"I Propose a March to Washington"—from my Commonplace Book

A rather striking harbinger of the '63 March in Carson McCullers' "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter"

I recently finished reading Carson McCullers' great 1940 novel, "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter"—a real masterpiece, by the way, and one I highly recommend—and I was startled to read the following passage, which I pass along to mark the 60th anniversary (yesterday) of the March on Washington.

The context: the book describes life in a small town in the Deep South in the 1930s through the eyes of five main characters: John Singer, a deaf-mute employed as a jewelry engraver; Mick Kelly, a 13 year-old girl; Jake Blount, a drifter/labor agitator; Biff Brannon, the owner of a local cafe; and Benedict Copeland, an elderly African-American doctor.

Copeland is consumed by bitterness and rage—rage at what white society had done and was doing to his people, rage at his fellow blacks who submit to these outrages, and rage at his own inability to alleviate their suffering or effect meaningful change. He and Blount, the labor agitator, confront one another towards the end of the book, after a particularly searing episode of racial violence at the local jail.  They both agree: conditions have become intolerable, and something must be done. No more "prudence." Copeland says:

In the face of brutality I was prudent. Before injustice I held my peace. I sacrificed the things in hand for the good of the hypothetical whole. I believed in the tongue instead of the fist. As an armor against oppression I taught patience and faith in the human soul. I know now how wrong I was. I have been a traitor to myself and to my people. All that is rot. Now is the time to act and to act quickly. Fight cunning with cunning and might with might.

"How?" Blount asks. Copeland continues:

By getting out and doing things. By calling crowds of people together and getting them to demonstrate. … I have a program. It is a very simple, concentrated plan. I mean to focus on only one objective. In August of this year I plan to lead more than one thousand Negroes in this country on a march. A march to Washington. All of us together in one solid body. If you will look in the cabinet yonder you will see a stack of letters which I have written this week and will deliver personally.

Blount wants no part of it:

That's not the right angle at all. In the first place, you'd never get out of town. They'd break it up, saying it's a menace to public health—or some such trumped-up reason. But even if you got to Washington it wouldn't do a bit of good. The whole notion is crazy. … Who cares whether you and your thousand Negroes straggle up to that stinking cesspool of a place called Washington? What difference does it make? What do a few people matter—a few thousand people, black, white, good, or bad? When the whole of our society is built on a foundation of lies?

Pretty amazing, for 1940. In a book written by a previously-unknown white Southern woman who was, at the time she submitted the book for publication, all of 22 years old!

And at the risk of gross over-simplification, I think it fair to say that Copeland's idea ultimately prevailed—people did care, it did matter, and it accomplished considerably more than a bit of good.