Twenty years ago, Minister Louis Farrakhan called for a Million Man March on Washington, D.C. for black men “to unite in self-help and self-defense against economic and social ills plaguing the African American community.” Naysayers predicted the attendance goal could not be reached because the inter-racial crowd of men and women who came to Washington on Aug. 28, 1963 to hear Martin Luther King was estimated at 250,000 — the largest D.C. march ever.
However, on Oct. 16, 1995 thousands of black men from all over America converged on Washington. The National Park Service estimated a crowd of 400,000, but that number was disputed. Professor Farouk El-Baz, director of the Center for Remote Sensing at Boston University, was able to estimate with satellite technology a crowd of about 837,000. His estimate was made late in the day in response to the controversy over the attendance after the crowd had begun to disperse. There is reason to believe that more than one million black men came to Washington.
Farrakhan has called for another march on the 20th anniversary of the Million Man March, to present to Congress proposals to improve conditions for racial minorities in America. The first march was extremely orderly and controlled. With tempers inflamed by a greater awareness of murderous police attacks on blacks, there will be a greater challenge to maintain order this time.
