text: Several hundred officers, many of them combat veterans of World War I, first gathered with the General of the Armies, John J. "Blackjack" Pershing, at the Willard Hotel on October 2, 1922, and formally established the Reserve Officers Association (ROA) as an organization.
  The first recorded meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research was convened at the Willard on May 7, 1907.
  In 1935 the hotel was used as a place of confinement for William P. MacCracken Jr., Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Aeronautics, after he was convicted of contempt of Congress in the Air Mail scandal. According to The Washington Post, "Chesley Jurney, the Senate sargeant at arms, had no place to hold MacCracken who, after being sentenced, showed up at Jurney's house and stayed the night. The next day he was confined to a room at the Willard Hotel."
  During World War II the British government rented several of the Willard's floors for its supply organization. Jean Monnet had his office there. In 1997 a memorial plaque was erected near the hotel's entrance to commemorate this episode.
  Martin Luther King Jr., wrote his famous "I Have a Dream" speech in his hotel room at the Willard in 1963, in the days leading up to his August 28 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.