No Evidence of Any Effect on Congress - The historic civil rights march on Washington - massive and orderly and moving - has dramatized the wants of Negroes in America, but leaders still faced the task today of trying to turn drama into action. Speaker after speaker told the 200,000 Negro and white sympathizers massed in front of the Lincoln Memorial Wednesday that their demonstration was no more than a beginning. 'Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content,' said the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., 'will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual.' Demonstrators and their leaders made it clear that one sign of progress, in their view, would be congressional approval of President Kennedy's civil rights bill...

The civil rights marchers may not see it all, but this is a city nerved by power, lined with marble, vibrant with areas of beauty and blighted by contrasting areas of squalor. It is a city of great monuments and slums, of complex law and petty crime, of history and lethargy. To the 100,000 or more civil rights marchers expected here Wednesday, Washington will be a symbol of national power, a capital where men and women petition for redress of grievance. They will gather at the base of the soaring Washington Monument, the center of a vast complex of greenery and marble, a monument that looks east to the Capitol, north to the White House, west to the Lincoln Memorial and south to the Jefferson Memorial and the Tidal Basin rimmed with cherry trees. Then they will march a few blocks down huge avenues and across parklands to the Lincoln Memorial, a temple in the style of the Parthenon in Greece. These are the symbols of government and beauty and history that draw almost 5 million tourists to Washington each year. But Washington has other faces, too...

More than 2000 Negro and white demonstrators marched through Washington on Friday in a civil rights protest that had the air of a happy summer outing until they met Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. The confrontation with Kennedy seemed to dispel the pleasant, friendly, almost festive atmosphere that had prevailed during the hot afternoon. The demonstrators grew angry because Kennedy kept them waiting in the hot sun for about a quarter of an hour and, when he arrived, Kennedy grew annoyed as he spied some home made signs charging racial discrimination in the Justice Department. Kennedy, standing on a rostrum at the door of the Justice Building, denied this. "Any individual can come here and get a job if he is qualified," he said. At the end of his speech, there were more cheers than boos. Despite this mutual irritation, the demonstration contrasted sharply with other racial protests that have erupted through out the Nation. There was no violence...

THE BRUISED cultural feelings of Washington received a fillip of sorts during the week of April 17, when twenty-eight writers and artists from eleven countries assembled for an annual congress sponsored by the capital’s Institute of Contemporary Arts and financed by the Ford Foundation. The roster included Italian Nobel-Prize poet Salvatore Quasimodo, American poets Richard Eberhart, Stanley Kunitz and Allen Tate, England’s critic-poet Sir Herbert Read and potter Bernard Leach, French poet Yves Bonnefoy and Brazilian novelist Erico Verissimo. Keeping close to a prepared schedule, they ate, drank and partied together, delivered lectures, plunged into panel discussions, declaimed poetry and exchanged views on the theme of the congress — the status of the artist. Leach even potted. While these activities did not tear headlines from the other major events of the week (the convening of the Daughters of the American Revolution and the opening of the Washington Senators’ annual drive to soar higher than eighth place), enough occurred to make Washington cultural buffs puff out their chests and, for at least a week, forget Howard Taubman...

About 100 years ago, Lord Lyons, bewhiskered, youngish ambassador from Britain, sent home a description of the city of Washington. "A terrible place for young men," he said. "Nothing whatever in the shape of amusement for them." No one doubts the accuracy of Lord Lyons' picture. Washington was just an overgrown village then. But could the present ambassador cable the same description now? Is the nation's capital still a hub by day and a dud by night? Like most questions in this federal town, these provoke more than one answer. Arguments usually follow two contrasting lines: 1. Washington is one of the world's dreariest capitals after dark. A few hours after midnight the only one you are likely to meet on the silent, black streets is a milkman or a mugger. 2. Washington is one of the world's great cultural, cosmopolitan centers. Great music, theater, jazz, night clubs, foreign restaurants, parties. There's enough amusement here for anyone. Where does the truth lie? Well, it is true that city laws tend to drive everyone home late at night...

A potful of hot water gurgled down on us as we waited, caught in a giggling, shoving crowd, outside Washington’s Coffee ‘n Confusion Club, a beatnik haven marking its first Saturday night of business in the nation’s capital. An irate neighbor in an upstairs apartment had tossed out the hot but not boiling water. The sprinkles from above alighting on the sprinkle of beards in the crowd symbolized one of the oddest clashes in the history of this clash-ridden federal town. For several months now, the prudery of Washington has been at war with the rebellion of its youth. The war started when a 24-year-old self-styled poet, William A. Walker, decided to open his club. Following the style of shops in San Francisco’s North Beach, it would sell coffee, pastries, biscuits, cream cheese, bagels and poetry. But Walker and his wife, Ruth, a 22-year-old graduate of Vassar, erred strategically in their first attempt by failing to consult officialdom before opening. Zoning laws promptly descended upon them, and police shut down the shop. In their second attempt, the Walkers, moving gingerly, followed every step of the law. They found an abandoned cellar restaurant at 945 K Street, Northwest, rented it, decorated it, and applied for a license. And then the smug traditions of Washington, sensing that the venture might succeed, began to stir and swat at this pesky, tiny threat of non-conformity...