60 years ago a freedom march was held in Detroit, sort of a test run for the march in Washington

While most people are familiar with the great march on Washington that took place in 1963, the freedom march in Detroit two months prior is lesser known.

On Sunday, June 23, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr led 200,000 marchers in Detroit to demand freedom, jobs and equality. Part of the reason that there was such a large turnout was because of work of a Black coalition of workers called the Trade Union Leadership Council and the grassroots organizing of Rev. Al Cleage Jr. After the march there was a rally held at Cobo Hall, where Rev. Cleage Jr spoke, along with several other civil rights leaders. Cleage Jr. urged marchers to boycott A&P Stores until they hire Black store manager. 

Unfortunately, mot of the commercial media didn’t include comments from Rev. Cleage Jr., chasing instead to focus on what Dr. King had to say. For example, the Grand Rapids Press quoted Dr. King, saying, “We want all our right, and we want them here and we want them now.” In fact, there were two articles in the Grand Rapids Press (Pages 1 – 4) about the Detroit  march in June of 1963. Neither of the articles on the Detroit march were on the front page and a great deal of the focus was on whether or not the march was peaceful. There was some coverage of the fact that a list of demands on civil rights were made, but only a few of those demands were mentioned in the articles.

It is unfortunate that there was not more substantial coverage of what Dr. King had to say. In his June 23, 1963 speech, which was powerful and included a demand from the Johnson Administration to proclaim a second Emancipation proclamation, one that focused on economic freedom. Reminiscent of his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Dr. King stated in his speech after the march:

They are telling us over and over again that you’re pushing things too fast, and so they’re saying, “Cool off.” Well, the only answer that we can give to that is that we’ve cooled off all too long, and that is the danger. There’s always the danger if you cool off too much that you will end up in a deep freeze. “Well,” they’re saying, “you need to put on brakes.” The only answer that we can give to that is that the motor’s now cranked up and we’re moving up the highway of freedom toward the city of equality, and we can’t afford to stop now because our nation has a date with destiny. We must keep moving.

The June 23, 1963 march on Detroit was organized primarily by Dr. King’s organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the UAW. Both Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the UAW President Walter Reuther were featured speakers at the march. 

In many ways, the Detroit march was held as sort of a test run to see if these organizations could pull off a march with hundreds of thousands of people. Detroit was chosen because the UAW had a large number of union members in the Motor City and Detroit was also one of the most critical northern cities with a major black population that was representative of police violence against blacks and other forms of structural racism.

In fact, the issue of police violence would haunt Detroit residents again, just days after the June 23, 1963 march, when a young Black woman named Cynthia Scott, was shot twice in the back by a Detroit cop. Three days later, the prosecutor ruled that the cop who shot Cynthia Scott out of self defense because Scott was a “fleeing suspect.” 

I end with this post with the murder of Cynthia Scott to elevate Dr. King’s point about not giving in to gradualism or reformism, but to take seriously the urgency of the moment, especially for Black Americans. 

Sources used in this post:

All Labor Has Dignity: Martin Luther King Jr., edited and introduced by Michael Honey

A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Abuses of Civil Rights History, by Jeanne Theoharis

A People’s History of Detroit, by Mark Jay and Philip Conklin