1963 March on Washington

To the editor:

I doubt that it's important to anyone but me that I was on the platform with the singers at the 1963 March on Washingon. I had been invited as Dave Van Ronk's manager and wife; also because I had helped organize about a dozen benefit concerts for CORE and SNCC; and, because I insisted that the old and the new left somehow had to find a way to say,"this is what we want and this is how we plan to get there...together." 

If this sounds like common sense, you must understand that the beliefs of the people who had taken part in communist, Trotskyist, democratic socialist, liberal, religious and communitarian organizations were so far apart that I remember a peace-in-Vietnam march during which two perfectly nice people who were in different sects that had split out of a larger Trotskyist party spat at one another. Both then were personlly horrified at what they had done--but both were hailed by their comrades for their bravery!!! 

Terri Thal, MPA
New City