Girl in iconic March on Washington photo finally identified
DETROIT – When Americans celebrate black history, especially when it has anything to do with the March on Washington, it’s often a girl’s face they see – in textbooks, on calendars, on brochures.
The photo of this little girl was taken by a freelance photographer working for the U.S. government. The original is stored in the National Archives, where for decades its caption identified the girl simply as a “young child in March on Washington.”
But the nameless child is anonymous no more. Thanks to her own research and the work of staff at the National Archives, an identifying notation was added to the file.
That girl, who was 12 then, is 60-year-old Edith Lee-Payne of Detroit, a community activist who in her own way continues to try to turn the dream that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of into a reality.
“It’s very humbling and very overwhelming still to know that my face is associated with the historic March on Washington and with Dr. King, and that it has touched so many people,” said Lee-Payne.
Currently, her photo is on a National Park Service brochure given to visitors to the King Memorial in Washington, D.C.
As an adult, Lee-Payne’s face and voice are well-known in the halls and meeting rooms of city government where she often speaks on behalf of Detroiters, advocating for stronger safety measures, better public transportation and other improvements in the city.
She’s also one of 28 plaintiffs in a suit filed last year urging that Michigan’s emergency manager law be declared unconstitutional on the grounds that it nullifies the votes of local people.
Lee-Payne, who spent most of her working life as an independent real estate sales woman, suspects that desire to speak up about perceived wrongs was laid as a child when her mother took her to civil rights marches. The first one she remembers attending is the Freedom March in June 1963 in Detroit when King previewed what would become his most famous speech.
She remembers King imploring those in attendance to meet him in Washington that August. Her mother decided they would do so. Lee-Payne remembers riding a Greyhound bus from Detroit to D.C. and being able to get near the front of the crowd because one of her aunts was a Red Cross volunteer trained to assist people on that sweltering hot day.
Photographer Rowland Scherman, 74, then a 26-year-old freelancer working for the now-defunct United States Information Agency, remembers the day and the anonymous “young child in March on Washington” well. Scherman, now based in Cape Cod, Mass., has taken photos all over the world, including another popular photo that is the cover of Bob Dylan’s “Greatest Hits” album.
Lee-Payne visited the National Archives last October to see the original photos; three in all, including two with her mom, Dorothy Lee, who died in 1993.
It’s rare that researchers at the archives meet the unknown people in the photographs, said Rutha Beamon, the archivist who showed Lee-Payne the photos. The photo subjects will remain anonymous because official documents cannot be altered, Beamon said.
But Lee-Payne’s name and information about her was typed onto a document and added to the box containing the photos.
“It’s very rare that that happens,” Beamon said of additions to the vault to identify anonymous people. “I’ve been here 23, almost 24 years, and I know of it being done maybe four times.”