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= Silent Parade =
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Introduction
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The Negro Silent Protest Parade, commonly known as the Silent Parade,
was a political protest in New York City on July 28, 1917. The
primary objective of the march was to draw national attention to the
widespread racial violence and entrenched systemic discrimination
endured by African Americans. It was organized in direct response to
a series of racially motivated attacks in 1916 and 1917, including the
East St. Louis massacre and lynchings in Waco and Memphis.
The parade was organized by a coalition of African American groups,
led by the recently-formed NAACP. Starting at 57th Street, the parade
route proceeded down Fifth Avenue, ending at Madison Square. It was a
silent procession, with an estimated 8,000 to 15,000 African American
participants marching in protest, accompanied by a muffled drum beat.
The event was widely publicized and drew attention to violence against
African Americans. Organizers hoped the parade would prompt the
federal government to enact anti-lynching legislation. However,
President Woodrow Wilson did not act on their demands. Federal
legislation was required because Southern states often refused to
prosecute lynchings under existing state statutes that outlawed
murder, kidnapping, and assault. The federal government would not
pass an anti-lynching law until 2022, when the Emmett Till
Antilynching Act was passed.
Lynching
==========
Lynchings are extrajudicial killings carried out--often under the
pretense of punishing alleged crimes--by individuals or groups lacking
legal or law enforcement authority. These acts frequently involve mob
violence and are commonly driven by racial animus. In the United
States, documented instances of lynching date back to the 1830s.
Lynching was a brutal manifestation of racism directed at African
Americans, occurring alongside systemic forms of discrimination such
as disenfranchisement and segregation. The frequency of lynchings
steadily increased after the Civil War (18611865), peaking around
1892. They remained common into the early 1900s, with a notable spike
in 1915 following the founding of the Second Ku Klux Klan.
Southern states often failed to prosecute lynchings under existing
state laws prohibiting murder, kidnapping, and assault. Federal
authorities lacked the legal means to intervene, as no federal
statutes at the time specifically criminalized lynching. In response,
anti-lynching activists in the early 1900s advocated for new federal
legislation to empower federal prosecutors to take action when state
officials refused to do so.
The Silent Parade took place at a time when the anti-lynching movement
was gaining momentum, led in large part by the NAACP. Founded in
1909, the NAACP sought to advance equal rights for African Americans.
Two years before the Silent Parade, the NAACP's magazine 'The Crisis'
published an article titled "The Lynching Industry", which contained a
year-by-year tabulation of 2,732 lynchings, spanning the years 1884 to
1914. During the year leading up to the parade, 'The Crisis'edited by
W. E. B. Du Boispublished a series of articles documenting specific
lynchings, including: a group lynching of six African Americans in Lee
County, Georgia; the lynching of Jesse Washington, a mentally impaired
17-year-old African American, in Waco, Texas; "The Waco Horror" was an
eight-page supplement at the end of the magazine, with its own page
numbering, pages 1 to 8.
and the lynching of Ell Persons in Memphis, Tennessee. According to
this article about Ell Persons, it was published as a four-page
supplement to volume 14, issue 3 of 'The Crisis'.
Anger over these lynchings was one of the motivations for the Silent
Parade.
World War I
=============
In April 1917, one month before the East St. Louis massacre, the
United States declared war on the German Empire and joined the Allied
Powers of World War I. The mobilization effort dominated the
headlines in the United States. African American soldiers of that era
were treated as second-class citizens, and were segregated from white
troops. African Americans had mixed feelings about the war: some
recognized military service as an opportunity to demonstrate their
worth; others viewed it as yet another situation where they would be
exploited by their country. Some African American leaders, such as Du
Bois, voiced pro-war sentiments, and encouraged African Americans to
join the military.
East St. Louis massacre
=========================
The Silent Parade was triggered by a series of riots in East St. Louis
between May and July 1917. The rioting, by white residents,
originated when the mostly white employees of the Aluminum Ore Company
voted in spring 1917 for a labor strike and the company recruited
hundreds of African Americans to replace them.
