On this day in 1963, 125,000 marched Detroit’s Woodward Avenue with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., marking one of the nation’s largest civil rights demonstrations.
TRANSCRIPT
On June 23, 1963, an estimated 125,000 people marched down Detroit’s Woodward Avenue carrying placards and singing “We Shall Overcome.” Lead by the Reverend Dr. MLK Jr. it was one of the largest demonstrations in the nation’s history. In the spring of 1963, Detroiters looked for a way to commemorate the anniversary of racial violence that tore through their city twenty years earlier that left 34 people dead and hundreds injured. The Detroit Council for Human Rights called for a “Walk to Freedom,” because many of the same basic, underlying causes of the 1943 disturbance were still present. The walk ended at Cobo hall where Dr King delivered a speech.