On July
28, 1917 the Silent Parade in New York City was an orderly but mute demonstration by as many as 10,000 African-Americans in protest to the continued brutal onslaught of lynching across the Jim Crow South and border states as well as the anti-Black
pogrom that killed as many as
200 and displaced thousands in East St
Louis, Illinois that May.
It
may be obscure today, but it was one
of the most significant events in
the creation of a modern, Black led civil rights movement and
the direct ancestor of the Black Lives Matter movement.
I
was vaguely aware of the Silent
Parade and have mentioned it in passing in
a couple of posts, including a history of the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP) and
a bio of W. E. B. Du Bois, but I was not clear on the timeline and particulars. Now I am delighted to share what
I learned.
Racial tensions in America had been ratcheting up for decades particularly after the complete abandonment of Reconstruction Era reforms in the South and the disenfranchisement of Southern
blacks in the Jim Crow Era. Hardening racial attitudes were spreading to Northern cities and states as
well. The rising wave of lynching was
just one of the forms of violent
intimidation used to keep Blacks in their subservient places. Although
the old Ku Klux Klan had disappeared and its reincarnation not taken root, night riding, vigilantism, and pop up mobs were all on the rise. Kidnappings,
beatings, rapes, arsons, and deportations were common.
Even
more troubling, was the rise in race riots, most of them in Northern
or borders states, especially as the Great
Migration began to get underway as oppressed
Southern Blacks relocated to North seeking factory work in booming war
industries. In those days race
riots meant one thing—a bloodthirsty
rampage of Whites against the Black residents of their communities. Although in isolated incidents some Blacks had fought back in self-defense
there had never been a riot in which
Blacks targeted White communities.
The
riot which erupted in East St. Louis on May 28, 1917 was just the most recent
and one of the bloodiest. Whites angered
at Blacks taking jobs at local factories staged a mass protest meeting followed by a march by at least 3,000 into the downtown district where they spread out attacking any Blacks they
encountered, burning homes, and looting businesses. It took the Illinois National Guard to quash
the violence, though tensions remained high.
Some
efforts at investigating the causes of the disturbance were made and some officials gave lip service to community
reconciliation. But it was too little, too late.
On
July 2, a carload of white men drove through a Black neighborhood and fired several shots into a group of men standing outside in the oppressive
summer heat—exactly what we would call a drive by shooting today. As
the car sped away crowds gathered and milled about. An hour later, two Police detectives and a reporter were among four men in a car that
cruised the same area. The detectives may have displayed weapons. Suspecting it was the same car involved
in the first shooting or another on the same mission, someone opened fire on their car, killing one officer instantly and mortally wounding the other.
Thousands
of white spectators gathered to view
the detectives’ bloodstained automobile
then rampaged through the black section of town. They cut the water hoses of
the Fire Department, burned blocks of the city, and shot residents as they tried to escape the flames. Police and National Guardsmen called to quell
the violence instead either stood aside
and let it run its course or in many
instances actively joined the
rioters.
After
the rioters simply exhausted themselves
and almost 6000 Black survivors were
turned into homeless refugees the liberal St.
Louis Post Dispatch editorially concluded:
All the impartial
witnesses agree that the police were either indifferent or encouraged the
barbarities, and that the major part of the National Guard was indifferent or
inactive. No organized effort was made to protect the Negroes or disperse the
murdering groups. The lack of frenzy and of a large infuriated mob made the
task easy. Ten determined officers could have prevented most of the outrages.
One hundred men acting with authority and vigor might have prevented any
outrage.
The
breathtaking scope of the violence
and a staggering death toll galvanized Black outrage across the country.
Various key players sprang
into action.
Anti-lynching
activist and
Chicago
Daily Defender journalist Ida B. Wells rushed to the stricken city to
investigate. She concluded that 50-150
had been killed in days of rioting and its aftermath. Investigators for the NAACP placed the dead
in the range of 100-200. A latter Congressional
Investigation Committee—influenced by several Southern members said the death
toll could not be determined but gave
credence to local official reports of 8 White dead and 38 Blacks. Some modern scholars have estimated that as many as 400 may have died
immediately or of wounds within weeks.
Most accounts now settle on a rough guess of 200.
Well’s
accounts were spread across the county by the issues of the Defender distributed nationally by Pullman
Porters. Local Black press picked up
the story.
Black separatist and Nationalist Marcus Garvey declared that
the riot was “one of the bloodiest outrages against mankind” and a “wholesale
massacre of our people….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.” He also argued for self-defense and
ultimately the establishment of an independent nation, probably in the Caribbean as a refuge for the African diaspora in America. This
combination of militancy and a sort
of Black Zionism had a lot of appeal to many who lost all hope of fair treatment in the United States. Whites were torn between stark terror of
a militant Black in a uniform at the
head of a mass movement and a vague hope that Garvey could become an ally in removing Blacks entirely from the country.
For
the NAACP the East St. Louis riots presented both a test and an opportunity. The only national
civil rights organization was only eight years old and not well established. Largely the creation of White liberals
it still was still dominated by them.
All of the national officers
and board members were white except
for Du Bois, the Black intellectual and editor of The Crisis and probably the most significant national Black leader since
Frederick Douglass. The white leadership was well meaning but an impediment
to making the new organization an authentic
voice for Black aspirations.
Most
of the organization’s chapters were
in the Northeast and split between
white liberals and the small Black
educated elite. It had little
representation in the South where the overwhelming majority of Blacks still
lived, or among poor and working class Northern Blacks. The organization had first earned national
attention for its protests and picketing of showings of D. W. Griffith’s Ku Klux Klan paean Birth
of a Nation in 1915.
