More Than a Dream: The Radical March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom

Book — Non-fiction. By Yohuru Williams and Michael G. Long. 2023. 272 pages.
A look at the March on Washington through a wider lens, using Black newspaper reports as a primary resource, recognizing the overlooked work of socialist organizers and Black women protesters, and repositioning this momentous day as radical in its roots, methods, demands, and results.

Time Periods: 1961

Themes: African American, Laws & Citizen Rights, Organizing, Racism & Racial Identity

Six decades ago, on August 28, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom — a moment often revered as the culmination of this Black-led protest. But at its core, the March on Washington was not a beautiful dream of future integration; it was a mass outcry for jobs and freedom NOW — not at some undetermined point in the future. It was a revolutionary march with its own controversies and problems, the themes of which still resonate to this day.

Without diminishing the words of Dr. King, More Than a Dream looks at the march through a wider lens, using Black newspaper reports as a primary resource, recognizing the overlooked work of socialist organizers and Black women protesters, and repositioning this momentous day as radical in its roots, methods, demands, and results. [Adapted from publisher’s description.]

ISBN: 9780374391744 | Farrar, Straus and Giroux (Byr)