The ensuing racial tensions led to widespread violence, with an
estimated 39 to 200 African Americans killed by white people. In
addition, hundreds were injured, and thousands were displaced from
their homes. Nine white Americans were killed.
Du Bois and activist Martha Gruening visited the city after the
massacre and spoke with witnesses and survivors. In September 1917,
they published a photo-essay in 'The Crisis' that described the riots
in graphic terms. After the riots, many African Americans were
discouraged, and felt that it was unlikely that the United States
would ever permit African Americans to enjoy full citizenship and
equal rights. The brutality of the attacks by mobs of white people,
coupled with the failure of police to protect the African American
community, led to renewed calls for African American civil rights from
leaders such as Du Bois, Hubert Harrison, and Marcus Garvey.Additional
information on calls for action:
*.
*.
*. In response, the NAACP began planning a public protest.
Planning
==========
James Weldon Johnson, the field secretary of the NAACP, worked with a
group of influential community leaders from St. Philip's Church in New
York to determine how best to protest the recent violence against
African Americans.
Initial plans considered a protest at Carnegie Hall butafter the East
St. Louis riotsJohnson proposed a silent march. The idea of a silent
protest was based on a suggestion made in 1916 by Oswald Garrison
Villard during an NAACP Conference. The Silent Parade was not the
nation's first silent march: Villard's mother, anti-war activist Fanny
Garrison Villard, had organized a silent march in 1914 to protest the
war.
Johnson orchestrated the march, and his use of silencewhich contrasted
sharply with the brutality of lynchings and race riotsserved to
emphasize the message. Silence as a rhetorical tool was also employed
by the Silent Sentinels suffrage protest group, which staged silent
protests in front of the White House starting in January 1917.
The parade was organized by a committee composed of representatives
from the NAACP, churches, and businesses. Two prominent members of
the New York clergy served as executives of the parade: the president
was Hutchens Chews Bishop, rector of the city's oldest African
American Episcopal parish; and the secretary was Charles Martin,
founder of the Fourth Moravian Church. Frederick Asbury Cullen served
as vice president. Parade marshals included nationally prominent
African Americans J. Rosamond Johnson, Christopher Payne, Everard W.
Daniel, James Weldon Johnson, and John E. Nail. Du Bois marched
within the group of parade leaders.
While the organizers of the Silent Parade did not explicitly exclude
white people from marching (many NAACP leaders were white), no white
people participated because the parade was intended to be a
demonstration of African American solidarity and unity.
A week before the parade, an announcement in the African American
newspaper 'The New York Age' described it as a "mute but solemn
protest against the atrocities and discrimination practiced against
the race in various parts of the country." The official name of the
parade was the Negro Silent Protest Parade, although some contemporary
sources referred to it as the Negro Silent Parade. Men, women, and
children alike were invited to take part. It was hoped that ten
thousand people would participate, and that African Americans in other
cities might hold their own parades. During the week before the
parade, major newspapers in several states published articles
announcing the march.
The goal of the parade was to protest lynching in particular, and
violence against African Americans in general. A specific objective
was to urge President Woodrow Wilson to support the enactment of
federal anti-lynching legislation. Organizers prepared a leaflet
which was distributed before the parade as an invitation, and during
the parade to bystanders. The leaflet contained a section titled "Why
We March", which read, in part:
The leaflet was signed by Martin as "Yours in righteous indignation."
The march
===========
|magazine=Black Maria Film Festival program
|title=Bill Morrison: The Art of the Archive
|first=Sally
|last=Berger
|year=2018
|page=25
|url=https://tefilmfest.org/pdf/2018_37th_Season_BMFF_Program.pdf
In the midst of a record heat wave in New York City on Saturday, July
28, an estimated 8,000 to 15,000 African Americans marched in silent
protest. The march began at 57th Street, and proceeded down Fifth
Avenue, ending at Madison Square. Mounted police escorted the parade.
