92 Years and Still Marching
“I say to you today, my friends, though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’”
While the drums roll, the marchers stride forward, and the chants roar, one man stands at the foot of the Washington Monument gripping a poster that has browned and decayed with age: “We March For Effective Civil Rights Laws Now!”
His name is William Andrew Allison, a 92-year-old retired railway mailman, and he has returned to the site of the March on Washington 50 years later with the same sign he carried the first time.
Born in North Carolina on July 5, 1921, Allison graduated from Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte in 1951. There, he was a brother of the Alpha Epsilon chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi – a predominantly African-American fraternity at a predominantly African-American school.
After finishing school, he became a teacher. When he found that the pay was unsustainable, he switched careers to become a railway mailman and moved to Temple Hills, Maryland.
As August 28, 1963 approached, Allison and his neighbors made preparations to descend into downtown D.C. to join a protest for racial equality and justice led by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
“I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.”
“I couldn’t wait to get down here because that was such an exciting day. All of us were finally getting together,” Allison remembers. “So exciting.”
His train mail service route took him from Washington to New York each day. On the day of the march, he came down from New York in the morning, took a nap, and then joined some 250,000 marchers to listen to Dr. King deliver his career-defining, movement-defining “I Have A Dream” speech.
At the time, he says, he could not have predicted the historic nature of the event. But the unmistakable sense maintained that it would be a remarkable moment in time.
“I was just excited to come down. I never realized it would be such an important day,” he says. “But we had something in mind. We weren’t just marching. We were fighting for the fairness and justice that had been denied us. That’s what the struggle was all about.”
“Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the rock of brotherhood.”
Back here on August 24, 2013, marchers swarm past Allison. A repeating pattern one by one: slow down to investigate why the surrounding admirers are all taking photos of the old man in the dark beige jacket, double take when they see the aged sign, pause to read it, scan over to Allison and finally put it all together.
“Oh my goodness,” they shout, pulling out their camera phones. “Is this from the original? Were you there?”
Allison is a quasi-celebrity here. Marchers pose for photos. Crowds form around him. Children ask for autographs. Kappa Alpha Psi brothers from schools and graduating classes all over the country hug him. He may not be capable of doing much marching anymore himself, but the marchers are coming to him.
His sign serves as a piece of memorabilia to the most famous day in the entire civil rights movement, but it is also a reminder that 50 years later, the same demands still apply. In light of recent judicial proceedings and legislative actions, the frustration is as intense as ever, Allison says – especially in his birth state of North Carolina.
“Here’s the perfect example,” he begins. “Lyndon Johnson passed the voting rights laws. And yet here we are decades later, in the courts, still fighting for voting rights. Eliminating racism from society might be impossible, but we are still trying to eliminate it from the law. Can you imagine that?”
“We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and the Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote.”
On Wednesday, Allison will come back to the Lincoln Memorial to hear the nation’s first African-American president deliver a speech from exactly the same spot that Dr. King did 50 years ago.
“It’s a step forward,” Allison says of President Obama’s 2008 election. “But there’s a long way to go.”
Allison has lived through 16 presidents. He was born seven-and-a-half years before Dr. King. As far as he is concerned, though, age is just a number. He may have turned 92 this summer, but there was never any doubt he would be back on the mall for this commemorative event.
“As long as I live, I will always fight for justice,” he says. “It isn’t over. I’d like to go home and look in the newspaper and say everything is smooth now. We don’t have any more problems. But that’s not the case. So here I am.”
Allison is not the only veteran of the March on Washington that has returned for this day, but he is certainly among a small elite group. Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) is the only speaker from the original event to return and address the crowds again. Many crowd members were not even born when Dr. King described his sanguine dream to the masses on that late summer’s day from the steps of a memorial.
But Allison knows that soon his fighting days will be over. The movement will be left in the hands of new generations.
“I’d like to see them leave here with a positive attitude, but with an awareness that we still have a long way to go for fairness,” he says. “Keep the faith that what we fought for 50 years ago is still important. Continue that battle until the very last man truly feels free.”
“The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright days of justice emerge.”
