It’s important to step back and understand what happened and to discover how you can make it better.

Members of the Bethlehem and Allentown Chapters of the NAACP traveled to Washington D. C. this past weekend to observe the 50th anniversary of March on Washington when Dr. Martin Luther King gave his history-changing “I Have A Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. According to Dan Bosket, the President of the Allentown Chapter of the NAACP, 108 people booked seats on the two buses that left the parking lot at Redner’s market on Airport Road early Saturday morning. Artie Ravitz of Easton was at the March on Washington 50 years ago. “I sat on the edge of the Reflecting Pool with my feet dangling in the water as I listened to Dr. King’s speech,” said Ravitz who said that as a young man he was a devoted follower of the civil rights movement. Asked Friday why he is attending this 50th anniversary ceremony, he said that working for civil rights is still important. “It’s more important than the first time because the Supreme Court is nullifying parts of the Voting Rights Act,” said Ravitz. “The Supreme Court doesn’t care about the rights of black people and brown people.” The August 28, 1963 march was part of a larger civil rights movement. 1963 was also the 100th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Earlier that year, President John F. Kennedy announced that he would push for a Civil Rights Act. Kennedy was assassinated Nov. 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas and didn’t live to see the Act signed into law by his successor President Lyndon Johnson. The Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965. The 1963 March on Washington was a major factor in these two laws being passed. Esther Lee, President of the Bethlehem Chapter of the NAACP, said commemoration of the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom” August 28, 1963, is important so that people of this generation will remember the struggle that African-Americans have made. She also decried in a recent interview what she calls a “genocide of our [black] youth.” She said the future of African-American families is at stake. She said children from “neighborhoods in economic strife” who then “don’t do well in school” become “candidates for jail.” This “pipeline,” according to Lee, disrupts families. Approximately 12%-13% of the American population is African-American, but they make up 40.1% of the almost 2.1 million male inmates in jail or prison as of 2009 according to the U.S. Department of Justice. “I fear that there will not be a family in the future,” said Lee when talking about the effect of having so many black men in jail or prison. The march on Washington 50 years ago challenged the morality of “Jim Crow” laws that pervaded life in most southern states. Jim Crow was systematic legal discrimination designed to keep African-Americans in a second-class citizen status. Included in its many injustices were laws that effectively restricted or denied voting rights to African-Americans. This, according to some civil rights advocates, is an issue that has resurfaced today in the form of various “voter ID” laws passed by Republican dominated state legislatures. Fredrick Montgomery, an educator with the Allentown School District, attended last weekend’s event in Washington D. C. He said that commemoration of the March on Washington is important to do today’s generation. Montgomery’s trip to Washington on a “jam-packed” bus resulted in what he called a “grand time, a memorable experience.” “Emotions were running high,” said Montgomery in an interview after his trip. “There were people from every walk of life there.” He said it was an example of how people from different races and cultures “can love each other.” He said he was pleased to see a significant number of young people go on the trip. “As an educator it’s important to me to see us learn to listen, bridge cultural gaps and be able to work things out,” said Montgomery. “We have no alternative except to work with diversity.” “Important history has occurred,” said Montgomery. “Tears, sweat and blood were shed by those that fought against oppression. But, repression still occurs for whatever reason.” “Many people put their lives on the line--white, black, Jews, gentile, young and old,” said Montgomery. “It’s important to step back and understand what happened and to discover how you can make it better.”