the white house and the archbishop of washington, boyle, who was going to give the invocation, walter reutherand they intervened. john has certainly been a national icon and more than that. >> i read this column every saturday morning by a fellow named colby king, and i love the date you, butt to he entered high school in the year of 1954, the year of round versus the board of education. you go to dunbar high school. as you enter high school, white students are staging protest because black kids are going to go to school with them in washington, d.c., the nation's capital. >> a lot happened during that time prior to the march on washington, and i will tell you, talking to people who were here last week -- my church opened up and we gave hundreds of bottles of water the people that were going to the march and talked to a lot of people, we have generations of people who have been affected by what happened in ways that will never be undone. that era that we went through, we lived it. we experienced it, and it did not end with a voting rights act or the civil rights act. those scars are still the

walter reuther, the head of the united automobile workers union. and this is a. philip randolph. >> yeah. >> he was born in jacksonville, florida, moved to new york, and organized the brotherhood of sleeping car porters. he was our leader. he was our dean. we called him the dean of black leadership. he was a principle of a man. >> so, when you look back, what comes to your mind? >> an awesome day. an unbelievable day. a moment in american history when people came together and heard and saw martin luther king jr. deliver that magnificent "i have a dream" speech. i will never forget just standing on those steps of the lincoln memorial, looking out. there was a wonderful spirit. you looked out, just saw the signs from organizations, from church groups, labor groups, youth groups. it was black and white. i think it represented one of the finest hours in american history. >> what struck me about the speeches that unfolded that morning were that they weren't just about segregation. they were about an egalitarian vision of america, white and black, that was part of the