Top Highlights

• Johnson defined his issue by the commitment to freedom, above any dodging confinement of section or race. “There is no Negro problem,” he said, “there is only an American problem, and we are met here tonight as Americans…to solve that problem.” The address marched steadily through history into the thicket of modern politics. Johnson decried the “ha...
• The vote was essential to the “far larger movement” of American Negroes to “secure for themselves the full blessings of American life,” Johnson resumed. “Their cause must be our cause, too,” he said slowly, placing his hands on the lectern. “Because it is not just Negroes, but really it’s all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry...
• Herz was a bookworm, a trilingual freelance writer, retired kindergarten proprietor, and ardent admirer of Martin Luther King. She had pushed her way into the 1963 rally at Cobo Hall to hear an early rendition of his “I Have a Dream” speech, which Michigan devotees considered superior to the famous version in Washington.