How will the March for Israel measure up against history?
While the 1963 March on Washington was nation-changing, other mass gatherings have been far less successful
The 2017 Women’s March on Washington, the day after Donald J. Trump’s inauguration as president of the United States, might have helped set the stage for Trump’s defeat in 2020. Photo by Benjamin Lowy/Getty Images
Editor-at-Large Robin Washington November 13, 2023
If you want to capture the attention of Congress, the president, and the American public, a surefire way is to bring 100,000 people to march on Washington.
Maybe.
Major Jewish organizations in the U.S. are following that playbook with Tuesday’s March for Israel, which the Jewish Federations of North America describes as an event to “bring together communities from across the country to show strong solidarity with the Israeli people, while demanding the immediate release of the remaining hostages and to condemn the rise of antisemitism.”
The rally follows a long tradition of mass gatherings at the nation’s capital to influence legislation and policy, most famously with the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. It was there that the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream Speech.”
That march, which, with 250,000 attendees, was the largest-ever gathering in the capital up to that time, helped lead to the enactment of the Civil Rights Act the following year. But other marches in Washington, D.C., have been less successful, and even recorded as failures, when measured by the goals of influencing legislation, the presidential administration and the public.
“You rarely get all three,” said Joel Sipress, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Superior.
An estimated half a million people attended the Women’s March in January 2017, just after the inauguration of President Donald Trump, to march for women’s rights and protest against the newly elected president.
Yet not only did Trump fail to sponsor any meaningful legislation to support women’s rights, he went on to appoint a Supreme Court majority that would eviscerate Roe V. Wade, the 50-year-old decision guaranteeing abortion rights — one of the issues about which the marchers felt most passionate.
However, says Sipress, that march’s lack of legislative impact doesn’t mean it was a complete failure. In another light, it was possibly a success.
“It made a significant impact because a lot of women in the U.S. who were very concerned about what the Trump administration might mean for them discovered they were not alone,” he said. Four years later, that sense of solidarity may have helped enough suburban white women shift to Democrat Joe Biden to give him the win over Trump in 2020.
Another historic march may have garnered even greater numbers and a similar feeling of solidarity. The 1995 Million Man March, led by Louis Farrakhan, may well have lived up to its name when it came to the number of participants, according to a Boston University count. With as many as one in 16 Black men in America on the mall at the same time, the march clearly illustrated Black unity.
Yet while planners said 1.5 million Black men registered to vote over the next year, the march did not translate into any major governmental reform. In a 2002 interview, movement scholar Aldon Morris described the march to me as a “pregnant moment” that failed to metastasize into long term action.
If the Million Man March attracted widespread attention but changed little, the Bonus March of 1932 resulted in great change — after initially being written off as a failure.
The march and subsequent occupation of the National Mall, where World War I veterans camped out to demand promised payments from the armed forces, ended violently when the Army forcibly removed the marchers. But that action led to the defeat of President Herbert Hoover.
“It was the last nail in the coffin for Herbert Hoover,” said Sipress. “The way that the Hoover administration responded confirmed the public’s perception that Herbert Hoover was out of touch and just didn’t care,” leading to the election, that fall, of Franklin Roosevelt and paving the way for his New Deal reforms.
So, will the March for Israel achieve its goals?
When it comes to winning freedom for the hostages, the answer is clearly no, unless Hamas has an unthinkable change of heart or the marchers persuade the Biden administration to carry out an near-impossible rescue attempt.
As for the other two demands, Sipress says they’ve already been achieved.
“There’s really nothing they are asking of the U.S. government,” he said. “The position of the U.S. government has been for decades to support almost anything the Israeli government does.”
But he would add a fourth goal — one realized in the Women’s March.
“It’s in showing up,” he said. “They’re bringing together like-minded people to recommit themselves to a cause they already believe in.”
Rabbi Isaiah Rothstein cited that esprit de corps as his reason for attending the rally as he drove from New York on Monday night.
“A big component to me is to be with the people,” he said by phone, echoing Sipress that there’s little reason to lobby Biden for support he’s already given.
“I think that not everybody at the march is on the same exact page as to what its goal is. Mobilizing Jews from across America is not an easy thing,” he continued. “I will see every person as a congregant. I want to be able to provide healing to people who need healing.”
That camaraderie could inspire others and help sway public opinion, especially if the numbers far exceed the 60,000 called for. A large turnout may be crucial for March for Israel planners, “as more and more people in the U.S., including American Jews, begin to question the policies of the United States” when it comes to Israel, Sipress said.
To these historic examples, I would add one more, perhaps the most influential of all: The 1941 March on Washington against racial discrimination, called by Black labor leader A. Phillip Randolph.
It never took place.
Just days before Randolph’s threatened mobilization of 100,000 Black people to descend on Washington, President Roosevelt signed an executive order creating the Fair Employment Practices Committee, desegregating American defense industries on the eve of World War II.
The action resulted in tens of thousands of Black workers being hired by the defense industries that had previously barred them. Of equal import, the idea of the march was kept alive as a tactic to be used later in the arsenal of the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement. It was realized in the 1963 March, also directed by Randolph and Bayard Rustin, his protégé in both campaigns.
What it proved: The most powerful human force isn’t a mass gathering at all, but an idea.
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