BY ED FELIEN
By the time of the March on Washington I was already too radical to believe I was needed or wanted. It was to be a mostly black affair, and communists and Marxists weren’t invited. Organizers of the March had been fending off criticisms that the March was organized and dominated by communists. In fact, the FBI and the racist Southern politicians were actually close to the truth. A. Phillip Randolph, the head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and one of two organizers of the March, had run for state controller in New York as a Socialist in 1920, and Bayard Rustin, the other organizer, was a socialist and gay. So, no one on the left wanted to go to the demonstration holding up a crazy left-wing sign and screw up the message. Probably over 250,000 people showed up, 60,000 or so of them white.
I was in Manhattan staying with friends. We had our own March, around White Castle hamburger joints that had the policy of hiring just one black person in an otherwise white crew. This was my first protest demonstration. I was arguing with my friend in the subway to the Bronx about how maybe this was unnecessary and maybe things would get better by themselves. I remember continuing the discussion all the while threading my way through angry young white counter demonstrators, between mounted police and climbing under wooden barricades. When we finally reached the other side and the site of the demonstration, I found that the only other person on our side of the barricades was a very short young black guy with a CORE (Congress Of Racial Equality) T-shirt on. He was quite happy to see us. We picked up signs and started marching around the hamburger stand. I tried to talk calmly and cheerfully to the angry white guys screaming at us. They said, “What about Chock Full O Nuts, they only hire black people and one white guy?” I tried to explain how the dominant white culture actually sets the agenda for racial discrimination in hiring. And I was sure that black-owned Chock Full O Nuts would change their hiring practice as soon as White Castle changed theirs. Aside from the excitement of an angry crowd and six or so mounted police, the most interesting moment came when two baseball teams showed up. One white and the other black. The black team had won, and their prize was that the white team would treat them to White Castle hamburgers. We talked to the black team members. They decided they could do without their prize and not cross our fragile picket line. It was the most important victory of the day.
