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For two young Berkeley documentarians, one of modern history’s most dramatic moments took on a new and unexpected reality when they set about collecting first-hand accounts of that day, four decades past, when Martin Luther King Jr. told the world he had a dream. 

“In school you just learn one story,” said Leslie Lewis, a 2002 Berkeley High graduate who filmed the interviews. “Everyone had a different perspective. The pieces didn’t all fit together. There were 250,000 stories that day.” 

To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the Martin Luther King Jr. Freedom Center of Oakland will present footage from interviews the pair videotaped last month of Bay Area residents who attended the rally where Dr. King gave his famous speech. 

For the young men, the project breathed new life into a tired tale. 

The King Center didn’t set out to make the film when planning this year’s tribute, initially figuring on a simple reception for the marchers. But when a board member told Center Executive Director Claire Greensfelder that she knew someone who had attended the March, Greensfelder decided it might be nice to get some quotes. 

She sent Daveed Diggs, who had taught writing and poetry workshops for the center, to do a couple of interviews. The talks went so well they decided to go ahead with the film, using a technology grant from SBC Pacific Bell and the filmmaking skills of Diggs’ BHS classmate Lewis, who had already composed several short films. 

Starting in early July, the pair, along with other King Center staff, sought out freedom march alumni using every tactic imaginable—they blanketed senior centers, churches and book stores with fliers, spoke at public events, and even posted an ad on craigslist. 

Their search netted a vibrant cross-section of 13 participants: whites and blacks, local natives and more recent transplants, political activists and civil rights novices. 

“This is a view of the march from a uniquely Bay Area perspective,” said Diggs, who conducted the interviews along with Oakland writer Tor Erickson. “We couldn’t get this type of diversity from any other place.” 

The interviews offered marked contrasts with the official school-taught history of the march. Several participants said they didn’t bother to stick around for the King speech, and many said they were more interested in the speech of John Lewis, then the head of the Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee. 

Others, mostly those active in the movement, said they hesitated to attend because the march seemed too mainstream. One marcher said he almost skipped out when he heard that Washington, D.C., workers were given the day off because he didn’t want to go to a protest endorsed by the mayor. 

“I was totally unconnected to the personal side of [the march],” Diggs said. “A lot of people thought they were wussing out by going to it.” 

No matter the background, every participant understood the march’s significance. “People were shocked at the amount of faces that showed up, said Diggs. “They knew the government would have to take notice of it.” 

For the documentarians, their summer project has left a lasting imprint. 

Diggs said that before he talked to the freedom marchers, he understood the march was important, but he had no notion of just how much and why. “Having seen all the documentaries and from what I was taught, I thought, yeah march on Washington…big deal. Now that I know the way the march has colored their lives, I’m much more interested in it.” 

Lewis agreed. “I can put myself in the middle of that march now,” he said. “It was interesting to hear someone talk about it in a real way. It brought it back down to earth.” 

The footage will be cut down to 35 minutes for the King event, but Lewis hopes to turn it into a full-length documentary. 

Diggs, a sophomore theater student at Brown, hopes to collect more oral histories, but he plans to include them in a performance piece rather than a film. 

The 40th Anniversary celebration of the freedom march will be held on Aug. 28 from 7:30 to 9 p.m. at the Lakeshore Avenue Baptist church in Oakland. The event also features a performance by the St. Benedict’s Gospel choir and the recitation of Dr. King’s writings on peace by Bay Area-native, Danny Glover. 

Berkeley will mark the anniversary with a 7 p.m. ceremony at Civic Center Park reaffirming the 1963 Civil Rights Pledge. Organized byy Darryl Moore, the program will feature march attendee Carole Kennerly, the first African American woman elected to the city council, NAACP national board member Denisha DeLane, Alex Papian of the Berkkeley NAACP branch, and Sean Dugar of the NAACOP Youth Branch, who also conceived the event. 

“Attending the march in 1963 wqas inspirational and empowering,” Kennerly said. We must never forget what we accomplished, even as we must acknowledge how far we have to go.” 

Copies of the Civil Rights Pledge will be offered in several languages, including Chinese, Hebrew, Japanese, Spanish, Tagalog and Vietnamese.