By John Perrino
Marvin Kalb (center) moderated the first Kalb Report of the show's 20th season Tuesday night.
(Photo Credit: John Perrino)
The Kalb Report opened its
20th season with a forum commemorating the 1963 March on Washington Tuesday
night at the National Press Club.
The live taping marked the
eve of the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington and came one
day before a commemorative march which lead to the Lincoln Memorial for
speeches by President Barack Obama, Former Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy
Carter, Oprah Winfrey, and other prominent speakers including some members of
the forum.
A panel of Rep. John
Lewis, Ambassador Andrew Young, NAACP Chairman Emeritus Julian Bond, PBS NewsHour
Anchor Gwen Ifill, Morehouse College President Dr. John Wilson, and the first
African American woman reporter for The
Washington Post, Dorothy Gilliam, was featured.
Representative Lewis is
the only surviving speaker from the 1963 March on Washington.
Moderator Marvin Kalb
covered the event for CBS standing only feet away from the Lincoln Memorial
during Dr. Martin Luther King’s iconic “I have a dream” speech.
The forum covered American
civil rights history, personal experiences by panel members of the 1963 March
on Washington, and critique reporting on the 1963 march and Civil Rights Movement.
“You couldn’t hold back
the tears, you realized that this was something special,” said Ambassador
Young. “It took a southern black
movement and…made it a global phenomenon.”
“It was 20 years in the
making and… 50 years later, we’re still assessing whether the demands that were
made were met,” said NewsHour Host Ifill.
Panelists also reflected on
the expectations of many people, especially in the media and government, that
the March on Washington would have a storyline of violence.
“There was not a lot of harmony…the
NAACP and the Urban League didn’t want the march,” said Young.
Other topics of discussion
included the omission of Dr. King’s speech by The Washington Post despite the paper assigning 60 reporters to the
story and the fact that there were no female speakers on the march.
Students from over 30
colleges and universities were in attendance for the taping and aspiring
journalists were told by Ifill to “go deeper and find the real stories.”
The forum was broadcast
live on CSPAN, CBS Radio, Sirius Radio, and other outlets.
The Kalb Report has strong
ties to The George Washington University including the Director, Michael
Freedman, who teaches journalism in the School of Media and Public Affairs. The
senior and associate producers are GW alumni and the web editor is a current
senior at the University.
For the complete
transcript and video of the show, visit http://research.gwu.edu/kalb-report.
