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THEN: Lawyer, political adviser and draft speechwriter for King I was behind Dr. King onstage as he stepped up to the microphone with prepared notes in his hand. But after he’d delivered the

first seven-and-a-half paragraphs, Mahalia Jackson, who was on the platform with us, shouted, “Tell ’em about the dream, Martin. Tell ’em about the dream!” I thought, _Oh, Lord, those

people don’t know it, but they’re about to go to church._ Clarence B. Jones Courtesy Stonybrook Entertainment Everything from Martin after that was extemporaneous. He’d used the phrase “I

have a dream” in sermons and speeches at several previous public gatherings. But until the March on Washington, it never got such a response. As I looked out at the sea of people, I was

struck by the number of white people, roughly a quarter of the crowd, who were there to support our mission. Because of my experiences at previous demonstrations, I knew that a significant

number of white supporters were Jewish. In fact, the speaker right before Dr. King was Rabbi Joachim Prinz, who reflected on his time in Nazi Germany by saying, “The most shameful and the

most tragic problem is silence.” I think of what these young Jewish activists’ parents and relatives went through in the Holocaust and of what my own people’s enslaved ancestors had gone

through. BERNICE A. KING, 60 NOW: Chief executive officer of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change THEN: 5-month-old infant There’s something people may not

understand about my father’s “I Have a Dream” speech. He was not delusional when he started talking about the dream — a dream that some people feel was and still is impossible, given the

conditions of our world. My father was a preacher. And preachers have a tendency to lay out the case and give you hope. So, before the “I have a dream” portion of the speech, he conveyed

that we had the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, but economically, Black people were still lagging behind, 100 years later. Not because of something we did, but because things were

stripped from us. He’s giving you the reality, but then giving you his dream, including that his four children would live in a nation where they would not be judged by the color of their

skin but by the content of their character. The hope. We have to eradicate those things that still lead to racial disparities in our nation and world. The next day, newspapers prominently

featured the demonstration on front pages. The Jackson Advocate/newspapers.com; The Pittsburgh Courier/newspapers.com; The Boston Globe/newspapers.com A RIPPLE EFFECT _After the marchers

returned to their lives in the days, weeks, years and decades that followed, the march continued to resonate — both in marchers’ personal commitment to social justice, and in the laws and

conscience of a nation._ COURTLAND COX Dr. King’s speech closed the march. After the crowd left, I remember a few dozen SNCC veterans singing “We Shall Overcome” at the Lincoln Memorial. I

think that was an expression of solidarity and a way to recommit ourselves to the effort to change America. The march gave visibility to what we were doing. It was important. But I came from

Mississippi to the march and returned there afterward. So, it didn’t change me personally. It just gave me more space in which to work. MONTE WASCH After the march, I was on my way back to

New York with friends, both Black and white. We staged a sit-in at a diner in Maryland known for its segregation policy. The owner called the cops, and we were ID’d, booked and fingerprinted

and spent the night at the police station before the charges were dropped. That was my way of celebrating the March on Washington. THOMAS WINDHAM I’d say 95 percent of our factory workers

in Brooklyn were Black men, but pretty much all the supervisors and foremen were white. The timekeeper was white. And I was very conscious of the distinction. So, at the march, when I had

signed a pledge personally committing to “the struggle for jobs and freedom for all Americans,” that really meant something to me. It also meant something to my friends who watched the march

on TV, because when I returned home to the South Bronx, everybody wanted to talk about it. There was this sense of uplift, of pride, of hope replacing despair. It was now OK to talk about

the oppression we were experiencing. Part of our cultural lexicon had been about having to get up every morning “to meet ‘the man’  ” or “to clean Miss Anne’s house.” But the talk after the

march was, “Soon we won’t have to do that.” JOYCE LADNER I went back to college in Mississippi the day after the event and continued my activism. The march was a momentary reprieve. Less

than one month later, KKK members in Birmingham, Alabama, dynamited a Baptist church, killing four Black girls and injuring more than 20 other congregants. We weren’t fighting for

integration. We were fighting for our lives. ED FLANAGAN I told my parents afterward that I had attended the march, and they were OK with it, especially because I wasn’t harmed. Three years

later, when I was in the military in Florida, a bunch of us wanted to go skating at a rink. I was not allowed in the facility. The march didn’t make overnight changes, but it showed us what

was possible. VIRGINIA HAMMOND Nearly five years after the march, Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis. When I rewatched footage of King’s final speech, these words struck me: “I’ve been to

the mountaintop. … I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the promised land.” What anointing did that man have? What did he know that

