Silent Parade | |
---|---|
Part of the reaction to the East St. Louis riots and anti-lynching movement | |
Date | July 28, 1917 |
Location | 40°45′47″N73°58′26″W / 40.76306°N 73.97389°W |
Caused by | Black people deaths during the East St. Louis riots |
Goals | To protest murders, lynchings, and other anti-black violence; to promote anti-lynching legislation, and promote black causes |
Methods | Parade/public demonstration |
Resulted in | Woodrow Wilson not implementing anti-lynching legislation |
The Negro Silent Protest Parade, [1] commonly known as the Silent Parade, was a silent march of about 10,000 African Americans along Fifth Avenue starting at 57th Street in New York City on July 28, 1917. The event was organized by the NAACP, church, and community leaders to protest violence directed towards African Americans, such as recent lynchings in Waco and Memphis. The parade was precipitated by the East St. Louis riots in May and July 1917 where at least 40 black people were killed by white mobs, in part touched off by a labor dispute where blacks were used for strike breaking. [2] [3]
Prior to May 1917, there began a migration of blacks fleeing threats to life and liberty in the South. Tensions in East St. Louis, Illinois, were brewing between white and black workers. Many blacks had found employment in the local industry. In Spring 1917, the mostly white employees of the Aluminum Ore Company voted for a labor strike and the Company recruited hundreds of blacks to replace them. [3] The situation exploded after rumors of black men and white women fraternizing began to circulate. [4] [5] Thousands of white men descended on East St. Louis and began attacking African Americans. They destroyed buildings and beat people. The rioting died down, only to rise with vigor again several weeks later. After an incident in which a police officer was shot by black residents of the city, thousands of whites marched and rioted in the city again. The Encyclopedia of the Harlem Rennaissance states that "Eyewitnesses likened the mob to a manhunt, describing how rioters sought out blacks to beat, mutilate, stab, shoot, hang, and burn." [2]
The brutality of the attacks by mobs of white people and the refusal by the authorities to protect innocent lives contributed to the responsive measures taken by some African Americans in St. Louis and the nation. [6] Marcus Garvey declared in a speech that the riot was "one of the bloodiest outrages against mankind" and a "wholesale massacre of our people", insisting that "This is no time for fine words, but a time to lift one's voice against the savagery of a people who claim to be the dispensers of democracy." [7] [8] After the riots, many black people felt that there was little "possibility of the United States ever permitting black people to enjoy full citizenship, equal rights and dignity." [9]
Writers and civil rights activists, W.E.B DuBois and Martha Gruening visited the city after the riot on July 2 in order to speak to witnesses and survivors. [10] They wrote an essay describing the riots in "gruesome detail" for The Crisis , an NAACP publication. [10] [11]
James Weldon Johnson, the Field Secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), [12] [13] worked with a group of influential community leaders at the St. Philip's Church in New York to decide how to protest the riots. [14] [15] The idea of a silent protest had first been suggested in a 1916 NAACP Conference by Oswald Garrison Villard. [15] Black women in New York had also participated in earlier silent parades with white women, like the June 1917 silent parade in support of the Red Cross. [16] Villard's mother, Fanny Garrison Villard, had organized a silent march for suffragettes in New York in 1913. [9] However, for this protest, organizers felt that it was important that only black people participate because they were the main victims of the recent violence. [15]
Two prominent members of the local clergy were tapped to serve as the executives for the parade. Rev. Dr. Hutchens C. Bishop, rector of the city's oldest black Episcopal parish, and Rev. Dr. Charles D. Martin, founder of the Fourth Moravian Church, respectively, served as the president, and secretary for the parade. [1] With "righteous indignation", Dr. Martin wrote the call to action entitled simply "Why We March". It laid out the rationale for the protest, and was distributed before [1] and during [17] the parade.
