Detroit serves as blueprint for the March on Washington
(CBS DETROIT) - Sixty years ago, words from Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech were heard all across America. But before he said them in Washington, he recorded them in Detroit.
Sharon Elizabeth Sexton, the chair of the Black Historic Sites Committee of the Detroit Historical Society, said she was 8 years old, two weeks from her ninth birthday, when King came to Detroit in 1963.
"My dad tricked me. He said, 'We're going to a parade.' Except we were getting so dressed up, you know? What kind of a parade do you go and you wear your best clothes?" Sexton said. "My mom had, you know, suit on. My dad and brother had ties on, and I had your real fluffy dress ... I was going along with it. And then, when we got to where we were going, I had never seen so many people never seen so many people. And it's like, wow, this must be a real special parade. And my dad put me on his shoulders. He hadn't done that since I was 3 years old. And then I saw them. And it wasn't balloons, or clowns, or floats. It was these people singing. And I was like, 'What is going on?'"
What was going on right along Woodward Avenue was something people called the blueprint for the March on Washington -- a civil rights march in Detroit with a record-breaking crowd.
"It was the largest civil rights gathering in the history of the country up to that point, so Detroit's really on the forefront of that movement. And I think creates, really, the blueprint for what Washington turned out to be ... All of the mechanism to build the march in Detroit kind of played out in Washington to just kind of to greater effect," said Jeremy Dimick, the director of Collections and Curatorial at the Detroit Historical Museum.
Even the speech that would later be heard around the entire world was first spoken and recorded in the heart of Motown.
"When Dr. Martin Luther King came here to Motown to tell us that he wanted to record his 'I Have a Dream' speech on the Motown label, it was a great day for Motown. I mean, it was so wonderful because he was such a presence ... and we all admired him for the work that he was doing. And we were very, very flattered that he came to Motown and wants to be with us, and especially to deliver a speech as important as his 'I Have a Dream' speech has become and what it means to America," said Motown legend Smokey Robinson.
Robinson was with Hitsville USA when King made the request. He said King's decision to work with Motown was intentional.
"He said, 'I want to record my 'I Have a Dream' speech here at Motown because you guys are doing with music what I'm trying to do legally. You're breaking down all these barriers that I'm trying to break down legally and have people to do because it's the law. But you're doing it with music. And I appreciate you so much, and I love your music. And so I want to record my 'I Have a Dream' speech here in Motown,'" said Robinson.
The decision, though both to march and record, wasn't met with excitement by everyone.
"[John F.] Kennedy was actually worried King came to Detroit from Washington DC. He [King] was there the day before meeting with Kennedy and came to Detroit," Dimick said. "Kennedy's message was we need to back off these marches and demonstrations because they had just introduced the civil rights legislation, and he thought all of these demonstrations would be pushing kind of the envelope and like that, you might get people to vote for it. But if you keep pressing the issue and beating that drum, it was going to turn people off."
In Detroit, the opposite happened. People were inspired.
"It was recorded live at at Cobo. And actually, on the recording, you can hear the audience reacting to him. And, you know, echoing back some of the things he's saying or applauding at, you know, points where you'd expect applause ... It's incredible too when he gets into kind of the conclusion of the speech where it gets into the 'I Have a Dream' portion that, of course, is now so familiar. The audience, you can hear, just goes wild for it," said Dimick.
"It was like all the brave people who say, you know, buck the system ... and we're going to march for our rights. So it was a situation, and all these people, most of them were Black, and they were all there for the same reason. So it was the unity, it was the pride. It was hearing something that you never heard before. And you just kind of knew it was going to be something special and something historic," Sexton said.
It was that excitement and passion in the Motor City that helped drive a movement straight to Washington.
"We're on the street, and they had speakers. So you could hear what was going on in Cobo Hall at the time was Cobo Hall. You could hear what was going on in Cobo Hall. And then I just remember the 'I Have a Dream' speech. It was the first time you'd ever heard it. And I was like, 'I can help him, I can help, I can help him in his dream,'" said Sexton.
"He was Dr. Martin Luther King. He was the Black president, so it was an honor," Robinson said.
Sexton said: "And then a couple of weeks later, you know, we were sitting around to watch the March on Washington, and he started the 'I Have a Dream' speech. I remember that. I remember him saying that, you know ... It was very memorable. And it still is. And every kid -- because we're now all in our 60s, or 70s or older -- all the kids who went to that March became somebody, you know. It was like they did something with their life to make an impact on somebody else."
A little piece of Detroit is forever encapsulated in our nation's history.
"Motown put out an album with both the Detroit speech, King's Detroit speech, and then a few months later, his Washington speech as well on the Gordy record label. So I mean, that speech is literally preserved for all time in a Motown container," said Dimick.
