Detroit Walk to Freedom

Walk to Freedom
Part of the Civil Rights Movement
DateJune 23, 1963 (1963-06-23)
Location
Adelaide Street, Woodward Avenue and Cobo Hall in Detroit, Michigan
Caused by
Resulted in

The Walk to Freedom was a mass march during the Civil Rights Movement on June 23, 1963 in Detroit, Michigan. It drew crowds of an estimated 125,000 or more and was known as "the largest civil rights demonstration in the nation's history" up to that date.

Various ministers and leaders of local and national organizations, including the mayor of Detroit, were in attendance and gave speeches. Among them was Martin Luther King Jr. who after the Walk to Freedom March gave an impassioned speech. It was a precursor to his famous "I Have a Dream" speech given weeks later in Washington, D.C. The march itself was, to King and his supporters, partly a practice run of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.[1]

Due to the greater size of the March on Washington, the Detroit Walk to Freedom has been somewhat lost to obscurity outside of local Detroit history.[2] At the time, Dr. King called it "one of the most wonderful things that has happened in America."[3]

  1. ^ Sugrue, Thomas J. (2008). Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North. Random House. pp. 298–301. ISBN 9780679643036.
  2. ^ Freedom North: Black Freedom Struggles Outside the South, 1940-1980. Palgrave Macmillan. 2003. pp. 166–168. ISBN 9780312294670.
  3. ^ "Detroit's Walk to Freedom". Walter P. Reuther Library. Retrieved 20 April 2013.