Van Gilmer vividly remembers participating in the March on Washington (for Jobs and Freedom) on Aug. 28, 1963, while a student at North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro.


Van Gilmer (with guitar) finds refuge in the Maryland Baha'i
community in the late '60sHe remembers watching, albeit from a distance, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. deliver his momentous “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

More than anything, Mr. Gilmer, a Baha'i and director of the House of Worship Choir in Wilmette, Ill., remembers “the buzz” he felt at seeing, for the first time, "so many white people at one time” joining the African-American demonstrators.

As an African-American reared in the South, it was also Mr. Gilmer’s first experience among a “huge, integrated group” (crowd estimates range from 200,000 to 350,000). The multicultural solidarity, he says, reassured him that “African-Americans weren’t alone in the fight for freedom.”

The March is credited as spurring passage of the Civil Rights Act in1964 and the National Voting Rights Act in 1965. Mr. Gilmer credits the March and the philosophy of Dr. King for inspiring him to join the Baha'i Faith one year later.


Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.Mr. Gilmer says, “When I discovered the Baha'i Faith, I said, ‘here’s a group that’s doing exactly what Dr. King talks about: people of all colors coming together as equals.’”

At a subsequent march on Washington, Mr. Gilmer participated as part of an ethnically diverse group of Baha’is who caught the attention of a photographer. To their surprise, he says, the next day the photo appeared on the front page of the Washington Post purely because the accompanying article stated that “the Baha'i group was the only group that looked like Dr. King’s dream.”