Monday, January 15, 2018

The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom

Martin Luther King, Jr. [1929-1968] would have turned 89 today. It was during the March on Washington, held on August 28, 1963, that Dr. King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream Speech." The speech galvanized the civil rights movement, and in 1964, James Blue released the film, "The March," which documented the events of the March as well as King's speech.

The film was produced for the Motion Picture Service unit of the United States Information Agency, and was intended for foreign audiences. In 2008, the documentary was inducted into the National Film Registry maintained by the Library of Congress. A full digital restoration of the original negatives was later undertaken by the Motion Picture Preservation Lab to coincide with the March's 50th anniversary in 2013; details of this painstaking process are available at the National Archives website.

The National Archives has many other resources related to King and to African American history, and there are several prior Common Curator posts regarding King's legacy as well.

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