histories, our history book shelf features some of the best known history writers. revisit key figures, battles and events during the 150th anniversary of the civil war. visit college classrooms during lecture history. go behind the scenes on american artifacts and the presidency looks at the policies and legacy of past american presidents. view our complete schedule at c span.org. history book shelf features popular american history writers in the past decade and heirs every saturday at noon eastern. this weekend on "history book shelf," loosy barber, it covers the history of marches on washington, d.c. beginning with the 1894 march calling for

public works programs for the unemployed and continues through the 1963 civil rights march and aebt vietnam war protests. >> thank you steve. thank you all for coming here. i'm very glad to be here at catholic, where my good friend john sweet has been teaching for many years and i have learned much about him and much about this institution so it's interesting to finally see the place since i've only heard about it from the distance. of course coming to washington is not so unfamiliar for me. i have did many years of research, obviously, in connection with this book. but i am also, someone was asking me just before, about whether or not i had washington ties. and i am someone who came from a family that is tide to washington on my father's side, both his parents came from washington and lived here.

and that also ties into a question that i think is very pertinent to, and is asked all the time these days, is why write a book on the history of marching on washington. and the way i think about that now is, there's two answers. one personal and one more intellectual. so i'll start with the personal. i come from a family of people who march. as i did my research, i discovered the name of my great grandmother among the women who had supported the cause of the national women's party though she drew the line when they decided to start picketing the white house. they would scarcely attract a blink. she, however, thought it was a shameful break with tradition. and withdrew her membership in

the nation women's party. my parents, as students, went on their second date to the youth march for integrated schools, one of the series of marches that were held by civil rights a a actists in 1950s. as i started this book there was a family debate among my mother and father about whether or not my father had been at the 1963 march on washington for jobs on freedom. my father claims he had been and my mother reminded him that that was unlikely since he was teaching in indiana and my brother had recently been born. one of those examples of how sometimes people create an attachment to an historical event that might not be quite appropriate. and i myself began marching at a relatively early age. as i mention in the preface to

"marching on washington," my earliest march took place when i was around six years old and i don't remember clearly this event. i'm sure like others of uh-uh have childhood events that you know you took part in, but the only reason you know you took part in it is because there's home movies or for your generation, home videos of it. so this march on washington in 1971, on april 24th, and indeed that was the name of the march, suggesting how common marches on washington had been called at that time. it was simply called the april 24th march, it was against the vietnam war, took place on a spring day and there's pictures of me with my father with his super 8 camera shooting footage of it and my brother and i both standing around, somewhat young for the crowd, but carying our

out now signs. but this personal history definitely is part of why i wrote this book. it seemed to me crucial at times in order to express my political views on any number of issues from controlling the use of nuclear power, to expressing my strong views about abortion rights, to march, to demonstrate and even at times to risk arrest. but when i came to think about this topic, i also came to it as a scholar. i was a student of a number of wonderful historians who came from both political history, jim paterson, and social history, jack thomas, and the combination through the medium of women's history, mary jo buel.

and this combination of scholars helped me see when i wanted to write first a dissertation and then this book, was to do a topic in american history that would allow us to appreciate the way in which american citizens, ordinary american citizens have influence on national politics. i felt that in the atmosphere of day, in which it feels very easy to assume that because of declining voter participation, because of the clear influence of money and on politics, big businesses, that there needed to be an attention drawn to the way in which people participated in pop particulars. and in national politics.

there are any number of wonderful studies that look closely at local politics, from the eye viewpoint of participants, but it is harder, and as i discovered when i tried to craft the study, it's harder sometimes to grasp how ordinary participate in national politics over a long period. so, as i grappled with choosing topics and i wept running into amazing examples of marches on washington in the mids of other topics i was exploring, whether it was a student paper that was written for me in class, on the jobs on freedom in which i had that feeling somewhat familiar to most people who have taught of being extraordinarily excited by what was on the page but wishing for ever so much more which wasn't on the page and wanting to know more, and finding myself wanting to really

understand this event, which had become so iconic for us all. we all know the "i have a dream" speech. if you didn't already know it, he was on a stamp recently. and you will be seeing him over and over again this summer as we come on to the 40th anniversary of that speech. so i felt that it was crucially important to look at these events and find a way to study them that would remind us of how they related to each other. because of the things i kept thinking was wait, why haven't we figured out what's the relationship? there's all these different marches, i keep running across them. but then when i went around to look and say where's the book that tells me what's the rule on marching on washington, or what's the history, there was no

