Our friend Rick Richman directs our attention to the following excerpt from Joshua Muravchik's article in the September issue of Commentary entitled "Fifty Years After the March" (the emphasis is mine):
Its great success was attributable to impressive leadership. Four whites -- representatives of Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish denominations and labor leader Walter Reuther -- spoke at the march and served on its executive committee. But they were later additions to the original core group, comprising the leaders of the major civil-rights organizations: [Martin Luther] King ... Wilkins ...Farmer ... Young ... and [A. Philip] Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first predominantly black labor union. The Big Six, as they were called, naturally had their rivalries and vanities and other shortcomings, but in addition to their eloquence, they each exhibited intelligence, learning, and a profound sense of responsibility ... None was a hustler or huckster or demagogue out to glorify himself on the back of his people. ... In addition, at the very core of the march was what we might call the 'big two,' Randolph and Rustin.
Randolph, who was already in his seventies, was in effect the chairman of the march ... Wilkins paid tribute to the accomplishment of the 'big two.' History, he reflected, 'has attached the name of Reverend King to the march, but I suspect it would be more accurate to call it Randolph's march - and Rustin's.'"
I presume the reference is to Bayard Rustin (1912-1987), co-founder of the A. Phillip Randolph Institute in 1964 and organizer of the Black Americans to Support Israel Committee (BASIC) in 1975 -- for which, I am assuming, he later won The Stephen Wise Award. For more, see his biography at the link.
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