16
1993.35.292 Robert Shelton Collection, Experience music Project permanent collection
Broadside, magazine, November 1962
1993.35.291 Robert Shelton Collection, Experience music Project permanent collection
March on Washington
On August 28, 1963, 250,000 people gathered in Washington, DC, to participate in a march for
jobs and racial equality. It ended at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, where several artists,
including Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Mahalia Jackson performed. Several others gave speeches,
culminating with Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, button, Washington, DC, August 28, 1963
L2004.450.1 Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History, Behring Center
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, backstage pass, August 28, 1963
L2004.373.1 On loan from the collection of the National Civil Rights Museum, Memphis, TN
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom map, Washington D.C., August 28, 1963
L2004.450.3 Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History, Behring Center
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, program, August 28, 1963
L2004.450.3 Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History, Behring Center
Section 9: On the Road to the Counterculture
On the Road Again
In 1964 the ever-restless Bob Dylan turned away from topical songwriting and began writing
more introspective songs that distanced him from his fellow folk music lovers.
Early in the year, Dylan and three friends set out on a cross-country road trip in the spirit of Jack
Kerouac’s novel, On the Road. Dylan found the writer Carl Sandburg in North Carolina, reveled at
Mardi Gras in New Orleans, heard the Beatles on the radio, and landed in San Francisco, where
the Beat poets christened him as a peer. Later in the year, Dylan visited Greece, where he wrote
many of the songs on his fourth album, Another Side of Bob Dylan. The album’s new, more
idiosyncratic (and rocking) songs confused and upset many people in the folk community, who
feared they were losing their finest topical songwriter.
John Sebastian, Paul Rothchild, and Bob Dylan, Massachusetts, April 26, 1964
P2004.429.2 © John Byrne Cooke
The Beatles
In Feburary 1964, during a cross-country road trip to perform on the West Coast, Bob Dylan first
heard The Beatles’ single “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” He was “knocked out” by their harmonies
and the way they’d reinvented rock ‘n’ roll, and the song helped rejuvenate his love for the genre.
Bob Dylan in performance at Berkeley Community Theater, poster, February 22, 1964
L2004.419.12 From the collection of Paul Wultz
“I Want To Hold Your Hand / I Saw Her Standing There,” single, Capitol Records, 1964
1997.59.6a Experience Music Project permanent collection
Pull My Daisy, short film directed by Robert Frank, and featuring Larry Rivers, Jack Kerouac,
David Armstrong, and Allen Ginsberg, 1959
Photograph: John Cohen
L2004.403.12 Courtesy of John Cohen