oh the 1963 March led by Dr. Martin Luther King and that I have a dream speech in Detroit commemorated two months ago along Woodward Avenue hundreds taking part.

I hope that as you step out into the street this morning you are making a commitment a commitment to organize our communities.

This is a generational moment and it's personal for me.

My father marched 60 years ago as a six year old in this march.

Organized labor in the civil rights movement are inextricably intertwined.

And we stand together.

And it is a great, great, prestigious honor to be a part of this.

We see people banding books people want to band the book that talks about Dr. King.

This march would not be acceptable and flawed under the current government.

Under the current legislation, You can never stop marching.

You know, it's critically important, though, that we affix.

Policy to protest protests.

Our policy is pure performance.

We want the fight now.

The fight back then.

1963.

Then it was the Walk to Freedom Detroiters and Dr. King historic.

Some see the beginning of a change that was going to come.

Why is it a little known fact that Dr. King rehearsed the I Have a Dream speech here in the city of Detroit first before he took it?

Well, you know how it is, man.

You know, you get in you you get in, you sing on at one place before you go sing it out.

Yes.

Right you working out the kinks and stuff and this ain't no small place Detroit if you can do it in Detroit, then you can withstand all kinds of critique because people here are rigorous about performance, about intelligence, about.

Oratory and the like.

Charity.

You were intentional.

We're bringing your daughter here.

Why?

Well, she has to see this in action.

And she also gets to see mom at work in a number of ways.

She also needs to see mom marching down aging.

She needs to get the opportunity so that ten years from now, 20 years from now, 30 years from now, she'll be able to say.

She participated in the march as one of the first steps toward her own fight for freedom for all of us.

This is commemorating the downtown Detroit downtown walk from Woolworth to Copel Hall in 1963.

I was six years old when I was in the first march in 64.

You were in the original march and.

Yes my dad my dad.

Brought me memory 60 years on for Gregory Gunn and for Dorothy Dewberry Aldridge it was a beautiful, beautiful day and no one expected these many people to show up.

An estimated 125,000 Aldridge was 20 years old in 1963.

She's talking with one Detroit contributer Bryce Hoffman yesterday there were a lot of white people there.

It was well integrated and there you know at the time the mayor of Detroit Mayor Kavanagh was a white person.

So there was no conflict between blacks and whites as such.

No one Detroit spoke to the late Reverend Dr. Joann Watson just before this year's Detroit walk.

It meant a lot because the injustice that was happening around the country was not just in the South it also included the North.

There were housing issues, employment issues, issues just related to the quality of your life.

In 1963 of course there was the question about police harassment, police brutality of the young people in Detroit.

Now one other thing I want to add that Medgar Evers had just been killed.

In.

Jackson, Mississippi.

Medgar Evers, an official assassinated by a white supremacist less than two weeks before.

And it was a motivating force that caused people to come out to the march that may not have had had Evers not been been killed only days before.

That march was organized by the Detroit Council for Human Rights, which was led by Reverend C.L.

Franklin.

And of course, if you don't know C.L., you probably know his daughter, the Queen of soul, Aretha Franklin, Reverend Albert Clay, who would become the founder of the Shrine of the Black Madonna and change his name to Jeremy Habib as you mine.

Benjamin McFall, the owner of McFall Brothers Funeral Homes in James Dale Rio, who would go on to become a judge.

Reverend Clegg and Reverend Franklin decided to start the Detroit Council for Human Rights with the idea that there really hadn't been enough improvement for African-Americans since the 1943 race riot and the March and the Walk to Freedom was the first major event that the organization organized.

The local and the NAACP not in on the planning seemed to them these activists were pushing too hard too fast.

Some thought that Reverend Clegg was was was clearly more radical than the Detroit IACP and at times so was Reverend Franklin.

The NAACP did bring protest signs but the United Autoworkers Union was a real driver of the march.

There's no doubt that the Walk to Freedom could not have happened without the UAW under the leadership of Walter Ruther these are some really cool objects from.

The march.

UAW archivist Gavin Strassel sits on a wealth of research material at the Walter P. Ruther Library at Wayne State University.

The records really reflect that as figures like Martin Luther King start to make inroads in American society.

You can see that the UAW takes notice and becomes a major financial contributor and supporter of the civil rights movement.

Dr. King spoke before the union's membership two years before the march.

The UAW use Lillian Hatcher was a walk to freedom organizer.

I think having the UAW involved in the planning probably went a long way and letting Martin Luther King know that this is a legitimate event and that this is something that he wants to take part in.

So Ruther and King had a great bond.

In fact, there is some thought that King might have written some of the I Have a Dream speech at Solidarity House, UAW headquarters, in Detroit.

So with the UAW and Reverend C.L.

Franklin, there was Dr. King's other Detroit connection.

Berry Gordy Junior, the founder of Motown Records, had met King, we know several years before 1963 probably the late 1950s.

And what came from that was Berry Gordy actually covering payroll for Dr. King to pay his staff.

And my understanding is that that happened more than once.

And so in so many ways not only was Motown organically helping the civil rights movement and being a catalyst for bringing people together, but also in a very intentional way, they were supporting the efforts of Dr. King.

The Detroit speech at Cobo Hall preserved on record by Motown.

Segregation is wrong because it is nothing but a new form of slavery, covered up with the niceties of complexity.

Dr. King would finish his speech in Detroit with the words Perhaps he's most remembered I have a dream free at last words.

He'd take to Washington.

Two months later.

They came from Los Angeles and San Francisco.

They came from Cleveland.

From Chicago, and they came from Detroit.

In August 1963 the March on Washington.

Detroiter Edith Lee-Payne was there with their mother.

She decided that we would go to Washington now.

She would always dress to me how important it was for me to be the best that I could always be and I could achieve and be whatever I wanted to be.

It helped me be more of an American, which is what I am.

The fact that I'm a black American is secondary.

That doesn't define me.

And our color should never define us.

Dr. King, didn't want our colors to define us.

He wanted our character to define us and who we were as a person.

And in Birmingham, Alabama, and.

All over the South and all over the nation.

We are stamped with saying that we will no longer feel our birthright of freedom from segregated poverty.

Historians have written and said often that had there not been those two marches, we may not have achieved the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act without those marches which take place just before the passing of that landmark.

Two pieces of legislation.