Montco's first African American Episcopal priest recounts her time at March on Washington
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- As we continue to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington for jobs and freedom, CBS News Philadelphia celebrates a Montgomery County resident who marched in Washington D.C. on that historical day.
It was August 28, 1973, and all eyes were on the nation's capital.
"I was there. I was there. I was 11," Joanne Bradley Jones said.
Reverend Joanne Bradley Jones, like many, will never forget this historic day.
"I remember the lead up in the press about it, the reports on the number of busses," she said.
Crowds of people had come in from all over the country as far as California.
Jones, as a child, attended the March on Washington with her parents who were both educators.
She remembers the long walk to the Lincoln Memorial.
"All along Constitution Avenue on both sides, there were a lot of spectators looking on. And since most of them were White, this really upset me, and I started to cry," Jones said.
This wasn't the first time Jones felt uneasy.
Two years earlier, her parents drove from Baltimore to the south for a conference where she faced segregation.
"We pull into an Esso station in Jackson, Mississippi, and the gas station attendant came out, and I could see that he had a gun on his hip," Jones recalled. "And I'd never seen that before."
"And I said to my mother, 'Mommy that man has a gun. Will he shoot me?'" Jones said. "And my mother said, immediately, very calmly, 'If you don't behave, he will.'"
From that day forward, Jones understood why hundreds of thousands of people from all walks of life were marching, singing hymns, holding signs to put an end to racism and Jim Crow America.
"I think by then I had picked up enough in the press, and my own reading and my understanding that I knew what it was about," Jones said.
Freedom and equality are the essence of Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream.
"I think seeing on television when Martin Luther King and others were wakened, all those folks who were at the march joined President Johnson and the White House when he finally signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964," Jones said.
Sixty years later, Jones marvels at seeing King's footprint throughout Philadelphia in many beautiful murals.
From the little girl marching along Constitution Avenue to now becoming the first African American Episcopal priest in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, Jones takes pride in being a changemaker and part of King's dream.
"It was important. It meant something. We got to this goal. We just have to keep on pressing," Jones said.
