movement was a call to conscience. In a nation where one group of people had decided that another group of people weren't human, the civil rights movement put that belief on trial. 

While the March's statement was profound at its time, it's become almost cliched now. It's lost its depth. It's no longer fresh. Yet, we desperately need the message now more than ever. Fifty years later, we're amid a brutal civil war in Syria, senseless murders by children and Nazi-sounding rhetoric passing for social conservatism among a host of other assaults on humanity. It's time we hear the message with new ears. 

50th anniversary March, 3 days ago

God made mankind in His image and equally human. That means we have no spiritual license to demand someone else reflect our image. Under God's order, we're supposed to honor another person's humanity whether we agree with them or not.  Anytime we decide someone else's life is worth less than our own -- whether they're of a different race, class, culture or religion -- we play God. 

Sadly, if we're all honest with ourselves, we'll see we've all been guilty of it in the secret conversations of our hearts. So, it's a work in progress because it's a work of the heart and hearts are stubborn. I guess that's why I'm always working on my own heart (according to the Myers-Briggs Personality Type, I'm an INTJ, and true to my "type," I tend to ponder such things). 

Fifty years later, I've peeled away the paint hoping to discover the original message of the March. And I see a call for us to accept other people who live on this planet because God put us all here at this time in history for His purposes and not ours. He never invited us to comment. We're on a need-to-know, read-in-only basis. Just as it should be.