Stanford professor Clayborne Carson reflects on March on Washington

BERKELEY -- Clayborne Carson was 19 when he ignored warnings about the dangers and propensity for violence before hitching a ride with the Indianapolis NAACP to attend the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom 50 years ago this month.

The threats didn't deter him from becoming a part of the largest political rally for civil rights in U.S. history and witnessing Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous "I have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

"I decided that I was going to go, and I wasn't going to tell my parents," Carson said. "They found out later."

Two decades later, Carson would receive an unexpected phone call from Coretta Scott King asking him to serve as the editor of the King's Papers project....