Thousands are expected to gather at the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28 for “March on Washington 2026: Defend the Vote,” a rally organized by Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network and the family of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to mark the 63rd anniversary of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, according to the march’s organizers.
The original March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, held Aug. 28, 1963, drew an estimated 250,000 people to the National Mall and is regarded as one of the defining moments of the civil rights movement, according to the National Park Service.
This year’s march comes weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court’s April 29 decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which narrowed the reach of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, according to legal analysis published by SCOTUSblog. Sharpton called the ruling “a bullet in the heart” of the voting rights movement and said the march is meant to signal that what he described as efforts to weaken ballot access “will not go unanswered,” he said in a statement….