The Nation Commemorates the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington
Crowds walk down Pennsylvania Avenue to the 50th anniversary celebrations of the March on Washington
Chris Flynn/ National Endowment for the Humanities
Crowds walk down Pennsylvania Avenue to the 50th anniversary celebrations of the March on Washington
Chris Flynn/ National Endowment for the Humanities
Fifty years after Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have A Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, thousands gathered today in Washington, D.C. and around the nation to commemorate the anniversary of Dr. King’s speech and the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
At 3 P.M., marking the moment when Dr. King urged Americans to “let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire” to “every hill and molehill of Mississippi,” bells were rung around the country at anniversary celebrations. New Hampshire Humanities coordinated bell ringing events throughout the state, joining celebrants at more than 300 locations around the globe. Bells rang out in locations such as Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, Topeka, Kansas, Stone Mountain, Georgia, and Katmandu in Nepal, while, in Washington D.C. relatives of Dr. King rung the bell that hung in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama before it was bombed in 1963.
NEH’s educational website EDSITEment offers lesson plans, a transcript and audio recordings to introduce students to the civil rights movement and the “I Have a Dream” speech. To learn more about Dr. Kings’ career, visit the chronologies, timelines, and journals available at the NEH-funded Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project.
Chris Flynn/ National Endowment for the Humanities
Chris Flynn/ National Endowment for the Humanities