1.75” depicting the U.S. Capitol with text reading “Prayer Pilgrimage For Freedom/Washington, D.C./May 17, 1957.” Button has yellowish tone due to the nature of the celluloid covering and it has a 1/16” brown speck trapped under the celluloid to the right of the illustration. Curl has name of maker Emress and back has union bug stamp. This demonstration was planned for the third anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision Brown vs. Board of Education which declared segregation in public schools illegal. The march was organized by A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin. It was supported by the NAACP and the recently founded Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. influenced planners not to embarrass the administration and thus the event was organized as a prayer commemoration. The 3 hour demonstration took place in front of The Lincoln Memorial. Mahalia Jackson and Harry Belefonte participated. Paul Robeson and his wife attended but were largely ignored. Speakers included Roy Wilkins, Mordecai Johnson and Martin Luther King was the final speaker who for the first time addressed a national audience. His speech set the agenda for voting rights as an important part of the civil rights crusade. There were about 25,000 demonstrators and at the time it was the largest organized demonstration for civil rights. King’s remarks are known as the “Give Us The Ballot” speech and its key section uses this demand as an anaphora followed by the different changes voting rights will bring about for African Americans; for example, “Give Us The Ballot And We Will No Longer Plead To The Federal Government For Passage Of An Anti-Lynching Law…” With this speech, James L. Hicks, publisher of the Amsterdam News declared King as the “No. 1 Leader Of 16 Million Negroes.” See 2 following related items.