The historic March on Washington not only changed a national conversation about race, but also paved the way for mass demonstrations to actually affect policy, the District’s delegate to Congress said this week.

Eleanor Holmes Norton, who was 26 years old and living in D.C. during the march, told PBS NewsHour Wednesday that the 200,000-person march was “the dawning of a new era.”

“Now, that mold has set the pattern for marches that are held on every conceivable subject today,” Norton said. “It broke open the notion that mass movements couldn’t happen. We had just come out of the fifties, which were the most complacent of decades.”

That summer in 1963, Norton joined civil rights leader Bayard Rustin in D.C. to help organize the march.

“We had no precedent to follow. The officials in Washington, from the president on down, were very afraid of what they hadn’t seen before. They would have preferred that there be no March on Washington,” Norton said.

The city is gearing up for the 50th anniversary of the march this weekend, with Norton slated to participate in multiple events, including the “March for Jobs and Justice” on the Mall, which will culminate in a speech by President Barack Obama.