The first March on Washington was proposed in 1941 by A. Philip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. During the Depression, African Americans did not benefit equally from New Deal programs. As the war effort accelerated and industry expanded, racial discrimination continued, as white employers denied black workers access to jobs in war industries. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt failed to act to remedy this situation, Randolph called for 50,000 African Americans to descend on the Capitol in Washington, D.C., to protest. Roosevelt turned to moderate civil rights leaders, like NAACP Executive Director Walter White, for aid in quelling the storm, but Randolph refused to back down. With the help of African-American newspapers like the Baltimore Afro-American, the Chicago Defender, the Pittsburgh Courier, and the New York Amsterdam News, which publicized the event, the estimated size of the proposed March on Washington...