Washington DC—Thousands returned to the Lincoln Memorial on Friday morning in a referendum of government for failing to honor its commitment to equal rights for everyone. The March On Washington 2026 was held 63 years to the day Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech. His impassioned message helped usher the civil rights movement from a footnote into prime time, and supercharged the movement which is still going today. It set the standard for what social and economic equality should look like. Friday’s march revived Dr. King’s call to social and economic equality.
As a deep blue sky shadowed the background of a bright white Lincoln Memorial, the speakers told how they would not allow the selfless sacrifices of 1960s civil rights leaders to be swept away.
One after another, speakers said that the nation had failed to keep its promise of equality. They spoke with the same rhythm and reason as Martin Luther King Jr. near the footprints he left 63 years ago. Their words contrasted the country’s 1963 legislative promises against its failed delivery of social and economic access. They concluded that legislative changes to civil rights promises in 2026 were giant steps backwards.
As one solution, speakers urged voters to “have a plan” by registering to vote and taking someone along with them. But there is a point that wrestling executive branch power back into service for those for which it was intended requires more than just voting, especially if the power of the vote is being subverted by executive branch policies that suppress that voting.
For even as they spoke, a new post office rule restricting mailed voting ballots as well as presidential orders demanding States’ voting lists, were being challenged in the courts. Many speakers railed against the Supreme Court decision in Louisiana v. Callais which overturned a lower court ruling and codified partisan gerrymandering as a legitimate government purpose. The recent decision allows States to tilt the balance of power in the legislature more favorably toward White majority districts. It has already resulted in the erasure of Black voting power in Tennessee and Alabama. In those States there are no longer any Black majority voting blocks. The decision further split Black majority voting blocksin six States altogether, severely muting the voices millions of Black voters in Texas, Florida, Louisiana, Tennessee, Alabama, and North Carolina. The Supreme Court decision was a major blow to the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Speakers Set Tone For November Elections
Chief among the speakers critical of the Supreme Court decision was Revered Al Sharpton, President and Founder of National Action Network, and organizer of the March on Washington 2026. The elder civil rights leader railed against Trump’s attacks on civil rights without mentioning him by name, but he did not need to mention who was behind the attacks.
“The Callais decision by the Supreme Court put a bullet in the heart of voting rights,” he said. Casting the Supreme Court as ruling from a pre-1963 mindset, he said, “But they don’t understand, we’re not going back. We will not let them turn back the hand of time. They can turn back the clock but they can’t turn back time. And if we go home and organize like they did in 1963, we can put a handicap on the most biased, bigoted presidency that we’ve seen in a long time.”
The march was joined by labor, faith, Latino, voting rights and community organizations. The group leaders spoke from the podium on the Lincoln Memorial steps as well. Many leaders who spoke followed in the footsteps of the same labor, clergy, and civil rights leaders of their organization predecessors who spoke in 1963.
“If your vote didn’t matter, they wouldn’t be working so hard to take it away from you,” said Everette Kelly, National President of the American Federation of Government Employees, which is the largest union representing federal and D.C. government employees. Kelly condemned the Doge takeover of government agencies and removal of tens of thousands of government employees who had kept the country operating safely with oversight needed for basic functions such as food inspections, weather forecasting, and air traffic control.
“Our ancestors didn’t pay the price for us to stand here quiet[ly],” he said. “There’s power in ‘We’ and in 10 weeks this election day will show them what a bad mistake that was.”
New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spoke about how the civil right leaders of 1963 were not handed a movement but had to build one. “The civil rights movement is the foundation for a Great Society,” she said. “We are living in the legacy of it today. But their vision went further than their victory. America may have agreed to open the lunch counter but it never committed to us affording the meal.”
Ocasio-Cortez argued, “America is wealthier than it has ever been. Yet millions of Americans work every day to afford the basics. It is not simply an economic failure, it is a moral and structural failure. We must work to fix it.”
Marcos Smyth, an artist working with Third Act-DMV, spoke about the march after he returned home that day. “Minorities and Blacks have been marginalized,” he said. This administration is trying to turn its back on Black people by making it more difficult to vote.”
Smyth brought a paper mache caricature of Trump on a wheeled cart he built. He originally designed and helped other artists build the puppet for the No Kings II rally in March of this year, and refashioned it for the March on Washington. But he didn’t want the caricature of Trump to be anything near the overarching reason the March on Washington was returning to the Lincoln Memorial. But so many people liked the puppet he was delayed by the many requests from participants asking to take a photo with him and the puppet.
“It’s not intended as a get out the vote message,” he said. But it couldn’t be helped to presume it was an inspiration for people to vote because it was Trump that was behind many of their rights being taken away.
Civil Rights Gains of 1963 Are Being Erased
After the 1963 march the nation has made significant progress by 1965, passing legislation codifying equal rights in many sectors which have been retracted in the last 2 years. In 1965, the birth of the great society, equal rights gains finally began to align with forefathers’ visions af a nation of equality and justice for all.. the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, .
But the dozens of speakers assembled warned that rights previously gained and the survival of democracy hung in a balance and was weighted down by the willful efforts of the wealthy and powerful influences to diminish it.
Under the policies of the most wealthy president the nation has ever elected, the viability of democracy was at stake, the speakers argued. This is because the wealthy are responsible for the loss of democratic norms by funding its demise. Elon Musk gave $200 million to the Trump presidential reelection campaign in 2019. He also offered voters a lottery of a million dollars if they voted for Trump. It was a lottery which turned out to be a fake ploy to gain votes for Trump. He never paid anyone a million dollars for voting for Trump because it was illegal to do so. Still, many fell for his ploy.
Trump is the nations first multi-billionaire president, leveraging the power of his office to form policy to his personal benefit and self enrichment. No other president has come anywhere close to the amount of wealth accumulated in office while president. The Supreme Court effectively crowned him as an untouchable from prosecution for official acts as president with its ruling in Trump v. United States, so that any official act he takes cannot lead to trial conviction. Further, the Supreme Court has ruled in his favor in nearly every case brought before it. This has in effect green-lighted many of the undoings of the constitutional order, and will make more difficult reversing the damage he has done to civil rights.
The Hart–Celler Act, or Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, was a federal law passed by the 89th United States Congress and signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. The law abolished the National Origins Formula, which had been the basis of U.S. immigration policy since the 1920s.
Trump’s Department of Homeland Security has through its Immigration and Customs Enforcement division, nearly blown the Immigration and Nationality Act out of existence. The draconian immigration policies under Trump’s White House have led to death of U.S. citizens, immigrants, and mass chaos across the country. The resulting chaos from ICE has enabled kidnapping, disappearance, and unlawful abuse in detention camps of thousands of migrants and immigrants without due process, pending deportation.
ICE “Ha[s] adopted methods and routine tactics that frequently lead to serious civil rights violations. They are committing these violations at a scale and severity without precedent in our nation’s recent history,” according to the ACLU in a July published report documenting 1200 incidents.
In 1965, the Social Security Amendments Act was also signed into law by President Johnson. It was also a part of the vision of the Great Society. It created Medicare and Medicaid, health insurance for those over 65. With the passage of the “Big Beautiful Bill,” legislation, ugly in both application and scope, it would cause the suffering and sickness of millions unable to afford rising costs of medical care in their retirement years. Billions will be cut from the provisions of this 1965 Act in order to afford tax breaks for the wealthy which go into effect in January 2027.
Video contributed by Marcos Smyth with editing by John Zangas.
