Enthusiasm Runs High for Rights March

People of all ages began arriving Friday to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the civil rights march on Washington, billed as a transfer of civil rights leadership to a younger generation.

But as college students groomed by civil rights groups held forums on the future of the movement, disgruntled urban activists pulled out of the event, calling it a party for middle-class blacks.

Today’s march and rally are to commemorate the watershed 1963 march demanding voting rights and an end to official segregation. It is sponsored by the same civil rights and labor groups that staged the original march, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

This time, the agenda is “Jobs, Justice and Peace,” with issues ranging from preserving union jobs to changing federal drug sentencing laws and locating soldiers missing from the Vietnam War. The agenda is being advanced by a broad coalition that includes Latinos, Asians, American Indians, women, gays, the disabled and the elderly.

While the original march drew about 200,000 people, organizers say this time they expect “tens of thousands” of marchers, most likely well short of their initial goal of 250,000.

Labor groups chartered nearly 1,000 buses to bring in marchers from across the country. The National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People has about 8,000 marchers who were coming in by bus, said Southeastern regional director Earl Shinhoster.

Many of those coming for the march plan to make it a day trip, organizers said. Bus caravans were expected to arrive early today, and most were scheduled to leave after the march ends.

Some have questioned why the commemoration is being held.

“March for what?” asked Louvenia Wheeler, as she waited for a bus at Washington’s Union Station with her two sons. “We’re always marching, and nothing ever changes.”

One group sitting out the march is an organization of reformed gang members who said Friday that the commemoration is overlooking the concerns of the urban poor people they represent.

The activists, representing the National Urban Peace and Justice Movement, said they told the 1,000 marchers the coalition had mobilized from six cities not to come to Washington.

Established leaders do not take the gang movement seriously, said Sharif Willis, president of United for Peace, an organization that operates in 27 states. Those leaders, Willis said, would rather see the gang movement swallowed up by a large organization.

“The time for big me, little you is over,” he said. “We represent a body who has felt they have been abandoned.”

Nevertheless, enthusiastic young people began arriving Friday.

About 300 people milled beneath 10 large tents set up for the People’s University on the Mall, designed for those who were too young to have attended the 1963 march.

James Mayo-Pitts, 28, of Norfolk, Va., said he traveled here in a van with 14 other young adults because civil rights remains important in his generation.

“People think that because there are laws on the books there’s no more need for action,” Mayo-Pitts said. “People have become complacent and caught up in their own lives.”

Sheila Rogers, 17, of Atlanta, said: “We’re here to protect our civil rights and remember Martin Luther King. We can’t just sit back and expect everything to be fair and OK. You have to keep fighting for them.”

President Clinton, vacationing in Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., will not attend the march or meet with organizers, but he will send a statement to be read at the march, the White House said Friday.