Not only does today mark the 50th anniversary of The March on Washington, it also signifies a special day in special events history.
Event coordinator and activist, Baynard Rustin, organized the event where Martin Luther King Jr. made his infamous “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963. With only two months of planning, Rustin and his volunteers coordinated the travel and accommodations of a quarter of million participants.
The idea of setting thousands of feet of rental barricade, rental staging, and rental audio and sound equipment along with high racial tensions, summer heat, and more than 200,000 people descending on a high security location, would make even the most experienced event professional a little anxious!
Volunteers assembled 80,000 boxed lunches, arranged more than 2,200 chartered buses, 40 special trains, 22 first-aid stations, eight 2,500 gallon water-storage tank trucks and 21 portable water fountains, demonstrating the strength of volunteers.
And this all happened before the days of computers, internet, or cell phones…
To read more about the event planning that made The March on Washington possible, click here.