ACTIVIST SPOTLIGHT: LOUISE PASSICK AND THE 1963 MARCH ON WASHINGTON

I set out on August 27 with several of my friends in an old VW bug to attend the March on Washington in Washington, DC. We were all scrunched in and slept at friends’ homes the night before the march. 

 The day of the march it was so hot and muggy (as it is in DC in summer), but history and excitement were in the air. I remember walking and sweating and hearing Roger Wilkins, A. Philip Randolph, Walter Reuther, and John Lewis speak. We knew this was momentous, but didn’t realize just how important until we saw the attendance numbers and the reactions, not only from America, but from around the world. 

 We were not anywhere near the speakers’ dais when MLK spoke; we were, by then, collapsed under the shade of a large tree, sweat pouring off us. I had marched for a while holding a sign that was very heavy and had put it down hoping that I would find it later to bring home as a memento. 

 I was very lucky to meet and shake hands with A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin. Rustin was the great intellectual force behind the march, but he was homosexual, and, at that point he was (even among this world-class group) to be kept under proverbial wraps. Those two men still share a most revered place in my mind. 

 As for the sign I put aside, I found a sign on the ground not attached to a wooden post, and brought it back with me to Brooklyn. It has come with me wherever I’ve lived, and still lives with me, albeit properly framed adorning one of my apartment’s walls.

Louise’s sign from the 1963 March on Washington.