Director Frank Smith Remembers the March on Washington

I came to Washington, DC fresh from Greenwood, Mississippi where I had been arrested in June along with Bob Moses, Lawrence Guyot, and others trying to help local people exercise their Constitutional right to vote. When I arrived in Washington for the March in August 1963, I was coming to hear our SNCC leader Cong. John Lewis plead the case for Congressional support for SNCC voter registration workers in the Black Belt Counties of the South. His words were so powerful he was forced to change his speech, a copy of which is on display at the African American Civil War Memorial Museum.

Marching, singing, and celebrating with a crowd of more than 250,000 people at the March on Washington was the emotional and community support I and other SNCC members needed to go back to the South and continue our work. The March on Washington and other Civil Rights protest was catalyst that pushed Congress to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which set America on a path to freedom and justice that continues today.

Feature image credit: Frank Smith, Bob Moses, and Willie Peacock in Greenwood SNCC office, March 1963, Danny Lyon Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement 44