Music accompanied a lot of activities in my childhood home on Long Island. Jazz, folk and classical were among the genres my parents enjoyed most. In an earlier time, my dad had worked as a radio disc jockey at what he called a “serious” music station in Newark, New Jersey, broadcasting classical music and jazz to New York City residents across the Hudson River. He spun records and added his own historical and social commentary to create the programs. In our home, we were treated to these same kind of stories as we listened to jazz greats, classical music and folksingers. Protest music was also high on the agenda, including Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and later, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. It was energizing to listen to these singers and to learn the lyrics to their songs. Absolute poetry!
The night Pete Seeger performed on national television after a seventeen-year ban due to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s blacklist of progressive artists, we children sat on the living room couch, freshly bathed and in pyjamas, to watch Seeger on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. It was September 1967. I could feel my father’s acute awareness in anticipation of this historic event.
He also favoured Black singers, many of whom were prominent during the Civil Rights Movement. Paul Robeson, Nina Simone, Harry Belafonte and Johnny Mathis were frequent choices on my dad’s “top ten” list. My father would plant himself in our living room, crooning along to Johnny Mathis. I would often join him, my clenched fist a pretend microphone, as I tried to get the lyrics and tune just right.
So, when my dad announced one night at the dinner table in August 1963 that he was going to join the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, we were not surprised. It seemed a logical step for a political man who was committed to racial equality. Our family had marched in Civil Rights rallies and gathered to listen to speeches from significant Black leaders. At one march when I was three or four years old, I had felt scared by the press of people, most of whom were Black. And I felt guilty for feeling scared, because I knew we were doing something important. When my dad told us he would go to Washington, I got it. I was only six years old but we’d been raised to cherish such values.
Nonetheless, when it came time for him to go, I pleaded with him to take me along. His worn brown leather catalogue case, with its tall flaps on the sides and top closure, the piece he took on his frequent business trips, was by the door. Although I could barely fit in it as I had quite comfortably only a couple of years earlier, I staged a sit-in (literally) to stop him from leaving without me. I was unsuccessful and he left to catch a bus hired by one of the union or civil rights organizations in which he was active.
I was heartbroken. It would have been August 27, 1963 as the March on Washington, where Dr. Martin Luther King made his iconic “I have a dream” speech occurred the next day. When my father came home, he regaled us with stories about the March and Dr. King’s wonderful speech. He said that he was deeply moved by the experience.
The movement to build toward the March was energized by the music we listened to in my home. In fact, music was an essential part of the civil rights movement. It was a powerful and transformative force, serving as both a means of expression and a tool for mobilization. It provided a shared language for activists, fostering a sense of community and shared purpose.
Benefit concerts known as “Salute to Freedom” were mounted across the country to raise funds for the March. Such concerts were held in Birmingham, Alabama, Chicago, New York City, San Francisco and Detroit. More than 150,000 people attended, both Black and white supporters.
Birmingham had seen extreme racial tension in May 1963. The city was one of the most segregated in the South, with entrenched racial divisions in all aspects of life, including schools, employment and public facilities. That racial strain – including terrible lynchings — was a focal point of the Civil Rights Movement and a turning point in the fight against segregation and racial injustice in the Jim Crow south. In early 1963, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) launched a series of nonviolent protests and civil disobedience actions designed to provoke a response and draw national attention to the injustices in Birmingham and other places. The campaign was led by Martin Luther King Jr. along with others. The son of my parents’ close friends, a university student, participated in Freedom Summer in 1964, going south to Mississippi to register Black voters. It was a dangerous time during which three students were killed by the Ku Klux Klan, drawing national attention to the risks faced by civil rights activists.
Activists also organized sit-ins at segregated lunch counters, marches, and boycotts of downtown businesses. These actions aimed to disrupt the status quo and pressure local businesses and the city government to desegregate. The movement took a dramatic turn that May with the involvement of young people in what became known as the Children’s Crusade. Thousands of African American students skipped school to participate in peaceful marches. The use of children was strategic, as it aimed to elicit a more sympathetic response from the public and media.
The police ordered the use of their dogs and high-pressure fire hoses against the young demonstrators. Images and footage of children being attacked by dogs and knocked down by powerful streams of water shocked the nation and drew widespread condemnation. The brutality highlighted the extent of racial injustice in Birmingham and garnered significant media attention.
The Birmingham campaign of 1963 is remembered as a pivotal moment in the Civil Rights Movement. We never learned about this in school. The campaign showcased the power of nonviolent protest, the resilience of the African American community, and the importance of media coverage in exposing injustice. The courage of the demonstrators, particularly the children, and the leadership of figures like Martin Luther King Jr., left an indelible mark on the struggle for civil rights and equality in America. What transpired in Birmingham is considered instrumental to the passing of the national Civil Rights Act the following year.
Later in 1963, a coalition of national civil rights organizations began planning a benefit concert for August 5th in Birmingham. It was one of the ways funds were raised to support the March on Washington held August 28th of that year. The organizations involved included the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), Clarence B. Jones, one of Dr. King’s closest advisors and speech writer, all spearheaded by comedian Joey Adams, a Jew, who was president of the American Guild of Variety Artists, a part of the AFL-CIO. The concert was planned as the first integrated event of its kind to ever take place in Birmingham.
Artists including Ray Charles, Nina Simone, Johnny Mathis, The Shirelles, The Staple Singers, Peter, Paul and Mary, Odetta, Harry Belafonte, Mahalia Jackson, Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, author James Baldwin and comedian Dick Gregory were among the many who participated in the series of different Salute to Freedom concerts. Dr. King was present at the Birmingham concert on August 5, 1963, watching intently from the side of the stage.
My father never spoke about these spectacular concerts. Certainly, we listened to these artists on our chestnut Magnavox victrola at home. But music was not the only glue bonding me to my dad. In addition to his job as a disc jockey in the late 1940’s, he was a radio announcer for a program called “Labour News and Views”. He did political education for the United Electrical Workers and the radio program was part of the post-Second World War attempt by progressive unions to build a united front. Until he was blacklisted, my father interviewed leaders and rank-and-file members of various unions about their challenges, failures and victories. All of this occurred long before I was born.
Years later, my dad brought back a small red and black banner as a token from the March on Washington. I inherited it when he died. I had it framed and hung it in my union office, where my job was to defend the human rights of union members. I spent thirty years working for unions in different capacities. It seemed quite fitting, the circle unbroken, between my father’s dedication to the cause and my own life’s work. Music and civil rights had captured both of our imaginations and influenced our life choices. He didn’t take me to Washington in 1963, but in an enduring fashion, I am still living out its legacy.
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Photo Source: Wikipedia, the Poor People’s March on Washington, 1968