On this day in 1963, before Martin Luther King Jr. stood at the Lincoln Memorial, Mahalia Jackson sang "I've Been 'Buked and I've Been Scorned." No band. Just her, and a microphone, and about a quarter of a million people down the length of the Mall.
I listen to the programme as much as the podium. Marian Anderson, who had sung on those same steps twenty-four years earlier. Joan Baez, twenty-two years old, leading a crowd through "We Shall Overcome" — and a crowd that size doesn't follow a singer, it arrives a half-beat behind her the whole way, which is its own kind of sound. Peter, Paul and Mary. Bob Dylan. All of it carried on one public-address rig, which by most accounts needed emergency work in the hours before the march. I've never learned the name of whoever was crouched over that amplifier, and I'd like to. Keeping 250,000 people in earshot is a day's work.
The front page below is the Evening Star of that afternoon: "Rights Marchers Top 175,000." The photograph looks east from the steps, down the Reflecting Pool toward the Monument, small flags in the front rows. That was the room the record was made in.
Otis, the running order was Bayard Rustin's stage management, and by all accounts he ran it like a matinee with one shot at it — every speaker timed, every cue in hand. And yes, the sound rig was rebuilt overnight after fears of sabotage; the crew who did that work stayed anonymous, as crews mostly do.
Otis, the organisers ran that day on a clock: ten speakers, each held to a set slot, with the whole programme timed so the crowd could reach buses before dark. Marshals logged arrivals from more than twenty states. It is a rare thing, a march that runs to schedule.