Patricia Worthy
Patricia Worthy was a college student just looking for a summer job when she got hired as the receptionist at the March on Washington planning office.
“I don’t think I had a title,” Worthy recalled. “I answered the phones.”
She had 10 phone lines to answer, and they rang from the time she walked in until she left for the day.
“I recall one day I’ll never forget, I heard someone say, ‘Where is this young lady who handles the phone?’ And finally I looked up, and there he was — Dr. King — and he said, ‘I want to meet this young lady. She has put me on the hold twice, and hung up on me once, and I want to know who she is.’ “
Worthy said she was “so embarrassed,” but then the civil rights icon gave her a hug.
By the day of the march, she was so tired, she dozed off and accidentally slept through the historic march and the “I Have a Dream” speech.
After a career practicing law — including a case involving the government’s wiretapping of King — Worthy has been a law professor at Howard University since 2004.
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