The Great March on Washington

Warren K. Leffler, courtesy of Library of Congress

Two score and 10 years ago, The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom took place in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, Aug. 28, 1963. It was one of the largest political rallies for human rights in United States history and called for civil and economic rights for African Americans.

You probably know that Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his historic "I Have a Dream" speech while standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial.

However, what you probably did not know is that women barely had a role. Not only did they march on Independence Avenue while the men marched down Pennsylvania Avenue, but according to CNN:

It was only after pressure from Anna Arnold Hedgeman, the only woman on the national planning committee, that a "Tribute to Negro Women Fighters for Freedom" was added to the official program.

It took further convincing to have a woman lead it.

Daisy Bates spoke in the place of Myrlie Evers, the widow of slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers. Bates, president of the Arkansas NAACP who played a key role in integrating schools in Little Rock, told the crowd: "We will walk until we are free, until we can walk to any school and take our children to any school in the United States. And we will sit-on and we will kneel-in and we will lie-in if necessary until every Negro in America can vote. This we pledge to the women of America."

Women had been central to the civil rights movement -- Diane Nash, Ella Baker, Dorothy Height and many others -- but were only included in the program that day after one woman spoke up.

What's that saying?

Oh yes, "Well-behaved women seldom make history."

 

This week in the Civil War: Aug. 25, 1863

South Carolina fighting, violence in Kansas

The Associated Press reported in a dispatch dated Aug. 25, 1863: "The bombardment of (Fort) Sumter still continues, and the south wall has been demolished almost to its base." For weeks now, Union forces have been attempting to smash through heavy Confederate defenses on islands ringing Charleston Harbor off South Carolina's coast. The AP dispatch added that rebel batteries have answered the Union's artillery bombardment with bursts of return fire at short intervals. Federal forces reported that their casualties are few and that "every confidence in success is felt by the officers and troops." At one point the bombardment became so intense, AP reported, that the entire southwest side of Fort Sumter has been reduced to rubble — "nothing but a heap of ruins." Even the Confederate flag flying above the fort was shot away during one barrage, The AP reported. In Kansas, meanwhile, authorities report the discovery 150 years ago this week of 28 bodies — part of the sectarian violence that the war has touched off in the West. Witnesses said in dispatches that the discovery of murdered civilians in one town was "heart-rending and sickening."

For whom the Bell's Palsy tolls

Honestly, I don't know what Momma would do without me.

First she got sick three times this summer - including a possible case of pneumonia.

Her latest medical misadventure?

Two days in the hospital with Bell's Palsy and high blood sugar.

Sigh.

Bell's palsy is a form of facial paralysis resulting from a dysfunction of the facial cranial nerve VII causing an inability to control facial muscles on the left side. 

Named after Scottish anatomist Sir Charles Bell in 1821, he described the trajectory of the facial nerve and Bell's Palsy.

I'm starting to think I'll never get out of this nursing outfit.