It’s been 50 years since Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, D.C. Former New Jersey Assemblyman William Payne was on hand for that historic moment and he sat down with NJ Today Managing Editor Mike Schneider to discuss his memories of the event and what he believes will help eradicate racism in the country.
Payne said it doesn’t seem like it’s been 50 years since King’s famous speech. He recalled that when he arrived at the Lincoln Memorial that morning, some Newark police officers who were volunteering as marshals spotted him in the crowd and escorted him to the stage where King stood. “I was very fortunate to be able to be in a position to be able to look out at the quarter of a million people that day and be among the luminaries that were there,” he said.
According to Payne, King was giving a speech, but didn’t deliver his famous lines until Mahalia Jackson leaned over and told him to tell the crowd about the dream. Payne said King had delivered a speech similar to the “I Have a Dream” speech in Detroit and other places not long before the March on Washington. “Some of his staff members, as you know, said, ‘Oh we don’t want to hear that again.’ But I think when Mahalia Jackson said that, it kind of sparked something in him,” Payne said. “He went to another plane. And that was really the thing that really sparked all of us.”
Payne said he knew after that day in Washington, D.C. that he had witnessed history. He was active in the NAACP as a teenager and became the national chairman of the youth and college chapters where he was able to meet many involved in the civil rights movement.
A Nobel Peace Prize winner inspired Payne to get involved. “As a child I grew up in the city of Newark and when I grew up it was second class citizenship and the conditions were negative towards black people. But I read one day about a man called Ralph Bunche who had won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950. He was a black man like me. I said at that time that if a … colored man … could rise to the heights that he could, then so could I,” he said. “That was my epiphany. That’s when I became involved — deeply involved — in trying to make things change.”
Payne said King’s words lifted up those in attendance and made them feel like they could do anything and the country would change. “We’re still trying to get there,” he said.
According to Payne, racism still exists just below the surface in the United States and that whites and blacks haven’t been able to work together like they did during the March on Washington. He attributes the change to not having an obvious goal.
“At that time we knew what we were fighting. We knew that there were laws that said blacks cannot go here and that sort of thing. So we had a target. We knew that we had to fight to take those visible signs down. Now it’s more subtle,” Payne said. “The racism is deeper. We can’t seem to focus the young people on bringing about these changes.”
Changing laws doesn’t change people’s attitudes and Payne believes educating the nation’s young people will do a lot to help fix the problem, which he said isn’t a black or white problem, but an issue for everyone.
“The ignorance of each other’s backgrounds, etc. is really at the base of the problem. So education will resolve this, I believe. That’s why the Amistad legislation, which I introduced, calls for the incorporation and the infusion of the contributions that African-Americans and other minorities have made to make this country what it is. It’s not taught. When it is taught, then African-American kids have a sense of pride, white kids have a sense of, ‘Oh we didn’t do it all by ourselves’ and they’re all Americans,” Payne explained. “I am fighting for the last 12 years to try to see to it that the state of New Jersey will in fact enforce the law to see that African-American history is part of the social studies curriculum for all students of the state of New Jersey and the country for that matter. And I think that’s the solution to the problem.”