Hello, I'm Dana Taylor for USA Today with a special edition of Five Things.

This month marks the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington for jobs and freedom.

It was a watershed event in the struggle for civil rights in America.

The day-long gathering culminated in one of the most monumental speeches in American history.

I understand the March on Washington, you have to understand the year 1963 and the seminal

event in the year 1963, of course the civil rights movement was Birmingham, was Birmingham,

Alabama.

That's Dr. Clarence Jones, Dr. Martin Luther King's personal attorney and one of his trusted

advisors.

Dr. King assembled his closest supporters and he brought up his staff from Atlanta and

Alabama to meet at the Department of Harryborough-Phoney in New York to announce that their

plan next campaign was to desegregate Birmingham, Alabama.

I remember Fidget Shettlesworth, the local leader in Birmingham, publicly directing his

remarks at me.

He says, now Clarence, this is, I know you come down and work with us and you visit with

us and work with us, but this is not Atlanta, Georgia, this is Birmingham, otherwise known

as Birmingham because there were more unsolved dynamite bombings in Birmingham and the other

place in the South and he was warning us of how dangerous the place was.

The campaign to desegregate the American South sought to dismantle the laws and ordinances

that separated and discriminated against African-Americans and disenfranchised them from voting.

Segregation was enforced by racist local and state governments and police departments

rife with active members of the Ku Klux Klan.

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