book. there was no guide. and so it seemed to me increasingly important to try and do that kind of study, to try to figure out the connections between these different moments of political demonstrations. so that's the combination of why i came to write this book. and what i want to do here today is use some examples from three marches of the ones that i look at in detail in this, in my book on the whole tradition, to examine the most crucial question, especially today, especially at this moment. the question of does marching on washington make a difference? does it matter? this comes up all the time. i wrote a piece that was

published in a variety of forums that said marches can change american politics, and this was a very somewhat upbeat, yes, go march. don't take it for granted. it's something to do. regardless of the issue. it was not go march against the proposed invasion. it was march for pro life. march for voting rights. march for the environment. there's a reason to do it. and i got a response from one woman in l.a. who said you know what? marches make me tired. i'm sick of marches. you said that they inspire people. they just make me exhausted, they take up too much time. we really ought to be just working on local organizing. don't bother. they're not -- you shouldn't write this kind of stuff. i'm exaggerating a bit, but she was clearly negative.

and this was different than the negative comments where they accuse me of being a communist sympathizer. i wrote her back that i was writing for a different audience and she might want to stay home from a few, secretly thinking maybe you should stay home from a lot for a while and get a rest. so i want to talk about this. can marches on washington make a difference and what can go we learn by looking at the past? obviously as i -- you already know my big answer, which is yes. so, it's more what did we learn over time. and why and how do they make a difference. so if we go back to that march in 1894 that was talked about by

steve west, that march by coxey's army, as they were called, a group of unemployed men, led by two rather strange individuals, mild-mannered businessman named jacob coxey from ohio, and carl brown, a flam buoyant labor organizer, car, supposedly a participant in the buffalo bill wild west show. we go back to 1894 and think about what these people thought they were doing. we realize it was a very different time. they believed, carl brown and jacob coxey, believed that if they gathered together their supporters and if they walked to washington in what they called a petition in boots, that they

would come to washington and that they would present their demand for an enormous public road building program on a scale that was unimaginable. but these men believed that if they came and they showed themselves as citizens in the people's capital, that the members of congress would listen to them. they were wrong. they came to washington, they set up camp in brightwood racing track. they charged admission. they were not very rich, as you might expect. people flocked out to see them. but the washington post described them as being not unlike a third-rate circus.

and indeed, they were roundly attacked for both the idea and the threat that they seemed to pose. the whole idea was attacked, the editors of the portland telegram called the mere proposal a sign of fatal blood poisoning in the republic. they attacked the leaders. they described carl brown as a red of as deep a dye as any that every trod at haymarket. hay market being the sign of a very controversial meeting of anarchists in chicago in 1888 that ended up to charmings of

eight anarchists sentenced to death. some of them were eventually pardoned. so they clearly thought of this group, brown as a dangerous group in the eyes of traditional politics. and the participants as a group were no better. they were dismissed by the editors "the independent," not yet the progressive journal it was to become, they were dismissed as an army of tramps. and the editor declared that they ought to have no influence whatsoever on legislation or congress, and indeed they did not belong to the bone and sinew of the country. but they didn't just use rhetoric against coxey's army.

they used law. when the coxey's army marched down pennsylvania avenue, jacob coxey had discovered that there were a number of laws that were going to limit what he thought he could do in washington. that his people's capital was not so open to him as he had expected. the police chief had politely informed him that there was a regulation passed in 1882 that forbid any organized group from parading on the grounds of the capital, from carrying banners, from making speeches, from using any part of that public space surrounding the capital for political cause. and that if you did so, you would be arrested.

so coxey decided that he was not willing to risk arrest for all the participants of the march. they did not plan to march all on to the grounds of the capital. but he was determined that he had the right, as an individual, just like all these other visitors who came to washington and went up the steps to the capital and went inside the cap tol building and steeples even went in and lobbied and spoke to congressm congressmen, that he too had that right to say his piece at the capitol. and when he did, he was arrested. they decided for a variety of reasons not to charge him with giving a speech. they recognized that that would be a pretty obvious tension with the first amendment, granting the right of the people to

peaceably asemable and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. but instead they charged him with walking on the grass. for this, they were fined and i am -- imprisonned for 20 days. it's not quite the same as what today even people who engage in civil disobedience get, and it did rather deflate the power of coxey's army, which, though they stayed in washington for the summer, had a difficult time figuring out quite what to do with themselves and eventually were disbersed, partially by being bribed with train rides home. so it was clear that the first amendment's gaern tea that the right of the people to peaceably

assemble at that time did not extend to these citizens who wished to use those public spaces in washington. so it would appear that this march made no difference. but it did plant a germ of an idea in many people's heads and in that way it did make a difference. it made people appreciate that perhaps there was a reason to use the public spaces of the capitol to position for your cause. perhaps not exactly as coxey's army had, but in ways that might be powerful. for opponents of coxey's army, this was quite disturbing. one senator cautioned his colleagues as he argued for more refresive action to be taken against them, that if they tolerated the march, that it is quite possible that it may