It
lately had become increasingly vocal
in protest to the policies of President Woodrow Wilson. During his three-way race for the Presidency
against William Howard Taft, and
Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 Wilson
had made vaguer promises of enacting anti-lynching legislation and in favor of some civil rights protections. Most
Blacks who could vote were still loyal
Republicans in gratitude for the end of slavery and the stab at
Reconstruction. But in some Northern
cities Blacks were being successfully courted by local Democratic machines. Wilson
made promises in hopes for a sliver of the Black vote. But he was the son of a Virginia mother who was an unreconstructed
Confederate. Upon election not only
did he forget his promises about lynch protections, but he also scrapped what few
shreds of Reconstruction era
policies remained and introduced of segregation
into all areas possible of federal government policy, workplaces, and hiring.
In
his early reaction to the East St. Louis riots, Du Bois castigated Wilson for inaction
on lynching and demanded action against spreading race riots. Wilson did not even bother to respond.
Du
Bois knew that more dramatic action was
required to both rally Blacks
nationally and build the NAACP. He found
a new ally in the second Black elected to a leadership position in the
organization, Second Vice President James
Weldon Johnson. Johnson was a perfect example of the Black
elite who Du Bois believed would raise the race. He was a lawyer,
Republican Politian, diplomat under Theodore Roosevelt, and a poet. He had written Lift Every Voice and Sing which the Fisk University Singer would
popularize as the “Black National Anthem.” He would also soon become a leading figure of
the Harlem Renaissance.
It was Johnson who first proposed a silent protest march at an Executive Committee meeting of
the NAACP Harlem branch shortly
after the East St. Louis riot. Du Bois
heartily supported the plan. Johnson himself
was the prime organizer, seeing to
all of the myriads of details needed to mobilize an action
like no other before it. He took care to reach out and include all classes of Black citizens utilizing the Churches, Black Women’s
Clubs, trade union members, social and benevolent clubs and laborers. He knew that to be effective the march had to be absolutely
peaceful and dignified. As he recruited marchers, he trained them in discipline. Any hint of violence or disorder would not only discredit the action, but likely bring down a catastrophic
police response.
As a result of that meticulous
planning and organization thousands of African American citizens rallied at 59th Street beginning at noon on July 28. By the one pm starting time, they were organized
into perfectly organized ranks, long
rows of marchers stretched across the street and spaced rank after rank in
order that would have been the envy of
any military parade. They fell in behind an American flag and a line of dignitaries, clergymen, and leaders
with Du Bois and Johnson font and center.
The parade swung smartly south on
5th Avenue the broad main thoroughfare
leading to the heart of heart of Manhattan’s fashionable districts. That was the same route taken by the 1915
Women’s Suffrage Parade organized by Carrie
Chapman Catt and the National
American Woman Suffrage Association, and event that helped inspire this march and upon which it
was partly modeled.
Behind the leaders were rank upon
rank of women and children decked out in white representing the purity and innocence of the victims of the riots. It was also a tip of the hat to the Suffragists
who had marched in white and was a symbolic
linking of both struggles for
the dignity of full citizenship rights. Behind them came the men in their best black or
somber colored suits. The black was mourning for the victims. The
attitude was reserved dignity belying stereotypes of ragged idlers, ignorant laborers, and violent
predators. All marched in total and perfect silence.
Some carried professionally painted placards and banners with messages like:
Your hands are full of blood.
Thou Shalt Not Kill
Mothers, do lynchers go to heaven?
We have fought for the liberty of white Americans in six
wars; our reward was East St. Louis.
Police turned out in force, lining
the parade route with batons in hand or exposed from under their long
coats. They had been told to expect violence from the marchers and
had orders to disperse them at the first
sign of trouble. Behind them large crowds thronged the sidewalks.
Supporters and virulent
opponents of the Parade were both out but probably outnumbered by the curious and bewildered. Amid some cheers cruses and occasional
objects were hurled at the marchers as they passed by stoically.
The silence was finally broken with cheers
by supporters when the parade ended at Madison Square. There was no rally or fancy
oration. Du Boise, Johnson, and some
of the clergy were interviewed quietly by
the press.
Reactions in that press varied
from outright hostility to mockery in many cases. But some were impressed by the solemn dignity
of the event. The New York Times wrote, “one
of the most quiet and orderly demonstrations ever witnessed.”
Was anything accomplished? Not immediately. The Wilson administration never acknowledged the protest and
continued to vigorously pursue it segregationist policies even as it deployed Black
troops to France and relied on Black workers in the humming defense industries and in agricultural
production. Both lynchings and race
riots continued, and the pace
accelerated after the war as troops returned home and competed for
jobs in a post-war slump. 1919 would be a banner year for race riots in cities like Chicago. The revived
Ku Klux Klan became an open power not
only in the Old South but in Northern States like Indiana where it nearly took over state government.
On the other hand, Black communities across the country took enormous pride in the event and many were inspired to action. The civil rights approach of the NAACP gained support over the militant separatism of Marcus Garvey. As an organization it grew and prospered and added chapters, including those in the South. It would be the primary civil rights organization until a new movement arose after World War II.
Chad Williams, Associate Professor of African
and Afro-American Studies at Brandeis University and the author of Torchbearers of Democracy wrote
of the long term significance in a Miami Herald op-ed on the 100th anniversary of the Parade in 2017:
The “Silent Protest Parade” marked the beginning of a new
epoch in the long black freedom struggle. While adhering to a certain politics
of respectability, a strategy employed by African-Americans that focused on
countering racist stereotypes through dignified appearance and behavior, the
protest, within its context, constituted a radical claiming of the public
sphere and a powerful affirmation of black humanity. It declared that a “New
Negro” had arrived and launched a black public protest tradition that would be
seen in the parades of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, the civil
rights demonstrations of the 1960s and the Black Lives Matter marches of today.
No comments:
Post a Comment