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What's good, y'all? You're listening to Code Switch. I'm Gene Thumbie.

So, way back in the very early days of Code Switch in 2013, way before we had a podcast even,

some of my colleagues on the team brand this Twitter feed back when, you know, when it was still called Twitter.

That account was named at today in 1963.

And the idea behind it was really simple.

Every day, the account would tweet out news items from newspapers from that same

corresponding day, but 50 years earlier in 1963. And 63 was a really eventful year for the

civil rights movement in the United States. Megger Evers, the civil rights organizer, was gunned down

outside of his home in Mississippi by a member of the clan. 22 black people, including

four school age girls, were killed when white opponents to desegregation hit a bomb under the steps of their church in Birmingham, Alabama.

And of course, 1963 also saw what has since become the most famous moment of the civil rights movement, the March on Washington.

And specifically, Martin Luther King's now iconic speech.

So just to go back to that 1963 Twitter feed, we ran away back then, one of the things that might be surprising to people today was how shook people were

about this whole thing back then and this idea of this huge throng of black folks descending

on D.C. There was all this worry about violence breaking out, that the whole thing would

devolve into rioting, all within view of the White House lawn. And so in the lead up to the

march, Washington, D.C., police and federal authorities, they were all on high alert. There was even a ban

on alcohol sales in D.C. the day of the march. And then the march came, and hundreds of

thousands of people who had come to the Capitol to demand full equality under the law,

they left peacefully.

There were just four arrests, including one of a Nazi counter-prostester.

...