The Kalb Report Commemorates 50th Anniversary of March on Washington

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 20^th 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 50^th 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.