![\"View_of_Crowd_at_1963_March_on_Washington\"](\"http:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/View_of_Crowd_at_1963_March_on_Washington-300x236.jpg\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"People can read about the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in textbooks, and they can watch clips of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.\u2019s \u201cI Have a Dream\u201d speech on YouTube, but one employee of Sinclair Community College, Dr. Robert Obach, can tell you about it from firsthand experience because he was there for it all.<\/p>\n
Obach, who teaches philosophy, arrived in Washington D.C. in June of 1963 and was living in a religious community when he heard the news about the upcoming March on Washington.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy brothers in this community started talking, \u2018should we go to (the March on Washington), it\u2019s going to be a historic event?\u2019 Well, I started thinking I\u2019d like to be there at a historic event so I went,\u201d Obach said.<\/p>\n
Obach said he and his brothers in the community gathered around the Washington Monument and then walked about a mile down Constitution Avenue to the Lincoln Memorial with thousands of people, mostly African-Americans and some Caucasians, singing \u201cWe Shall Overcome\u201d because they all supported the idea of justice and freedom.<\/p>\n
Obach said the brothers he marched with decided to leave because it was too crowded, but he stayed and soaked it all in. Obach said he struck up conversations with African-Americans in the crowd that told him how they felt about civil rights.<\/p>\n
\u201cI learned about how they hated segregation because it cuts them off and shuts them out,\u201d Obach said. \u201cSo here they are explaining to me, a white boy around 21 years old, what it\u2019s like (to be African-American at the time) and I\u2019m picking up this information like gee, this is amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Obach said he met Jackie Robinson that afternoon during the speeches of integration leaders.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe people behind me started moving aside to let someone through and it was Jackie Robinson. I recognized him as Jack, put out my hand and he shook it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Later that afternoon Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave the keynote address where he shared his famous \u201cI Have a Dream\u201d speech.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew the speech was inspiring,\u201d Obach said. \u201cI didn\u2019t know it would become that famous though.\u201d<\/p>\n
Looking back in hindsight, Obach said King\u2019s speech was the keynote address for civil rights for all Americans.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it was a pivotal moment in American history,\u201d Obach said. \u201cA real step forward into liberty, justice and freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n
Obach added, \u201cI felt so much a part of things, I felt belonging. I felt like we\u2019re on the move now, that we\u2019re going someplace, that we\u2019re going to accomplish something and that we\u2019re going to do it together.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
People can read about the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in textbooks, and they can watch clips of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.\u2019s \u201cI Have a Dream\u201d speech on YouTube, but one employee of Sinclair Community College, Dr. Robert Obach, can tell you about it from firsthand experience because he was there […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":90,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[839,840,1402,838],"class_list":["post-3720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tartan-news","tag-march","tag-march-on-washington","tag-samuel-huist","tag-washington"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-Y0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/90"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3720"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3736,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3720\/revisions\/3736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}