we didn’t? He knew the importance of what he was doing and how it was going to be a driving force for a multitude of people beyond him. LOUIS ARMMAND African Americans had been struggling

for equality for centuries in one way or another. But for the people in my generation, I think the march was the difference between knowing about the struggle in an abstract way and having

an opportunity to get involved personally. It activated many of us. In the years after the march, I would go on to work in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi, where I saw people who, with a

third-grade education, having only picked cotton for a living, become some of the most stalwart organizers and fighters in the movement. Because there was hope. RITA MORENO The march

completely changed my life. That’s when I became an official activist. When I saw all those people who came by bus, and who hitchhiked there, I decided, _Forever and ever, I will be a person

who allows myself to show what I feel in public. I’m not going to hide it anymore._ I mean, winning an Oscar was thrilling and wonderful. But this day was way more important. Way more.

Video: MLK’s Daughter Revisits the March on Washington BERNICE KING You know, this was not just a march to bring people together. It was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. It set

the precedent for adding demands for legislation to mass demonstrations. That march was a blueprint for how you utilize mass demonstrations to bring about social change. ELEANOR HOLMES

NORTON Bayard Rustin was perhaps the only person in the country who could have organized that march the way he did. And it produced an extraordinary effect, because out of it came the Civil

Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. I learned from the March on Washington that Congress is a responsive institution. It takes people pressing Congress to make Congress do

anything. So, I very much value having been on the outside, now that I’m on the inside. The march reminds me how real change comes about. BRUCE HARTFORD Before that day, I’d shied away from

civil disobedience. The march was so powerful that it made me smash through the fear of losing out on a future job opportunity if I got into trouble. In the year after the march, I was

arrested four times for nonviolent sit-ins to protest employment discrimination in California. I eventually moved to the South to work for Dr. King. As police attacked and tear-gassed us on

the streets of Alabama and Mississippi, we would sing “We Shall Overcome,” echoing the songs and signs from that day in ’63. Journeying to D.C. showed me the true meaning of unity. RUTHA MAE

HARRIS Singing at the march was a wonderful experience — one I shall never, ever forget. Oh, it was indescribable. I’m 82 now, and I’m still singing. I still tell people I was part of the

movement. I can say that whatever freedom I have, I got myself. No one had to do it for me. TODD ENDO I was, by far, the youngest person in the JACL delegation at the march. My mother was 49

at the time, and most participants were nisei like her — the children of Japanese immigrants. I think that was my mother’s first big step in taking a visible and outspoken stance in the

civil rights movement. Afterward she became much more active, and she inspired me to become more active too. I marched in Selma in 1965, and I’ve continued to work for social justice. Today

five generations of Endos have participated in civil rights causes. When my mother joined the March on Washington, she found her voice, and she created a family tradition of striving for

justice and equality for all Americans. ROBERT RABEN, 59 NOW: President of the Washington, D.C.–based consulting firm the Raben Group, founder of the March on Washington Film Festival THEN:

In utero I wasn’t born until a few months after the march, but it has affected my life. Years ago when I was in Montgomery, Alabama, I met a woman who’d been an usher at Dr. King’s church.

Our conversation got me thinking about how so much of our history is told through the generals, the leaders. I wondered, _What if history were told through the foot soldiers — the people who

risked their jobs to vote, or who walked for 381 days during a bus boycott, or who made thousands of box lunches and planned transportation for the March on Washington?_ So, when I came

home to D.C., a friend and I decided to create a documentary film festival about people like that: men and women who aren’t famous but who helped change a nation. We called it the March on

Washington Film Festival, and we have done it every year for the past 10 years. The festival is now online, and people everywhere can access it. AARP is a sponsor. The powerful questions

these films raise are the same ones as for anybody who has been marginalized by race, gender or sexual identity: Who tells your story, what is that story, and are you in control over that?

ERIC HOLDER Watching the march on TV helped form my view of the world. It shaped my career decisions, especially the work I’ve done on voting rights. It made me believe in the value of

protest and gave me a sense that if people came together, they could accomplish big things. For sure, we’ve hardly reached the place we ought to be all these years later, but things are

fundamentally different now than they were then, because of the commitment and courage of the people who organized and marched — John Lewis and so many others. John Lewis could point to any

number of things to show that his hard work as an activist and congressman had been meaningful. But at least one of them was that they made it possible for someone like me to become the U.S.

attorney general. On my last day in office, in 2015, he came by and told me, “I’ve admired the work you’ve done.” And he hugged me and started crying. I cried too. DAMON EVANS Today we are

still fighting for some of the same things. We still have not reached “there.” But I am so grateful that at such a young age, I could see people of different backgrounds and beliefs come

together for one cause: equality for everybody.