Many marchers carried signs and banners that described contributions
of African Americans to American society, or gave reasons for the
protest. Some signs appealed directly to President Wilson. One
banner displayed an African American family in the ruins of East St.
Louis, pleading with Wilson to bring democracy to the U.S. before he
brought it to Europe. Police deemed the banner in "bad taste", so
parade organizers withdrew the banner before the parade began.
Several hundred children led the parade, followed by several thousand
women dressed in white, then men. The men wore formal attire or
military uniforms, and they marched in rows. Some of the men carried
drums, which were muffled, and beat a slow cadence.
The placement of children and women at the front of the parade drew
attention to the profound impact that lynching and racism had on
African American families. Following the march, 'The Crisis'
published several photographs of the parade, all but one of which
featured women and children. Their refined attire visually
highlighted the connection between respectability and civil rights.
Visual cues also made a connection between the military service of
African Americans and their demands for equal rights. Some of the men
wore their U.S. Army uniforms and carried placards drawing attention
to the fact thatjust a few months before the parade African Americans
were among the first U.S. soldiers to arrive in France after the U.S.
joined World War I. A large sign carried at the front of the women's
section read: "The first blood for American independence was shed by a
NegroCrispus Attucks."
More than 20,000 spectators of all races looked on from both sides of
Fifth Avenue, including an estimated 15,000 African Americans.
African American Boy Scouts handed out leaflets describing why they
were marching. Some White people stopped to listen to marchers
explain the reasons for the march, while other White bystanders
expressed support for the parade. Many spectators were moved by the
spectacle; in his autobiography, organizer James Johnson wrote: "[T}he
streets of New York have witnessed many strange sights, but I judge,
never one stranger than this; among the watchers were those with tears
in their eyes."
Aftermath
===========
The protest was widely reported in newspapers across the country, and
successfully raised public awareness of the lynchings and other acts
of violence committed against African Americans. 'The New York Times'
described the parade in an article published the following day:
Historian Patricia Sullivan described it as "one of the most stunning
protest marches in the annals of the black freedom struggle." The
parade was the first large, exclusively African American protest in
New York. Media coverage of the march helped to counter the
dehumanization of African Americans in the United States: the demeanor
and appearance of the marchers was dignified, civilized, and
respectable. The 'New York Age' described the parade as "[t]he coming
together of all classes of Negroes to further a common cause", noting
that several disparate groups of black people marched in unity,
including Haitians and West Indians.
The parade and its coverage depicted the NAACP as well-organized and
efficient, and helped increase the visibility of the NAACP among both
White and Black people. The march sparked a revival of the New York
branch of the NAACP: initially established in 1911, the branch had
become dormant by 1916, but was reactivated in November 1917.
President Wilson
==================
|publisher=Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library
|url= https://beinecke.library.yale.edu/1917NAACPSilentProtestParade
|title= 1917 NAACP Silent Protest Parade, Fifth Avenue, New York City
|date=July 26, 2020
|first= Michael
|last=Morand
|access-date=April 3, 2025
}}
Marchers hoped to persuade President Wilson to implement anti-lynching
legislation and support African American civil rights. Four days
after the Silent Parade, a group of NAACP leaders traveled to
Washington, D.C. for a prearranged appointment with Wilson. Upon
arrival at the White House, the group was told that Wilson was unable
to meet with them due to another appointment. They left a petition
they had prepared for Wilson, which reminded him of African Americans
serving in World War I and asked him to take steps to prevent
lynchings in the future. Two weeks later, Wilson met with a smaller
delegation from the NAACP and listened to their concerns. Eleven
months later, in July 1918, Wilson issued a written statement
discouraging mob violence, but it fell short of calling for
anti-lynching legislation. Discrimination against African Americans
significantly increased during the Wilson presidency (1913-1921) as a
result of Wilson's policy of segregating the federal government
workforce.Additional information on Wilson's segregation policy:
* .
* .
*
Red Summer
============
As World War I drew to an end, there was considerable social tension
as returning veterans of all races tried to find work, and black
veterans struggled to gain better treatment after their war service.