The parade was advertised in The New York Age where it was described as a "mute but solemn protest against the atrocities and discrimination practiced against the race in various parts of the country." [18] Men, women and children alike were invited to take part. It was hoped that around ten thousand people would be able to participate, and that African Americans in other cities might hold their own parades. [18] [19] The New York parade was announced ahead of time in other cities as well. [20] [21] [22]
In the midst of record heat [23] in New York City on July 28, an estimated 8,000 to 15,000 African Americans [24] [25] marched in silent protest to the lynchings, as in Waco, Memphis, and especially the East St. Louis riots. The march began at 57th Street, down Fifth Avenue, to its end at 23rd Street. [23] Protesters carried signs that highlighted their discontent. Some signs and banners appealed directly to President Woodrow Wilson. [9] A mounted police escort led the parade. Women and children were next, dressed in white. They were followed by the men, dressed in black. [6] [2] People of all races looked on from both sides of Fifth Avenue. The New York Age estimated that "fully fifteen thousand Negroes, who should have taken an active part, looked on." [23] Black boy scouts handed out fliers describing why they were marching. [17] During the parade, white people stopped to listen to black people explain the reasons for the march and other white bystanders expressed support and sympathy. [23] Some of the messages written on fliers were: [26]
The parade marked the first large black-only protest parade in New York. [27] The New York Times described it the following day: [24]
To the beat of muffled drums 8,000 negro men, women and children marched down Fifth Avenue yesterday in a parade of "silent protest against acts of discrimination and oppression" inflicted upon them in this country, and in other parts of the world. Without a shout or a cheer they made their cause known through many banners which they carried, calling attention to "Jim Crowism," segregation, disenfranchisement, and the riots of Waco, Memphis, and East St. Louis.
— New York Times
Media coverage of the march helped to counter the dehumanization of black people in the United States. [17] The parade and its coverage helped depict the NAACP as a "well-organized and mannerly group" and also helped increase its visibility both among white and black people alike. [28]
Marchers hoped to influence Democratic President Wilson to carry through on his election promises to African American voters to implement anti-lynching legislation and promote Black causes. Four days after the silent parade, black leaders involved in the protest, including Madame C.J. Walker, went to Washington D.C. for a planned appointment with the president. [29] The appointment was not kept, as the group of leaders were told that Wilson had "another appointment." [29] They left their petition for Wilson, which reminded him of African Americans serving in World War I and urged him to prevent riots and lynchings in the future. [29] Wilson did not do so and repudiated his promises. Federal discrimination against African Americans significantly increased under the Wilson administration. [30]
While the parade was put on under the banner of the Harlem branch of the NAACP, a who's who of the Church and business community helped plan the event. The issue of the NAACP The Crisis magazine which described the parade quotes the New York World this way: [31]
The Rev. Dr. H. C. Bishop was President of the parade. The Rev. Dr. Charles D. Martin was Secretary. The Rev. F. A. Cullen was Vice President. The first Deputy Marshal was J. Rosamond Johnson. Others were A. B. Cosey, C. H. Payne, formerly a member of Troop A, Ninth Cavalry; the Rev. E. W. Daniels [ sic ], Allen Wood, James W. Johnson and John Nail, Jr. Rev. G. M. Plaskett and Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois were in the line of officers.
The parade was the very first protest of its kind in New York, and the second instance of African Americans publicly demonstrating for civil rights. [32] The Silent Parade evoked empathy by Jewish people who remembered pogroms against them and also inspired the media to express support of African Americans in their struggle against lynching and oppression. [33]
A silent parade of at least 1,000 men also took place in Providence, RI later in the same year. [34]
Another large silent parade took place in Newark in 1918. On the day before the parade, members of the NAACP spoke at local churches about the parade and the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill. [35] Women from the New Jersey Federation of Colored Women's Clubs (NJFCWC) marched along with men and other women carrying signs. [35] A large meeting was held in the Newark Armory when the parade was complete. [35] Another NAACP-sponsored silent march happened on August 26, 1989 to protest recent Supreme Court decisions. The U.S. Park Service estimated over 35,000 people participated. [36] The march was encouraged by NAACP director, Benjamin L. Hooks. [37]
In East St. Louis, there was a week-long commemoration of the riots and march in the weeks prior to the 100th anniversary on July 28, 2017. [38] Around 300 people marched from the SIUE East St. Louis Higher Learning Center to the Eads Bridge. [39] Everyone marched in silence, with many women in white and men wearing black suits. Those who couldn't walk followed by car. [39]
On the 100th anniversary, Google commemorated the parade in a Google Doodle. [40] Many people in 2017 expressed online that they first learned about the Silent Parade through the day's Google Doodle. [41]
A group of artists, along with the NAACP, planned a re-enactment of the silent march in New York for the evening on July 28, 2017. [42] The event, with around 100 people and many participants wearing white, was not able to march down Fifth Avenue because the city would not grant access due to Trump Tower being located there. [43] The commemoration took place on Sixth Avenue instead, and the group held up portraits of contemporary victims of violence by both police and vigilantes in the United States. [43]
In the broader context of racism in the United States, mass racial violence in the United States consists of ethnic conflicts and race riots, along with such events as:
The civil rights movement was a social movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement in the country. The movement had its origins in the Reconstruction era during the late 19th century and had its modern roots in the 1940s, although the movement made its largest legislative gains in the 1960s after years of direct actions and grassroots protests. The social movement's major nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience campaigns eventually secured new protections in federal law for the civil rights of all Americans.
