Born a few years after the March (in 1967), Maryland Del. Keiffer Mitchell’s family has a long history as part of the civil rights movement in Baltimore. Here is an excerpt from his conversation with Fraser Smith (full audio is below).
My grandfather was the director of the NAACP Washington bureau. And so during the March—he wasn’t at the March per se; his job that he assigned himself, that he was going to do, was to monitor the situation, at least on Capitol Hill. So he was up at the Capitol during that time of the March…My grandmother had organized busses here in Baltimore to take Marchers down to the March…The night before, there were Marchers from some of the colleges from up North, like Bryn Mawr College and others coming down to Baltimore and going on their way to Washington, didn’t have a place to stay. So my grandmother opened her home up so these Marchers could spend the night making plans. What was funny was, she had some strict rules, because she four boys and you had these attractive college coeds spending the night down in Baltimore…She was up all night making sure [her] four boys weren’t mingling too long with the young college coeds who were coming down…