During the summer of 1919, later called the Red Summer, racial riots
of white people against black people broke out in numerous industrial
cities during these tensions and economic strife. In contrast to the
East St. Louis massacre, the 1919 events were characterized by many
instances of black people fighting back against their attackers. In
October 1919, African American sociologist George Edmund Haynes, an
employee of the federal government, published a detailed report
outlining the white-on-black violence of the summer, and noted that
states were unwilling to intervene. The report urged the U.S.
Congress to take action and identified 38 separate racial riots in
which white people attacked African Americans in widely scattered
cities. In addition, Haynes reported that between January 1 and
September 14, 1919, white mobs lynched at least 43 African Americans,
with 16 hanged, some shot, and 8 burned at the stake.
-->
Impact on lynching
====================
The annual number of African American lynchings increased following
the parade and did not decline below the 1917 level until 1923.
Lynchings persisted in the United States at least into the 1960s. In
1918, the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill was introduced in Congress, but it
failed to become law, suffering the same fate as nearly 200
anti-lynching bills that were introduced between the end of the
Civil War and the civil rights movement. The Civil Rights Act of 1968
created new federal crimes for violent acts based on the race of the
victim. In 2022, Congress passed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act,
which extended existing federal hate crime laws to encompass any
members of a mob who conspired to injure a victim.
Subsequent silent marches
===========================
After the Silent Parade, James Johnson sent letters to all NAACP
branches, suggesting that they organize similar marches. Three months
after the Silent Parade, a smaller version of the march with 1,800
African Americanstook place in Providence, Rhode Island, in October
1917.
After the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill was introduced in Congress, two
silent marches were organized by African Americans to show support,
including one on June 14, 1922, in Washington, where about 5,000
people marched in front of the White House and the Capitol holding
signs supporting the anti-lynching legislation. In the same month,
female members of the NAACP in Newark, New Jersey, organized a similar
silent parade.
During WWII, the African American advocacy group March on Washington
Movement organized a march in Washingtonmodeled on the Silent
Paradeprotesting the execution of Odell Waller and segregation in the
armed forces. Seventy-two years after the Silent Parade, another
NAACP-sponsored silent march took place in Washington, D.C. on August
26, 1989, to protest recent Supreme Court decisions which restricted
affirmative action programs. The U.S. Park Service estimated that more
than 35,000 people participated. After two African American
transgender women were killed in 2020, a protest was organized in
Brooklyn, drawing thousands of attendees; organizers used the Silent
Parade as inspiration, and asked protesters to wear white and remain
silent for the initial part of the demonstration.
100th anniversary
===================
Several events commemorated the hundredth anniversary of the Silent
Parade, on July 28, 2017. The Google Doodle for that day depicted the
Silent Parade, and linked to the parade's Wikipedia articlemany people
reported that the Doodle was the first time they learned about the
march. In East St. Louis, a series of events were held to commemorate
the 1917 riots. Around 300 people marched from the Southern Illinois
University Edwardsville Higher Learning Center to the Eads Bridge.
The marchers reenacted the 1917 parade, walking in silence, with many
women in white and men wearing black suits.
A group of artists, along with the NAACP, reenacted the silent march
in New York on the evening of July 28, 2017. 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's location on that street. 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.
Sources
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* This article describes the 1836 lynching of African American
Francis McIntosh in St. Louis.
*
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* Later reprinted with .
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* Charts showing per-year counts of lynchings are Figure 5 and
Figure 6.
*
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* {{cite book
| title=Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America,
1890-1940}
| publisher= North Carolina University
| last=Wood
|first= Amy Louise
|url= https://archive.org/details/lynchin_woo_2009_00_4164
|access-date=April 15, 2025
| year=2009
| isbn=9780807832547
}}
*
*
* Discussion of state versus federal prosecution is throughout the
entire article, but an overview is on pages 777795.
External links
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* Collection of photos of the Silent Parade.
License
=========
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Original Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Parade
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