Detroit Walk to Freedom

Walk to Freedom
Walk to Freedom
Part of the Civil Rights Movement
Date	June 23, 1963
Location	Adelaide Street, Woodward Avenue and Cobo Hall in Detroit, Michigan
Caused by	20th anniversary of the Detroit race riot of 1943; Race-based discrimination in downtown Detroit;
Resulted in	125,000 or more people participate; Martin Luther King Jr. delivered precursor speech of "I Have a Dream";

The Walk to Freedom was a mass march during the Civil Rights Movement on June 23, 1963 in Detroit, Michigan. It drew crowds of an estimated 125,000 or more and was known as "the largest civil rights demonstration in the nation's history" up to that date.

Various ministers and leaders of local and national organizations, including the mayor of Detroit, were in attendance and gave speeches. Among them was Martin Luther King Jr. who after the Walk to Freedom March gave an impassioned speech. It was a precursor to his famous "I Have a Dream" speech given weeks later in Washington, D.C. The march itself was, to King and his supporters, partly a practice run of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

Due to the greater size of the March on Washington, the Detroit Walk to Freedom has been somewhat lost to obscurity outside of local Detroit history. At the time, Dr. King called it "one of the most wonderful things that has happened in America."

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