[African Americana]: [Civil Rights]:

March for Freedom Now. Date: Friday, June 14, 1963, 2:00 P.M. - 7:00 P.M. Place: Assemble Opposite the White House... [caption title].

Washington DC: 1963. Handbill, 8.5 x 5.5 inches. Even toning. Near fine. Item #5101

A rare handbill or small broadside advertising an important Civil Rights demonstration organized and co-sponsored by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), with each organization listed at the bottom of the broadside. The march was prompted by two important historical events in early June 1963: a notable address on civil rights by President John F. Kennedy on June 11, 1963, and the murder of Medgar Evers later that night. JFK was prompted to make a live television speech by the horrendous political violence (which he himself witnessed live on television) by southern authorities against civil rights protesters in the South. In his speech, JFK characterized white resistance to civil rights as a "moral crisis" and pledged federal assistance for integration. President Kennedy's ultimate goal was to begin the push for new civil rights legislation. A few hours following JFK's speech, just after midnight in Jackson, Mississippi, noted civil rights leader Medgar Evers was gunned down in his driveway. Sparked by these events, and certainly others that had come before, CORE, the NAACP, and the SCLC organized the protest march embodied in the present handbill.

The demands listed on the present handbill are spelled out in six numbered action items, as follows: "Mr. President -- No Federal Funds for Apartheid States," "Don't Play Politics with Human Rights," "D.C. Commissioners...Issue Fair Housing Ordinance," "We Can't Eat Jim Crow -- We Demand Fair Job Rights for All," "Protect All Citizens Rights of Protest," and "End Blatant Job Discrimination in the Justice Department." The march itself was attended not only by members of CORE, the NAACP, and the SCLC, but also Malcolm X and a contingent of the Nation of Islam. This protest helped spark the flame of civil rights fervor in the Nation's Capital two months before the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, when Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his landmark "I Have a Dream" speech.

OCLC only lists a single institutional copy, at Harvard, but others are perhaps held within larger collections of civil rights material.

Price: $950