A huge, militant crowd of more than 100,000 people, the overwhelming majority Black, rallied at the Washington Monument to honor the slain civil rights leader. Thousands more demonstrated in cities throughout the country.

Not since the 1963 march on Washington, led by King, has there been such a national outpouring of the Black community.

Braving the cold, singing and chanting despite slush and snow, tens of thousands of demonstrators marched from the Capitol grounds to the rally site.

The mood was festive but determined. Determined that civil rights gains, won by the movement King helped lead, will not be taken away by Reagan or by racist terrorists like the Ku Klux Klan.  
 
January 30, 1956
NEW YORK, Jan. 25—After prolonged delay, plans appear to be getting under way to launch the long-heralded Civil Rights Mobilization in Washington, D.C. In Grand Rapids a conference Jan. 20-22 of Michigan locals of the United Auto Workers called for mass labor participation in the mobilization which will be sponsored by the AFL-CIO, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and 49 other national organizations.

The Washington mobilization was originally pointed to by CIO President Walter Reuther last October. After that nothing but months of silence came from top labor and Negro circles about the mobilization. Speculation was that sections of the leadership feared a mobilization might get out of hand and became a mass March on Washington, which would greatly embarrass or possibly force a break between the labor and Negro voters and the Northern Democratic leaders who have taken a pledge not to get tough with the Southern wing of their party.  
 
January 15, 1931
The American working-class faces the year 1931 with heavy losses behind it and with long, hard and militant struggles in front of it, if it is to resist successfully the savage onslaught against it in the future. In one of the country’s foremost bourgeois economic reviews, we read:

“We estimate that the current rate of annual income of all workers, exclusive of those in agriculture and Federal employ, is approximately 35 billion dollars, as compared with a peak rate in 1929 of about 44.6 billion. This represents a decline of 9.6 billion, or 21.5 per cent.”

With the fall in the purchasing power of the masses, the economic crisis continues to deepen. According to the bourgeois statisticians, business has dropped about 30 percent “below normal.” Despite all of Hoover’s optimism, despite the promise of the politicians and the mockery of the “buy now” campaigns, sales have descended to new lows.  
 
 
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