Leid Stories - 08/02/13

How Far Forward?: 50 Years After the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom The conversation begun yesterday continues. This is the 50th-anniversary month of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. On Aug. 28, 1963, more than 200,000 people delivered a demand in person to the government to end political, social and economic apartheid in America. Two landmark pieces of legislation, the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Voting Rights Act (1965), grew out of the march, and African Americans began to feel optimistic about a new-found sense of place in American society. There is a general sense among Americans today that government is a failing, or failed, institution—either unwilling or unable to erase the same fissures that run deep into America’s landscape. Leid Stories asks the question: How far forward has the struggle come in half a century?