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Photos from March on Washington: “This is a marathon, run as a relay”

Yolanda King’s speech was an inspiration as she takes the baton from her grandfather and dad.

Zach D Roberts

Zach D Roberts

— 4 min read
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Photos from March on Washington: “This is a marathon, run as a relay”

Originally published at Progressive.org

Last weekend, on the sixty-third anniversary of the March on Washington, thousands gathered in Washington, D.C. to defend voting rights. The mobilization took place amid President Donald Trump’s campaign to restrict mail-in voting and create a federal voter database, which would threaten ballot access and constitute a major security risk for millions of Americans.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s granddaughter, Yolanda Renee King, told the crowd to recognize the fight for civil rights in the United States as an ongoing effort.

“We have to stop thinking about freedom and justice like a fifty-yard dash, or even a 100-yard dash. This is a marathon, run as a relay,” she said. “That means nobody is expected to run the whole race. My grandfather didn’t. My grandmother didn’t. John Lewis didn’t. Fannie Lou Hamer didn’t . . . . The countless peoples whose names we will never know didn’t. They ran their leg. They passed on the baton. That is how movements work. That is how democracy survives.”

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York also spoke, connecting generations of elected leaders in this fight for access to the polls, jobs, and freedom.

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Inspired by Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel “The Handmaid’s Tale,” women dressed in red-hooded cloaks have become a fixture at liberal protests in recent years, often to protest abortion rights restrictions. Here, an organization called the National Handmaid Army calls on the nation to not “allow fiction to become a reality.”
Reverend Deacon Kenneth Radcliffe from the St. Charles Borromeo, Resurrection, and All Saints Parish in New York City stands in front of the Lincoln Memorial. The parish has a long legacy of social justice activism in Harlem.
Three demonstrators from Indivisible hold a sign proclaiming “Hands Off Our Vote.” Like many other pro-democracy groups, Indivisible is running a voting rights campaign ahead of the midterm elections.
Attendees at the March on Washington were not able to sit alongside the Lincoln Memorial’s Reflecting Pool amid repairs caused by Trump’s renovation debacle.
Three demonstrators from Indivisible hold a sign proclaiming “Hands Off Our Vote.” Like many other pro-democracy groups, Indivisible is running a voting rights campaign ahead of the midterm elections.
The King family leads the march alongside the Reverend Al Sharpton and film director Spike Lee. Lee’s shirt proclaiming “Black folks don’t hang themselves from trees” references an ongoing spate of Black people found dead from hanging—suspected lynchings—in recent months and years.
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