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Marches, events speeches to commemorate 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King ‘I have a dream’ speech
Civil rights groups the National Urban League and King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) will also be holding events in Washington. The SCLC’s international convention on Friday will feature debates on race and poverty and on voting rights.
The U.S. Postal Service will unveil a commemorative stamp on Friday, and a Sunday gospel brunch with opera singer Denyce Graves is tap. The National Park Service has scheduled numerous civil rights-related events on the National Mall.
The Smithsonian Institution has an exhibition at the National Museum of American History commemorating the 1963 march and the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln.
The Smithsonian is holding a concert and a mock training session for participants in a desegregation sit-in, and is releasing a playlist of music from the civil rights movement. The National Portrait Gallery also has a show on King and his life.
The Newseum, a museum dedicated to U.S. media, started exhibits this month highlighting the role of students in the civil rights movement. They include a section of retailer F.W. Woolworth’s lunch counter where North Carolina students started sit-ins in 1960.
On Saturday, some 100,000 people are expected at a march on Washington’s National Mall organized by civil rights leader and TV commentator Al Sharpton and by King’s oldest son. The “National Action to Realize the Dream” will group unions, civil rights and Hispanic groups and Democratic political leaders.
The march is focused on a host of issues, including jobs, voting rights, gun violence, women’s rights and immigration. Speakers include the family of Trayvon Martin, the African American Florida teenager shot dead by a volunteer watchman, and Georgia Democratic Representative John Lewis, the last surviving organizer of the 1963 march.
