60 Years After the March on Washington: Remembering MLK’s Radical Honesty

Sixty years ago, upwards of 400,000 people gathered at the National Mall for the March on Washington. A day of marching, music, and speeches closed with Martin Luther King’s iconic oration, which offered a hypnotic challenge in four simple words: “I have a dream.” With these words, King called on Americans, both Black and white, to struggle to reach a higher plane.

But for those words to be meaningful — not a gauzy Hallmark card, but a tough-minded call to action — King first had to preach a different four-word idea: “Unearned suffering is redemptive.”

The March on Washington, which took place on August 28, 1963, commanded the attention of the nation and the world for an entire day. Americans would not just see brief clips of King but would hear his entire speech. All three networks aired his speech live. He had to get it right.

The night before, in the Willard Hotel, King worked on his speech with his aides, Wyatt Tee Walker and Andrew Young. King found the dream an irresistible trope. The Bible teaches that “your old men shall dream dreams and your young men shall see visions.” King understood the mainstream appeal of the American Dream and used the phrase once before at a massive rally in Detroit’s Cobo Hall in June of 1963.

Walker and Young considered the dream concept trite. It sounded too hopeful, avoiding the harsh realities of racism in 1963 America. But King decided to keep the passage in his speech. As he often said about favorite phrases, “It just feels right to me.” In a sense, Walker and Young were right. During this key moment, if King allowed a sweet and sentimental phrase to dominate the day, he would be letting the moderates and liberals who preached patience off the hook.

In 1963, economic issues merged with basic civil rights; in fact, the March was billed as a gathering for “jobs and justice.” And there were more than 2,000 demonstrations, and protests moved to the North and West — into New York and Newark and Philadelphia, Chicago and St. Louis, and Los Angeles and San Francisco. But, while the movement was growing, it was also showing strains. Many younger activists rebelled against King’s commitment to nonviolence and integration. Malcolm X mocked the “Farce on Washington” and called for using “any means necessary” to fight white terrorism. And as John Lewis prepared to give a fiery speech on the Mall, white allies threatened to bolt the March unless he cut objectionable passages.

So how could King take advantage of this moment? How could he hold his coalition together and present a winning case to the white political and media power structures? How could he offer a thrilling vision of the future, with the dream motif, but also confront friends and foes with the “fierce urgency of now”?

His answer was radical — speak the truth, bluntly and without apology. Hence the starkest words of King’s stirring speech:

“I am not unmindful that many of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations… Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.”

This phrase carries a double message. First: Because of the deep and thoroughgoing racism in American institutions and culture — not just in the South, but everywhere — Black Americans will bear brutal costs when they fight for their rights. Second: Only by fighting this fight can they “redeem” themselves — and the American promise of “a more perfect union.”

That phrase hit Harold Bragg, a longtime activist, “like an electric shock.”

“[King] was willing to face the truth and speak honestly to guide a divided America to a higher plane.”

Here was a true leader, refusing to gloss over the dangers of their cause. He warned them that continued struggle would bring more violence and death. Rather than luxuriating in the glow of a beautiful mass gathering of love and hope, King used the power of brutal truths. Nothing defines King’s legacy better than his radical honesty. Over his whole career — from the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955-56) to his rallying sanitation workers in Memphis (1968) — King stubbornly insisted on telling the truth.

This honesty helped keep the movement together and brace activists for the struggles ahead — the Birmingham church bombing, the Selma march, the Poor People’s Movement, and much more — until his assassination in 1968. But his honesty often cost him support — and white supremacists escalated their campaigns of hate and violence. Before his assassination in early 1968, a Harris poll showed that 75 percent of the public disapproved of King.

King’s brutal honesty was not only needed during the beginnings of the civil rights movement, but maybe even more so today. The lesson for our own perilous time is basic. If we cannot explore our challenges with openness and honesty — with people of similar and differing experiences — we can’t properly confront our most important challenges. Leaders of our current times must heed King’s words and follow his example of truth-telling in the face of a hostile public. They must avoid easy bromides and cost-free promises and be willing to challenge not just adversaries but even their own followers at times.

King was far from perfect. In a sense, that’s the point. He was always struggling, just like the rest of us. But as he showed in Washington sixty years ago, he was willing to face the truth and speak honestly to guide a divided America to a higher plane.

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