become a habit to make pilgrimages annually to washington and endeavor to dominate congress by the physical presence of the people. how little did he know he was going to be right. and indeed he was to some extent right. in the wake of coxey's army, groups began to think more and more about using public protest in the capital as a means of furthering their cause. and you can see this in the evolution from the 19 -- in the early 1900s, through the 1920s and 1930s. there's a growing acceptance of the notion that certain kinds of marches on washington, certain kinds of demonstrations, i should say, because that term had not become accepted yet, the notion of a march on washington, was not what they recalled yet.

you notice that coxey's army called themselves a petition in boots, tying themselves directly to the petition. in 1913, when the sufferages came they were a parade and paj event, tying themselves to a tradition of display of good virtue and also of military parades down pennsylvania avenues were a common occurrence. but nevertheless when there was controversy where they should para parade, a police suggested it was not the right place for dignified women and instead they marched down 16th avenue which he saw as a respectable location -- 16th street, sorry. as a respectable location. they protested vehemently and they won the right to march on

pennsylvania avenue. and "the washington post," no fan of sufferage, supported their claim equating it to any other citizen, male or female. and likewise, in 1932, when veterans of world war i came to washington seeking immediate payment of what they considered their just compensation for serving the country during world war i, the march that became known as the bonus march, when they came in 1932, they were tolerated. they were treated with kindness, president hoover arranged for the army to give them tents, a place to camp.

opened up the navy hospital for them to be treated. the superintendent of police at that time, a man named peling blastford has the distinct and somewhat strange role of being both the police chief of washington and the treasurer of the group behind the bonus march. so he was simultaneously in charge of policing them and making sure that their financial arrangements stayed on the up and up. so there grew to be a more common acceptance of the idea that political protest was something that was acceptable. and there were small gains from each of this demonstrations in direct policy terms. but one of the difficulties that i've struggled with with this book, one of those interesting

ironies, i would say, in historical study, the kind of thing that makes you really have to grasp complexity and not settle for simple stories, is that if you want to look for a march that made a difference, a march that resulted in immediate and concrete changes in federal policy, then you have to look to what i call the march that did not happen. it was the threatened negro march on washington of 1941 that generated the most immediate and most obvious result of change in policy, resulted in president roosevelt issuing an executive order, execute order 8802, that was the first federal order

prohibiting racial discrimination by contractors outside of the federal government, by defense contractors. this is significant. there had already been during the new deal orders that on paper said the federal government should not discriminate on the grounds of race. these were not completely enforced by any means. but to expand the reach of the federal government to say that the federal government was going to intervene in cases of racial discrimination in private business was a new thing. and it came because of a skillful threat to march on washington. the organizers of this march

were different folks than the people who had organized coxey's army. a. phillip randolph, an african-american labor organizer had years of experience in organizing and in protesting. he had developed associations, he had led the brotherhood of sleeping carporters to recognition, by both the pullman company, giving amp americans a very real place in the labor movement, and he had built alliances with many other african-american leaders of the time. he was a classic race man, as the term was of the time. and when he looked around in 1941, and he listened to his colleagues notice and comment and complain and go to congress

and go to the president and say look what is going on. our country is preparing for war. we are in need of workers we are in need of experienced soldiers. and your administration is tolerating segregation in the military that results in inefficients and results in discrimination against people who deserve promotions and new roles and looking around at defense contractor after defense contractor who refuses to hire african-americans. sometimes because they say their fellow workers won't tolerate it, and that was most certainly the case. and sometimes simply because it wasn't their practice.

randolph decides that he is going to organize what he calls a mammoth machine of mass action with a terrific striking power. and he labelled this effort the negro march on washington for defen defense. he wasn't shy. he didn't cloak his march in any other rhetoric. this wasn't a petition in boots, this was not a parade. this was not a new type of lobbying, as one of the leaders of the bonus march wanted to call it. but this was a mass action that was going to change america. and he organized a very effective coalition and they started organizing and they got black fraternal groups and black churches and black newspapers to sign up and endorse the effort.

and by late may of 1941, for a march scheduled for june 1941, president roosevelt was getting quite concerned. he described himself as much upset about the upcoming protest, and he appealed to some of his friends who were african-american, to stop the march. now, these genteel requests did nothing. randolph ignored them. he, roosevelt then decided to see what happened if he made some concessions. he had an executive office, he had a memorandum issued that said that defense contractors really shouldn't