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1957 Prayer Pilgrimage:
In 1957, civil rights leaders called for a demonstration at the Lincoln Memorial to coincide with the third anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Brown v Board of Education. Organizers were determined to protest the lack of progress in desegregating schools, draw attention to the deteriorating economic conditions of blacks in the South, and push for new civil rights legislation. More than 25,000 people attended the rally on May 17, making it the largest civil rights demonstration in the nation's capital. It also served as a training ground for the organizers of the 1963 march, including A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, Martin Luther King Jr., and Roy Wilkins. |