When Audrey Plummer, who was then 18, told her mother that she intended to go to the March on Washington on Aug. 28, 1963, her mom had misgivings.
“I’ll never forget that my mom didn’t want me to go. I was exercising the fact that I just turned 18 and (said), ‘I’m going,’” she said, remembering how her mother was worried about her venturing forth into a crowd of people. Their family lived near Union Station in the nation’s capital. The year before, Plummer had graduated from Eastern High School, and then she got a job working as an information operator for the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company.
Sixty years after the march, Audrey Plummer Mayo who is African American, reflected on her experiences that day. She is now 78 and is a longtime member of St. Thomas More Parish in Washington, D.C., and she lives with her son and his family in Waldorf, Maryland.
“I walked down there (to the march). I went by myself,” she remembered. “Once I got there, I was adopted for the day by this white family. They saw I was by myself. They had food and drinks.”
But she was so far away from the Lincoln Memorial that she didn’t really get to hear Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech until she heard it replayed afterward.
“What we focused on that day was mostly the camaraderie,” Mayo said. “People were having such a good time. They were embracing everyone.”
She added, “Thinking back 60-some years, I just thought this was the first opportunity I had to show my support for civil rights… It was a great opportunity for me, instead of just sitting back and reaping the benefits, to fight for the benefits.”
Her father, George Arthur Plummer, worked as a shoe repairman. He and his wife Thelma Sims Plummer, who is now 101, raised Audrey and her two sisters and three brothers.
After initially working for the telephone company, Audrey Plummer was hired by the State Department. “I didn’t realize until I had worked for the U.S. Department of State for years that I was brought in to integrate some of the offices,” she said.
Audrey Plummer had been baptized at Holy Redeemer Church in Washington, and in 1967 her wedding to Charles Mayo was celebrated there. Charles Mayo, who worked as an elementary school teacher, died in 2018 after they had been married for 40 years. They have two sons and seven grandchildren.
In her nearly 40-year career with the State Department, Audrey Plummer Mayo worked mainly in security and human resources, serving the agency domestically and overseas, including in posts at Cameroon and other African nations, and she also worked in Europe and Mexico.
Reflecting on the message of the March on Washington, Mayo said, “It really didn’t hit me until I got in my 30s and had kids, and also (when I was) moving up in positions in the workforce.”
She said that message hit home especially in her professional experience, when she saw that “you have to fight for positions and recognitions in the workforce and prove yourself above and beyond what other workers are doing.”
And she also had come to know racism and segregation were not only realities in the South. Around 1964 when she was riding a Trailways bus to Michigan, on a stop in Toledo Ohio she saw a sign in a restaurant stating that it had the right to refuse service to some individuals. After the waitress didn’t serve her, she slid off the chair and found something to eat in a vending machine.
For more than 50 years, in between her service in other countries and her living for awhile in Delaware, Mayo has been a parishioner at St. Thomas More, serving as an Extraordinary Minister of the Eucharist there and also helping with a committee that does outreach like collecting backpacks for children at the beginning of the new school year.
Reflecting on the legacy of the March on Washington and what it means to her today, Mayo said, “I can’t believe it’s been 60 years. I’m thankful that I have come as far as I have,” but she added, “It’s really sad to think that some of the things we were fighting for 60 years ago, we’re still fighting for today.”
She noted how, “When you look at the number of incarcerated people, the scale is still tilted toward Blacks being incarcerated.”
Mayo said it is also sad that her grandsons have to be taught about being careful if they are ever stopped by police, and she also worries about them being impacted by violence in the community.
In addition to being active at her parish, Mayo also participates in the Waldorf branch of the NAACP and its work for racial justice and equality. That involvement, she said, is motivated by her determination “to change things, so my grandkids don’t have to go through what I’ve gone through or what the people before me have gone through.”
Dr. King’s message still resonates with her, as she has hopes, and concerns, about the future.
“I will never give up the dream. The dream is still there, it’s embedded in me,” Mayo said. Then with concern in her voice, she added, “I don’t know about the new generation. Have we taken the dream from them?”
