2013 marked the 50th anniversary of the celebrated March on Washington, where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his celebrated “I Have a Dream” speech. This historic event has been covered extensively over the last half-century, yet a robust new book by a UW-Madison professor delivers a fresh understanding of this watershed moment and the broader civil rights movement it propelled.
William P. Jones’ The March on Washington: Jobs, Freedom, and the Forgotten History of Civil Rights does not put MLK’s much-lauded speech at the forefront but rather explores the real significance of the massive march that attracted more than 250,000 participants on a hot August day in 1963. In The March on Washington, Jones turns his focus to jobs and highlights the march’s organizers whose dreams of economic equality and freedom for all Americans were central to the march’s goals. This excellent one-volume history is essential reading for anyone interested in the civil rights movement.
Jones is a professor of history and a specialist in civil rights and labor history. He will speak at Boswell Book Co. at 7 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 20, in an event co-sponsored by the UW-Milwaukee Department of Urban Studies.