the march too.” It dawns on me for the first time that this march is going to be something big. Even movie stars are going to it.
Reporters and photographers wait at the foot of the gangplank. They go straight to my father, Paul Newman and a woman who turns out to be Marian Anderson and take them aside. Flashbulbs explode. In the morning, the picture is on the front page of the Washington papers.
We are staying in the Mayflower Hotel. It is big and impersonal and my father says it is probably the best hotel in Washington when I ask him, “What’s the best hotel in Washington?”
Steve and I are impressed. My father has a suite. This is really an adventure. We both feel very adult as we look around the rooms of our suite. Immediately, people start to arrive. The phone starts to ring. And work for my father begins. Members of the staff of the Commission on Religion and Race crowd inside. They are mostly in their thirties, ministers and lawyers. They are friendly to me and Steve, but when they look at my father it is with an almost passionate respect. He is sitting casually in an armchair, his jacket off, tie loose, feet resting on top of a coffee table. He looks very young, relaxed, optimistic.
“Did they get those sandwiches all packed?” somebody asks. The National Council is donating a hundred thousand sandwiches to the March on Washington. At the last minute, it occurred to people that the thousands of marchers were going to get hungry. Earlier this afternoon we had stood in my father’s office and looked at them loading the rented trucks out on West 120th Street with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The Commission offices are in the Interchurch Center at 475 Riverside Drive. Nicknamed the “God box,” this building houses national offices of many of the Protestant denominations in the country.
“What a mess,” laughs my father.
“That’s what June said on the phone.” June is his secretary.
“I want to have a staff meeting tonight. Not just about tomorrow, but to talk about the whole fall program.” He is getting serious but his face loses none of its glow. “I guess we might as well eat dinner from room service. Paul, see if you can find a menu around.” Dinner is full of jokes. About four other staff, my father, Steve and I. We drink wine, then linger over coffee as the rest of the staff gradually arrive.
It is very interesting for me to watch my father and the staff work together in these meetings. They do most of the talking while he listens, occasionally filling in with a few words when his own thoughts run as fast or faster than the speaker’s, but directing the conversation too. He will suddenly cut off talk on one subject. It will be like a chapter closing in a book: neat, and logical. On to the next chapter.
Obviously, he is not just my father. He is the father, in varying degrees, of everybody in the room. He is thirty-nine years old but looks younger than most of the staff. And it is plain that for them, just as for me, there is magic in the man who sits with his chair tilted back, one finger alongside his sharp nose, listening, thinking, directing the conversation as naturally as a valley directs a river through its middle. He is our father. Something in him that gives him this incredible “fatherness” which touches so many. I don’t feel jealous. Perhaps some of the staff do, just a bit. He really is my father. His blood is my blood. It makes me glad.
The first big event involving the Commission was the March on Washington. Part of the mandate which the General Board itself passed in setting up the Commission was a call to a national meeting of Christians in Washington to symbolize the concern of the whole nation. This was before there were any crystallized plans for a march. Then we began hearing about Phillip Randolph’s plans and some other plans that Martin Luther King had, so we all put together our efforts and established the March on Washington Committee. Ten sponsoring organizations participated. The major civil rights organizations, organized labor (at least one part of it), and three religious groups—the Catholic Interracial Council, the Synagogue Council of America, and our Commission on Religion and Race of the National Council of Churches. It was our deep feeling that there had to be an affirmative, positive, committed kind of demonstration involving many parts of the population of this country on behalf of civil rights in the summer of 1963. That was our only hope to prevent an open outbreak of hostility, so deep and intense was the feeling. So we set out to reach a simple goal: to get 30,000 white people into that March. And we got slightly over 40,000 out of about 250,000 to 300,000 people who marched that day.
That was our first entree, really, into what one could call the civil rights establishment in this country, that is, the NAACP, CORE, SCLC, and civil libertarian groups working with them. It is difficult to report how suspicious and how reluctant they were, how little expectation they had from the church in this whole thing. There was an unbelievable kind of cold shoulder at the beginning, because we had made so many protestations, we were so involved in pious platitudes in race relations, and we were so guilty.
In the morning, we eat breakfast at a banquet for the National Council of Churches leaders who have come to march. Afterwards, we take an elevator back upstairs to the suite. My father has an appointment with a man who is now ambassador to a small African country. A white man from the west, he is an active layman in the Congregational Church. He was appointed by John F. Kennedy after having helped elect him in the 1960 campaign.
“I had breakfast with Him,” says the ambassador. He is short and highly groomed. His blue suit must be custom-tailored and his haircut looks about an hour old. He crosses one leg over the other gingerly.
“What are they thinking about over there in the White House this morning?” asks my father. He likes to tilt back in chairs, but his eyes are brutally alert to every nuance of gesture.
“Well, Bob, I was talking to the Big Boy about that. He’s quite concerned. Quite concerned. I would say they are, ah…praying for a peaceful day. Not much else they can do until the day is over.”
“The leadership of the March Committee is with him right now.”
“Yes, I believe so, Bob.” Later a picture will come out of a smiling, tense President surrounded by civil rights leaders. Beside Kennedy, with an expression of calm foreknowledge, is King. He must have the speech tucked in his breast pocket. He knows the day will be his.
“Do you think they are willing to work with us on getting a strong bill through Congress?” my father asks.
“He’s having problems with this Congress. You know that. In any case, today is the day. It all depends on what he sees. If there is a bloodbath in the streets of the capital during his administration…you’ve probably thought of that. If there’s violence, you’re going to have some tough times on this bill.”
“At least,” says my father, “he’s going to be paying attention to today. I don’t think there’s going to be violence.” After a few more minutes of conversation, my father walks the ambassador out to the elevators. When he comes back, he shakes his head and grins a wry grin. “Big Boy? That may be a pretty accurate description of Kennedy. I hope not.” Then adds, “Come on. We have to get downstairs and form the line. You guys have to lead us.”
Steve and I stay eight feet apart so the banner will not sag. We move at the head of the ministers. It suddenly hits me that Steve is Jewish. He can’t have thought much about it as he wrestles with the bamboo pole to keep “National Council of Churches” stretched out.
STEVE (RIGHT) AND I CARRY THE BANNER AT THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON, 1963. MY FATHER AND BISHOP JULIAN SMITH ARE IN THE LEAD.
We are insignificant particles in a chain reaction that floods the streets.