At March on Washington's 60th anniversary, leaders seek energy of original movement for civil rights

Sixty years ago, Andrew Young and his staff had just emerged from an exhausting campaign against racial segregation in Birmingham, Alabama.

- Aaron Morrison

But they didn't feel no ways tired, as the Black spiritual says. The foot soldiers were on a "freedom high," Young recalls.

"They wanted to keep on marching; they wanted to march from Birmingham to Washington," he said.

And march they did--in the nation's capital. Just four months later, they massed for what is still considered one of the greatest and most consequential racial justice demonstrations in US history.

The nonviolent protest, which attracted as many as 250,000 to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, helped till the ground for passage of federal civil rights and voting rights legislation in the next few years.

But in the decades that followed, the rights gains feeding the freedom high felt by Young and others came under increasing threat. A close adviser to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Young went on to become a congressman, a UN ambassador, and Atlanta's mayor. He sees clear progress from the time when Black Americans largely had no guarantee of equal rights under the law. But he hasn't ignored the setbacks.

"We take two steps forward, and they make us take one step back," Young told The Associated Press in an interview at the offices of his Atlanta-based foundation.

"It's a slow process that depends on the politics of the nation."

At 91 years old, an undeterred Young will gather again with Black civil rights leaders and a multiracial, interfaith coalition of allies on Saturday to mark 60 years since the first March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, an event most widely remembered for King's "I Have A Dream" speech.