From King to Obama: The dream comes full circle

DENVER -- Their hair may be a little grayer and they may have lost a step or two. But a journey that takes 45 years can do that to you.

Two Minnesota delegates to the Democratic National Convention were participants in the 1963 March on Washington, a pivotal moment in U.S. civil-rights history culminated by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s famed "I Have A Dream" speech.

Josie Johnson was already a major figure in the Minnesota civil-rights movement when she joined the state's contingent on that hot summer day. Lucy Buckner-Watson was an impetuous teen from Ohio when she defied her father's wishes and drove with a friend to Washington.

The two delegates will be in the stadium here tonight when another part of history will be made: a black man in America accepts the nomination of a major political party to be its candidate for president.

It isn't coincidence that Democratic nominee Barack Obama will be making his acceptance speech on this date with so much significance. More than a half-dozen delegates to this year's convention were part of the crowd that day in Washington. A breakfast is scheduled to mark the occasion. The timing represents an effort to complete a circle that many, including Buckner-Watson and Johnson, thought they would never see.

"I never in life thought I would live long enough to see an African-American candidate with the strong possibility and the support," said Johnson, now 77, a former University of Minnesota regent. "I've watched all of our people, from Shirley Chisholm on, and thought America wasn't quite ready. I think we may be ready now if we can remember who we are as a people."

Remembering the march

Officially known as the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, it was attended by more than 250,000 people, the largest demonstration ever seen in the nation's capital at the time.

The 43-person Minnesota delegation got an early morning flight to Washington that day after collecting $6,000 in nickels, dimes and quarters along Lake Street and Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis. Then they took a bus to a church. All had signed a statement that they would not retaliate if violence broke out. Johnson, who was an assistant to Minneapolis Mayor Art Naftalin at the time, remembers feeling discouraged at first by the small numbers she was seeing.

"Then the people started coming, from every direction, in buses, walking, and the next thing we knew, that whole space was occupied," Johnson said.

The heat was intense. The Minnesotans stayed together and tried to stay out of the sun.

Johnson said she knew she was a witness to history in the making when King rose to speak. He deviated from his prepared text to speak the now famous words of racial harmony.

"To hear Dr. King talk about a dream that we all had. The placards we were carrying about housing, health care, employment and justice and fairness. We knew something important was happening that day," she said.

Buckner-Watson's trip to Washington was less organized. She was a postal worker in Akron, Ohio, when she and a friend decided to drive to the march. Her father, who had grown up in the South, was adamant that it would be too dangerous. But she persisted.

"Seeing how relatives were being treated in the South and how it was different in the North. There were 'colored' signs that my cousins had to obey. I wanted to be part of something that would change that," said Buckner-Watson, now 63 and living in Inver Grove Heights.

Obama's speech tonight will have personal meaning for Buckner-Watson, who recently broke her foot and has been traveling to convention activities by wheelchair. She passes out copies of a prayer for her 86-year-old father, now dying of cancer in Atlanta. She hopes her father, who once witnessed two black men being lynched, will live long enough to see a black man elected president.

"My father said no one would ever see the day. This will be one step closer," she said.

Mark Brunswick • 651-222-1636