"Here we are, at the 50th, with the responsibility of the shoulders we stand on -- to make sure that what we are doing with the 50th anniversary continues that dream."
-Melanie Campbell, President and CEO, National Coalition on Black Civic Participation
As the nation commemorates the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, one project has taken on the task of capturing the stories of the march and the larger civil rights movement.
"His Dream, Our Stories" is a collection of interviews with people who fought for justice and equality in 1963 -- as well as before the March on Washington, and since.
The project interviewed more than 80 people, and is gradually posting videos of the interviews on its website. The project was developed by Comcast NBC Universal, the parent company of NBC4.
There's also an eBook that will be released Aug. 26, and Comcast made some of the interviews available to subscribers via its On Demand service.
Some of those interviewed -- Ambassador Andrew Young, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Mamie Chalmers, and Rep. John Lewis, for example -- are among the boldfaced names of the civil rights movement. Others are people who may not be as well known, but were profoundly affected by the march.
Many of the participants are from D.C. Among them is Melanie Campbell, president and CEO of the D.C.-based National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, who spoke not only about her own introduction to the civil rights movement -- while studying in Atlanta, and continuing after she came to D.C. -- but also about the responsibility that she feels to continue the movement.
"When I got involved ... it was a servant-leadership model," Campbell said. "And you were a leader as long as you were serving the community.
"It's all about opportunity," she said. "Dr. King was about opportunity and justice for all. What the issues of the day were -- jobs and justice -- are still here."
Watch all the videos at the His Dream, Our Stories website.
And, if you have your own recollection of the March on Washington -- whether you were there or were affected by it -- you can submit your own story to the project as well.
