Masters of our own fate

By Marc Morial
Guest Columnist

In 1963, more than a quarter-million people gathered in Washington, DC to march for jobs and equality. The Great March for Jobs and Freedom was a watershed moment in American history—birthing now-iconic speeches that voiced the hardships facing Blacks as they sought a fair shot at an elusive dream.

As we fast-forward 50 years and reflect on the progress we’ve made toward economic equality, we meet the sobering truth that much has been achieved, but much more needs to be done. Some people use apparent proofs of progress—that Blacks are no longer barred from living, learning and earning where they want because of their race, not to mention the election and reelection of our first Black president – to conclude that Blacks in America have overcome.

However, a shiny veneer of progress cannot justify the elimination of affirmative action in education and employment; the roll-back of voting rights protections and relegation of this precious franchise to increasingly partisan legislatures; or a cut back on social investments that can help current and future generations thrive in a fast-changing economy.

Taken alone, our achievements could be hailed as good progress in the pursuit of full equality. But unfortunately, the African-American condition has only improved primarily within our own community. This means that economic disparities with whites persist and cast doubt on what we thought was meaningful change.

These disparities underscore the need to reinforce our fight for lasting economic empowerment and for policies driving development in under-resourced communities. For example, the National Urban League launched our ongoing “War on Unemployment” in 2011, which included the release of our 12-Point Plan: Putting Urban America back to Work. We expanded the program in January of this year with a ground-breaking endeavor, Jobs Rebuild America—a series of public/private investments totaling more than $70 million over the next five years.

Beyond each of us actively working toward solutions, our ongoing struggle cries out for the kind of coalition advocacy that drove many of the civil rights and economic victories in the 1960s. Between November 2012 and January 2013, I helped to organize a historic convening of civil rights, social justice, business and community leaders to identify and push for public policy priorities to drive economic recovery and rebirth for African-American and urban communities and all low-income and working-class Americans. This policy agenda was embodied in an official Communique that included specific recommendations with clearly defined objectives to move us forward as a community.

When I compare these recommendations with the demands made on that August afternoon in 1963, I am struck by how little has changed.

In 1963, as today, the most pressing demands centered on economic equality, educational opportunity and parity, and civil rights. But instead of fighting against discrimination in hiring or a $2 minimum wage, we’re fighting for job training and wage equity. Instead of calling for school segregation to end, we’re demanding an end to disparities in educational investment. Rather than calling for meaningful civil rights legislation, we’re fighting to preserve those very rights our fought and died for and to retain the practical application of civil rights and equality through affirmative measures to achieve diversity in jobs and education.

Our experience since the Great March says that we must be vigilant in protecting our hard-won rights. To paraphrase William Ernest Henley’s poem “Invictus,” we must become masters of our own fate to fully realize the economic prosperity we demanded on that day in 1963.

If we are to honor Whitney M. Young, one of the unsung visionaries of the Great March and the Urban League’s leader from 1961-1971, we must not only be prepared to seize opportunity when it comes, we must be committed to creating opportunity when it does not.

Marc Morial is President/CEO of the National Urban League. This article – the twelth of a 20-part series – is written in commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. The Lawyers’ Committee is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, formed in 1963 at the request of President John F. Kennedy to enlist the private bar’s leadership and resources in combating racial discrimination and the resulting inequality of opportunity – work that continues to be vital today. For more information, visit www.lawyerscommittee.org.

This article originally published in the April 8, 2013 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.