Rhetorical Analysis of Clarence Jones' Introduction to 'Behind the Dream'

A quarter of a million people, human beings who generally had spent their lives treated as something less, stood shoulder to shoulder across that vast lawn, their hearts beating as one. Hope on the line. When hope was an increasingly scarce resource.

There is no dearth of prose describing the mass of humanity that made its way to the feet of the Great Emancipator that day; no metaphor that has slipped through the cracks waiting to be discovered, dusted off, and injected into the discourse a half century on. The March on Washington has been compared to a tsunami, a shockwave, a wall, a living monument, a human mosaic, an outright miracle.

Still, I can say to those who know the event only as a steely black-and-white television image, it’s a shame that the colors of that day—the blue sky, the vibrant green life, the golden sun everywhere—are not part of our national memory.

If taken together, the images and recordings of Martin make up that 'movie' of the 1963 March on Washington in our collective consciousness, and if it’s true, as people often say, that 'If you loved the movie, you’ve got to read the book,' Behind the Dream is that book.