to test the state of desegregation
of travel facilities as well as of waiting rooms and restaurants. As the
campaign reached a climax, Attorney General Robert Kennedy became annoyed
with its intensity. Apparently, he had hoped that the direct actionists
would wait for the new Administration to take the lead in Civil Rights.
Instead, they chose to try to make the new Administration live up to the
image which it had projected. Kennedy requested a cooling-off period, but
the freedom riders would not listen. But when the freedom riders were
attacked in Montgomery, Alabama, without receiving adequate local police
protection, Kennedy sent six hundred federal marshals to escort them on
the rest of their pilgrimage.

The year 1963 was a target date for the Civil Rights Movement. It was
the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Movement adopted
the motto, "free in '63." In the spring, the S.C.L.C. spearheaded a
massive campaign in Birmingham for desegregation and fair employment.
Marches occurred almost daily. The marchers maintained their nonviolent
tactics in the face of many arrests and much intimidation. In May, when
the police resorted to the use of dogs and high-pressure water hoses, the
nation and the world were shocked, Sympathy demonstrations occurred in
dozens of cities all across the country, and expressions of indignation
resounded from all around the world. In June, the head of Mississippi's
N.A.A.C.P., Medgar Evers, was shot in the back outside his home and
killed. Scores of sympathy demonstrations again reverberated throughout
the country. Violence in the South was on the increase.

Although President Kennedy had intended to use his executive authority as
his main weapon in securing civil rights, the mounting pressure on both
sides of the conflict forced him to take more drastic action, and he
submitted a Civil Rights Bill to Congress. Opponents of the Bill were
particularly perturbed by the section which sought to guarantee the end
of discrimination in all kinds of public accommodations--stores,
restaurants, hotels, motels, etc. They claimed that this was an invasion
of the owners' property rights. It soon became clear that the Bill would
be entangled in a gigantic Congressional debate for months. Civil Rights
supporters looked for new techniques which would bring added pressure on
Congress. Again, the idea of a March on Washington was proposed, and this
time it was carried through. The demo