John Leland in The New York Times:
Sixty years ago, in the summer of 1963, a four-story townhouse on West 130th Street in Harlem became the headquarters for what was then the largest civil rights event in American history, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. For one summer the house, a former home for “delinquent colored girls,” was a hive of activity — so frenetic that the receptionist twice hung up on the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by mistake. The march, which took place on Wednesday, Aug. 28, is now best remembered for Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, and for the crowd of 250,000 filling the National Mall. But it would not have been possible without the organizing at 170 West 130th Street, led by Bayard Rustin, a brilliant tactician whose homosexuality and former communist ties made him a target both inside and outside the movement.
Under the aegis of the march’s patriarch, the labor leader A. Philip Randolph, Mr. Rustin brought together the heads of the five big civil rights organizations — the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, N.A.A.C.P., National Urban League, Congress of Racial Equality and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Together with Mr. Randolph, they became known as the Big Six. It was a pivotal moment in the civil rights movement, following Dr. King’s tumultuous campaign to force the desegregation of Birmingham and President John F. Kennedy’s sending the National Guard to enable Black students to attend the University of Alabama; Medgar Evers, a field secretary for the N.A.A.C.P., was assassinated in June in Mississippi. As Courtland Cox, one of the march organizers, recalled, “People were sick and tired of being sick and tired, and they wanted to make a statement to the nation.”
More here.