| Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom | |||
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| Part of theCivil Rights Movement | |||
| Date | May 17, 1957 (1957-05-17) | ||
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SCLC members NAACP members Organizers Congressman | |||
ThePrayer Pilgrimage for Freedom, orPrayer Pilgrimage to Washington, was a 1957 demonstration inWashington, D.C., an early event in theCivil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. It was the occasion forMartin Luther King Jr.'sGive Us the Ballot speech.
The demonstration was planned to mark the third anniversary of theBrown v. Board of Education (1954), a landmarkSupreme Court decision ruling thatsegregation in public schools was unconstitutional. The event organizers urged the government to implement that decision, as the desegregation process was being obstructed in much of the Southern United States at local and state levels.
The march was organized byA. Philip Randolph,[1]Bayard Rustin,[2][3] andElla Baker. It was supported by theNAACP and the recently foundedSouthern Christian Leadership Conference. CongressmanAdam Clayton Powell Jr. (D-NY) had asked the planners to avoid embarrassing the RepublicanDwight D. Eisenhower administration, and they organized the event as a prayer commemoration.[2] A call for the demonstration was issued on April 5, 1957, by Randolph,Martin Luther King Jr., andRoy Wilkins.[3] According to King,Walter Reuther, president of theUnited Auto Workers, sent letters to all of his local unions, requesting members to attend the march and provide financial support.[4]
The three-hour demonstration was held in front of theLincoln Memorial on the Mall.Mahalia Jackson andHarry Belafonte participated in the event.Paul Robeson and his wifeEslanda attended, but were largely ignored.[5] Among the speakers were Wilkins,Mordecai Johnson, and King. King was the last speaker, and it was the first time that he addressed a national audience.[6][7] He identified restoration and enforcement of voting rights for blacks as an important part of the civil rights struggle.[8] About 25,000 demonstrators attended the event to pray and voice their opinion. At the time, the event was the largest demonstration ever organized for civil rights.
King's speech is referred to asGive Us the Ballot, as he repeated this demand as alitany, followed by a listing of changes that would result in African Americans regaining voting rights:
Give us the ballot and we will no longer have to worry the federal government about our basic rights ...
Give us the ballot and we will no longer plead to the federal government for passage of an anti-lynching law ...
Give us the ballot and we will fill our legislative halls with men of good will ...
Give us the ballot and we will place judges on the benches of the South who will do justly and love mercy ...
Give us the ballot and we will quietly and nonviolently, without rancor or bitterness, implement the Supreme Court's decision of May 17, 1954.[9]
It is one of King's major speeches.[8]
With this speech, King established himself as the "No. 1 leader of 16 million Negroes," according to James L. Hicks, of theAmsterdam News).[2][10] His call for the ballot eventually helped inspire such events as the Selma Voting Rights Movement, its relatedSelma to Montgomery March, and the 1965Voting Rights Act. The organizers gained experience, and the march laid the foundation for additional, larger Civil Rights Movement demonstrations in Washington.[1]
