At 16, Making A Trek To Make The '63 March On Washington
Lawrence Cumberbatch was only 16 when he trekked, on foot, from New York City to Washington, D.C., to join the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Lawrence, now 66, was the youngest person on the march with the Brooklyn branch of the Congress of Racial Equality.
His parents thought two weeks on the open road would be too dangerous for a teenager and made their best effort to dissuade him, Lawrence tells his son, Simeon, 39, at StoryCorps in New York.
"There's always someone in most families that everybody looks to as the authority. And in my case it was my mother's brother, Lloyd," Lawrence says. "So they did the usual, 'Go and see Uncle Lloyd. He wants to talk to you.' They were so sure [that] 'Well, he'll fix this,' " he says, laughing.
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