Read the papers this morning and was struck by a phrase, I think in the Post, but I suspect it could be found in many places" "Martin Luther King's March on Washington".
Not many living are old enough to realize how wrong that is. It wasn't his March, it was a group effort, initiated by A. Philip Randolph, the union leader, organized by Bayard Rustin, and sponsored by several civil rights organizations, led by the NAACP (which had been for 50 years the foremost organization). And it was a "March for Jobs and Freedom".
Mr. Beck's rally today, and his appropriation of King's name, is just one more small building stone in raising MLK to preeminence, and casting people like Randolph, Rustin, and many others into obscurity, remembered only by serious historians and those geezers old enough to remember their complex reaction to the march.
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