St. Clair County is the ninth most populous county in Illinois. Located directly east of St. Louis, the county is part of the Metro East region of the Greater St. Louis metropolitan area in southern Illinois. As of the 2020 United States census, St. Clair County had a population of 257,400, making it the third most populous county in Illinois outside the Chicago metropolitan area. Belleville is the county’s seat and largest city.Cahokia Village was founded in 1697 by French settlers and served as a Jesuit mission to convert tribes of the Illinois Confederation to Christianity. Prior to the establishment of Illinois as a state, the government of the Northwest Territory created St. Clair County in 1790 out of the western half of Knox County. In 1809, the county became the administrative center of the Illinois Territory and one of the two original counties of Illinois, alongside Randolph County. In 1970, the United States Census Bureau placed the mean center of U.S. population in St. Clair County.
East St. Louis is a city in St. Clair County, Illinois, United States. It is directly across the Mississippi River from downtown St. Louis, Missouri, and the Gateway Arch National Park. East St. Louis is in the Metro East region of Southern Illinois. Once a bustling industrial center, like many cities in the Rust Belt, East St. Louis was severely affected by the loss of jobs due to the flight of the population to the suburbs during the riots of the late 1960s. In 1950, East St. Louis was the fourth-largest city in Illinois when its population peaked at 82,366. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 18,469, less than one-quarter of the 1950 census and a decline of almost one third since 2010.
James Weldon Johnson was an American writer and civil rights activist. He was married to civil rights activist Grace Nail Johnson. Johnson was a leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), where he started working in 1917. In 1920, he was chosen as executive secretary of the organization, effectively the operating officer. He served in that position from 1920 to 1930. Johnson established his reputation as a writer, and was known during the Harlem Renaissance for his poems, novel and anthologies collecting both poems and spirituals of Black culture. He wrote the lyrics for "Lift Every Voice and Sing", which later became known as the Black National Anthem, the music being written by his younger brother, composer J. Rosamond Johnson.
Red Summer was a period in mid-1919 during which white supremacist terrorism and racial riots occurred in more than three dozen cities across the United States, and in one rural county in Arkansas. The term "Red Summer" was coined by civil rights activist and author James Weldon Johnson, who had been employed as a field secretary by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) since 1916. In 1919, he organized peaceful protests against the racial violence.
The East St. Louis massacre was a series of violent attacks on African Americans by white Americans in East St. Louis, Illinois, between late May and early July of 1917. These attacks also displaced 6,000 African Americans and led to the destruction of approximately $400,000 worth of property. They occurred in East St. Louis, an industrial city on the east bank of the Mississippi River, directly opposite the city of St. Louis, Missouri. The July 1917 episode in particular was marked by white-led violence throughout the city. The multi-day rioting has been described as the "worst case of labor-related violence in 20th-century American history", and among the worst racial riots in U.S. history.
The civil rights movement (1896–1954) was a long, primarily nonviolent action to bring full civil rights and equality under the law to all Americans. The era has had a lasting impact on American society – in its tactics, the increased social and legal acceptance of civil rights, and in its exposure of the prevalence and cost of racism.
The Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill (1918) was first introduced in the 65th United States Congress by Representative Leonidas C. Dyer, a Republican from St. Louis, Missouri, in the United States House of Representatives as H.R. 11279 in order “to protect citizens of the United States against lynching in default of protection by the States.” It was intended to establish lynching as a federal crime. The Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill was re-introduced in subsequent sessions of United States Congress and passed, 230 to 119, by the House of Representatives on January 26, 1922, but its passage was halted in the United States Senate by a filibuster by Southern Democrats, who formed a powerful block. Southern Democrats justified their opposition to the bill by arguing that lynchings were a response to rapes and proclaiming that lynchings were an issue that should be left for states to deal with.
Leonidas Carstarphen Dyer was an American politician, reformer, civil rights activist, and military officer. A Republican, he served eleven terms in the U.S. Congress as a U.S. Representative from Missouri from 1911 to 1933. In 1898, enrolling in the U.S. Army as a private, Dyer served notably in the Spanish–American War; and was promoted to colonel at the war's end.
African Americans in Omaha, Nebraska, are central to the development and growth of the 43rd largest city in the United States. While population statistics show almost constantly increasing percentages of Black people living in the city since it was founded in 1854, Black people in Omaha have not been represented equitably in the city's political, social, cultural, economic or educational circumstances since. In the 2020s, the city's African American population is transforming the city's landscape through community investment, leadership and other initiatives.
Christopher Harrison Payne was a prominent religious, educational, and political leader of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Born in the American South during the time of slavery, Payne rose to a level of prominence achieved by few, regardless of race. One of his many accomplishments include being the first African American elected to the West Virginia Legislature.
John E. Nail was an African-American real estate agent in New York City, significant for developing Harlem. His sister was Grace Nail Johnson, wife of James Weldon Johnson, both civil rights activists.
The anti-lynching movement was an organized political movement in the United States that aimed to eradicate the practice of lynching. Lynching was used as a tool to repress African Americans. The anti-lynching movement reached its height between the 1890s and 1930s. The first recorded lynching in the United States was in 1835 in St. Louis, when an accused killer of a deputy sheriff was captured while being taken to jail. The black man named Macintosh was chained to a tree and burned to death. The movement was composed mainly of African Americans who tried to persuade politicians to put an end to the practice, but after the failure of this strategy, they pushed for anti-lynching legislation. African-American women helped in the formation of the movement, and a large part of the movement was composed of women's organizations.
The Reverend Dr. Charles Douglas (C.D.) Martin was a West Indian Moravian minister. He was born in St. Kitts, British West Indies to parents Joseph and Adriana Martin. He founded the Fourth Moravian Church in Harlem, New York in 1903. It was located at 124 West 136th Street, Manhattan. He called the church "Beth-Tphillah" which is Hebrew for House of Prayer. In 1912, he was ordained as the first and only Black minister of the Moravian Church in the United States. He presided over the church from July 1908 until his death in March 1942.
The Reverend Dr. Hutchens Chew (H.C.) Bishop was an Episcopal priest who spent most of his career in New York City. He was rector of St. Philip's Episcopal Church in Harlem for 47 years. The church is the oldest black Episcopal parish in New York. The church was founded by abolitionists who laid the first stone in 1819.
John Rhode Shillady (1875-1943) was an Irish-American political activist who was Executive Secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from 1918 to 1920. He was attacked and badly beaten by a mob in Austin, Texas, on August 22, 1919. The attack occurred in broad daylight in downtown Austin, and the perpetrators bragged publicly about it. Shillady's injuries left long-lasting physical and emotional effects.
After young African-American men volunteered to fight against the Central Powers, during World War I, many of them returned home but instead of being rewarded for their military service, they were subjected to discrimination, racism and lynchings by the citizens and the government. Labor shortages in essential industries caused a massive migration of southern African-Americans to northern cities leading to a wide-spread emergency of segregation in the north and the regeneration of the Ku Klux Klan. For many African-American veterans, as well as the majority of the African-Americans in the United States, the times which followed the war were fraught with challenges similar to those they faced overseas. Discrimination and segregation were at the forefront of everyday life, but most prevalent in schools, public revenues, and housing. Although members of different races who had fought in World War I believed that military service was a price which was worth paying in exchange for equal citizenship, this was not the case for African-Americans. The decades which followed World War I included blatant acts of racism and nationally recognized events which conveyed American society's portrayal of African-Americans as 2nd class citizens. Although the United States had just won The Great War in 1918, the national fight for equal rights was just beginning.
silent march 1917.