Witnesses to history

Marsh remembers being mesmerized by all of the speakers that day, but he said King’s speech was “icing on the cake.”

King spoke of his dream that one day the descendants of former slaves and former slave owners “will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood” and that his children would “live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

“[His speech] gave me a different perspective of the struggle I was in,” said Marsh, who had already been working as a lawyer in Virginia to desegregate courtrooms. “It made me realize that I was part of something much bigger than what I thought before.”

While Marsh thinks some of the struggles King talked about continue today, he’s proud of how far he and other blacks have come. He remembers sitting on the black side of the courtroom in the early ’60s; now he’s chairman of the legislative committee that selects judges in Virginia.

“The American system makes an Obama possible,” Marsh said.

Lucy Buckner-Watson, a delegate from Inver Grove Heights, Minn., and Barbara Lee, a delegate from Staunton, Va., were teenagers when they marched and heard King’s “Dream” speech.

Lee, 60, was the youngest member of a group from Staunton who made the trip on an old bus.

“There was a hole in the bus floor and there was a piece of cardboard on the floor that kept flapping up as we rode,” she said. “It was a long trip.”

Lee remembers the crowd becoming quiet just before King spoke.

“When he said that someday we’ll all be one, it just stuck in my mind,” said Lee, a longtime member of the NAACP.

From the first time she saw Obama speak, Lee said, she could tell he carried a similar message. She has a button that says “A Legacy of Hope” with pictures of both King and Obama, and she says she wouldn’t miss Obama’s acceptance speech for anything.

“This is the most important thing that I’ve done in my entire life,” said Lee, who like most delegates will pay her own way to Denver. “I’m on Social Security, but I just thought, ‘I’m going, even if it takes me 10 years to pay it back.’”

Buckner-Watson, who attended the ’63 march with a friend while living in Ohio, said she also feels lucky to be going to Denver. And while handing Obama the nomination is important, there’s a race to be won, she said.

“When we leave there we are going to have to keep that energy going. We’ve got to,” said Buckner-Watson, 63, who also hopes her 86-year-old father with terminal cancer will live long enough to see Obama win.

“I want him to be aware and to be here on this side of heaven and realize a black man being president. Because he shared with us that he had seen a black man hung,” Buckner-Watson said.

“I am so very, very proud of my people,” she said, reflecting on the 45 years since King’s speech. “Although I know a lot have suffered way more than we have, it’s like having some kind of arriving.”

(Associated Press)

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