March on Washington, 1963

Main article: March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom

The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom at the National Mall

Civil Rights March on Washington, leaders marching from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial

Civil Rights marchers at the Lincoln Memorial

A. Philip Randolph had planned a march on Washington, D.C. in 1941 to support demands for elimination of employment discrimination in defense industries; he called off the march when the Roosevelt Administration met the demand by issuing Executive Order 8802 barring racial discrimination and creating an agency to oversee compliance with the order.
Randolph and Bayard Rustin were the chief planners of the second march, which they proposed in 1962. The Kennedy Administration applied great pressure on Randolph and King to call it off but without success. The march was held on August 28, 1963.
Unlike the planned 1941 march, for which Randolph included only black-led organizations in the planning, the 1963 march was a collaborative effort of all of the major civil rights organizations, the more progressive wing of the labor movement, and other liberal organizations. The march had six official goals:

• "meaningful civil rights laws,
• a massive federal works program,
• full and fair employment,
• decent housing,
• the right to vote, and
• adequate integrated education."

Of these, the march's major focus was on passage of the civil rights law that the Kennedy Administration had proposed after the upheavals in Birmingham.
National media attention also greatly contributed to the march's national exposure and probable impact. In his section "The March on Washington and Television News,"^[45] William Thomas notes: "Over five hundred cameramen, technicians, and correspondents from the major networks were set to cover the event. More cameras would be set up than had filmed the last Presidential inauguration. One camera was positioned high in the Washington Monument, to give dramatic vistas of the marchers". By carrying the organizers' speeches and offering their own commentary, television stations literally framed the way their local audiences saw and understood the event.^[45]
The march was a success, although not without controversy. An estimated 200,000 to 300,000 demonstrators gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial, where King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. While many speakers applauded the Kennedy Administration for the efforts it had made toward obtaining new, more effective civil rights legislation protecting the right to vote and outlawing segregation, John Lewis of SNCC took the Administration to task for not doing more to protect southern blacks and civil rights workers under attack in the Deep South.
After the march, King and other civil rights leaders met with President Kennedy at the White House. While the Kennedy Administration appeared sincerely committed to passing the bill, it was not clear that it had the votes in Congress to do it. But when President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963,^[44] the new President Lyndon Johnson decided to use his influence in Congress to bring about much of Kennedy's legislative agenda.