Yesterday's edition of the occasional "Google Doodle" feature on the home search page
It marked exactly 100 years since this day in 1917 when thousands (estimated 8000-10,000) Black Americans, men, women and children, marched in the "Silent Parade" in New York City to protest, and bring attention to, the then-recent East St. Louis riots that had turned violence on the black community there, resulting in the worst labor-related violence in US history. (background of the riots in this thread)
>> The only sounds were those of muffled drums, the shuffling of feet and the gentle sobs of some of the estimated 20,000 onlookers. The women and children wore all white. The men dressed in black.
On the afternoon of Saturday, July 28, 1917, nearly 10,000 African-Americans marched down Fifth Avenue, in silence, to protest racial violence and white supremacy in the United States.
New York City, and the nation, had never before witnessed such a remarkable scene.
The “Silent Protest Parade,” as it came to be known, was the first mass African-American demonstration of its kind and marked a watershed moment in the history of the civil rights movement.
The city’s surviving 6,000 black residents became refugees.
East St. Louis was an American pogrom. The fearless African-American anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells traveled to the still smoldering city on July 4 and collected firsthand accounts of the aftermath. She described the incident as an “awful orgy of human butchery.”
The devastation of East St. Louis was compounded by the fact that America was at war. On April 2, President Woodrow Wilson had thrown the United States into the maelstrom of World War I. He did so by asserting America’s singularly unique place on the global stage and his goal to make the world “safe for democracy.” In the eyes of black people, East St. Louis exposed the hypocrisy of Wilson’s vision and America itself. << --- A silent protest parade in 1917 set the stage for civil rights marches
On the afternoon of Saturday, July 28, 1917, nearly 10,000 African-Americans marched down Fifth Avenue, in silence, to protest racial violence and white supremacy in the United States.
New York City, and the nation, had never before witnessed such a remarkable scene.
The “Silent Protest Parade,” as it came to be known, was the first mass African-American demonstration of its kind and marked a watershed moment in the history of the civil rights movement.
The city’s surviving 6,000 black residents became refugees.
East St. Louis was an American pogrom. The fearless African-American anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells traveled to the still smoldering city on July 4 and collected firsthand accounts of the aftermath. She described the incident as an “awful orgy of human butchery.”
The devastation of East St. Louis was compounded by the fact that America was at war. On April 2, President Woodrow Wilson had thrown the United States into the maelstrom of World War I. He did so by asserting America’s singularly unique place on the global stage and his goal to make the world “safe for democracy.” In the eyes of black people, East St. Louis exposed the hypocrisy of Wilson’s vision and America itself. << --- A silent protest parade in 1917 set the stage for civil rights marches
It took a palpable degree of courage for black people to engage in such a public spectacle in 1917, a period of the nadir of racism and bigotry. Black people were being randomly murdered in lynchings throughout the country on the basis of unfounded rumors or a simple inkling of temerity. The even larger Tulsa Race Riots lay two years in the future, and the Ku Klux Klan was reorganized two years in the past. Calling attention to the elephant in the room in silent dignity reminded the culture of the realities in the American experience and exactly how they were falling short of the American ideal.
These were the pioneers in an attempted resetting of social equilibrium that went on for decades and continues today. They made their statement on a Saturday one hundred years ago.
