(File Photo: Source for Photo: Martin Luther King Jr., head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, speaks to thousands during his “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Aug. 28, 1963, in Washington. (AP Photo/File)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Beaver Falls, PA) Yesterday was the 62nd anniversary of the “March on Washington for Jobs for Freedom,” held in Washington, D.C. on August 28th, 1963, and a former resident of Beaver Falls attended this event. Along with attending that event, the then teenage Reverend Raphael Cox was selected by the Reverend Calvin C. Brown of Tabernacle Baptist Church in Beaver Falls, to be an attendee as a teenage representative of the March with the Pittsburgh Delegation in the late summer of 1963. Cox, who is from Canton, Ohio, stated that the “I Have a Dream” speech given by the late Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, “was short, but oh so powerful” on the day of the “March on Washington for Jobs for Freedom.” The “March on Washington for Jobs for Freedom” highlighted promoting freedom by pressing the United States government to both end discrimination and segregation while also pressing the United States government to both employ and train people through a federal program on August 28th, 1963. Cox turned eighty years old on August 6th, 2025 and he also noted that he is one of the few attendees of this August 28th, 1963 event that is still alive. The impact that the “I Have a Dream” speech by the late Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. became lasting and prfound on Cox, because in 2002, he became an ordained pastor. Cox graduted from Beaver Falls High School and moved to Canton, Ohio immediately after graduating a worked as a welder for the Timken Roller Bearing Corporation for 37 years until he retired in 2002.