A Pilgrimage for Equal Rights
Thousands came, from 30 states, to the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington on May 17, 1957. They wanted more, and faster, action on civil rights issues and to look back and forward on the third anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education.
In a speech to the crowd that day, the
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. described that landmark Supreme Court
decision as “a joyous daybreak to end the long night of enforced
segregation.”
But even then, it was clear that
segregation in schools would outlast its historic defeat in the courts,
in part because efforts to put the ruling in effect were weak or
nonexistent.
“The Supreme Court’s decision is not
self-enforcing,” said an article in The New York Times Magazine a few
weeks after the pilgrimage, “and instead of spelling the end of an era
of civil-rights litigation, it has marked the beginning of a new and
even more bitter phase.”
The photograph above seemed to capture
perfectly the mood of the time: No one in the picture looks satisfied or
triumphant. But our article that day relied only on words. No
photographs were included.
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