President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will celebrate the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington on Monday by the organizers of the 1963 rally and relatives of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. who gave his I Have a Dream speech at the Lincoln Memorial.

The Oval Office meeting will take place sixty years after President John F. Kennedy and King met at the White House on the morning of the march on August 28, 1963. All of King’s children have been invited to meet with Biden, White House officials House. said.

Biden will also speak later Monday at a reception at the White House commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a non-partisan, non-profit legal organization formed at Kennedy’s request to help advocate for racial justice .

March on Washington’s 50th birthday

Two White House officials have provided details of the Democratic president’s and vice president’s plans, on condition of anonymity, because their schedules have not been officially disclosed.

The 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom is still considered one of the largest and most consistent demonstrations of racial justice in American history.

The nonviolent protest drew as many as 250,000 people to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and provided the momentum for Congressional passage of landmark civil and voting rights legislation in the years that followed. King was murdered in April 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee

to eat

.

Black civil right leaders and a multiracial, interfaith coalition of allies will gather in Washington to mark the 60th anniversary of the first march. Biden will fly back to Washington on Saturday after a week’s vacation with his family in California’s Lake Tahoe region.

Thousands gather for the March on Washington commemorations

This year’s commemoration comes at a difficult time in US history, following the erosion of voting rights across the country and the Supreme Court’s recent elimination of affirmative action in college admissions and abortion rights, and amid of the growing threat of political violence and hatred against people of color. Jew

is peoples

and LGBTQ people.

White House officials say Biden and Harris, who is seeking re-election in 2024, are working hard to achieve King’s dream of equal opportunity for every American. Harris is the first black person to become vice president.

Biden has signed executive orders to promote racial justice and equality throughout the federal government and expand access to the right to vote. Voting rights legislation backed by Biden and Harris has stalled in a divided Congress.

Biden recently designated a national monument in honor of Emmett Till and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley. Till is the black Chicago teenager who was tortured and murdered in 1955 after being accused of whistling at a white woman in Mississippi. The assassination helped stimulate the civil rights movement.

In memory of the 1963 March on Washington

Harris has been outspoken about what she says are efforts by extremists to rewrite black history, including the Florida Board of Education’s recent approval of a revised curriculum to comply with government-signed legislation. Ron DeSantis, a Republican presidential candidate. The new standards included instruction that enslaved people benefit from skills they learned while in slavery.

The White House says black Americans are also benefiting from Biden’s economic and other policies, including low unemployment.

Officials are taking note of his numerous appointments of black women to federal courts, including Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first black woman to serve on the nation’s highest court.

They also point to nearly $7 billion in aid to the national network of historically black colleges and universities and its efforts to cancel billions of dollars in student debt.