WHAT’S THE STORY?

TODAY is the 25th anniversary of the legendary Million Man March in Washington DC in which black men from all over the country came together in the centre of the capital of the USA to demand change for the better for black people.

It wasn’t a march but a gathering, a woman gave the best speech of the day and best guesses say there were only around 850,000 attendees. Estimates vary between 400,000 and 1.9 million for the Washington DC event on Monday, October 16, 1995 – but the Million Man March it was named and the name stuck.

The 25th anniversary is being celebrated in various places across the US today, with black people recalling the inspirational spirit that fired up a protest that echoed the great civil rights marches of the 1960s.

WHAT WAS IT ALL ABOUT?

ORGANISED at first by the Nation of Islam and its charismatic and controversial leader Louis Farrakhan, the event was then directed by Benjamin F Chavis Jr, the former executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Many credit Chavis Jr with being the chief architect of the huge protest – said by some to be the largest gathering of African-Americans in history.

The aim, said Farrakhan, was to bring about a spiritual renewal that would instil a sense of personal responsibility in African-American men for improving the condition of African-Americans.

It was a deliberate attempt to alter the image that many white Americans had of black men. Speaker after speaker such as Jesse Jackson emphasised the need for African-American men to take responsibility for families and friends and communities, rejecting the drugs and violence in black areas and to work and campaign on improving the lives of millions of African-Americans.

WHAT DID FARRAKAN SAY WAS HIS INSPIRATION?

HE explained in his speech: “We stand here today at this historic moment. We are standing in the place of those who could not make it here today. We are standing on the blood of our ancestors. We are standing on the blood of those who died in the Middle Passage, who died in the fields and swamps of America, who died hangin’ from trees in the South, who died in the cells of their jailers, who died on the highways and who died in the fratricidal conflict that rages within our community.

“We are standing on the sacrifice of the lives of those heroes, our great men and women that we today may accept the responsibility that life imposes upon each traveller who comes this way.”

WHO GAVE THE BEST SPEECH?

REV Farrakan spoke for more than two hours and that was a bit much for some in the audience, but nobody could deny his articulate passion that moved many to tears.

Yet for many people the highlight was the rendition by the poet Maya Angelou of a poem that she wrote especially for the event.

Let’s leave this subject with excerpts from her words that memorable day:

The night has been long,

The wound has been deep,

The pit has been dark,

And the walls have been steep.

But today, voices of old spirit sound

Speak to us in words profound,

Across the years, across the centuries,

Across the oceans, and across the seas.

They say, draw near to one another,

Save your race.

You have been paid for in a distant place,

The old ones remind us that slavery’s chains

Have paid for our freedom again and again.

The hells we have lived through and live through still,

Have sharpened our senses and toughened our will.

The night has been long.

This morning I look through your anguish

Right down to your soul.

I know that with each other we can make ourselves whole.

I look through the posture and past your disguise,

And see your love for family in your big brown eyes.

Let us come together and revise our spirits,

Let us come together and cleanse our souls...

The ancestors remind us, despite the history of pain,

We are a going-on people who will rise again.

And still we rise.