By Hasan Kwame Jeffries, The Ohio State University
On July 28, 1917, 10,000 Black men, women, and children, called together by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), marched for two miles along Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue—one of New York City’s grandest boulevards. No one said a word the entire time. The marchers let their silence speak for them. And their silence spoke volumes about the terror that African Americans faced at the hands of raging white mobs.
The Negro Silent Protest Parade
The demonstrators started out on 59th Street and did not stop marching until they reached 23rd Street. All that could be heard were footfalls and the somber pounding of four drums. The wanton murder of Black people in East St. Louis, Memphis, and Waco topped the list of ‘recent horrors’ that organizers of the Negro Silent Protest Parade had identified as reasons for the march. In a flier announcing the demonstration, they wrote:
We want to make impossible a repetition [of these atrocities] by rousing the conscience of the country and bringing the murderers of our brothers, sisters and innocent children to justice.
These incidents, though, were only part of the problem. The pre-march circular read:
We march because we are thoroughly opposed to Jim-crow Cars etc., Segregation, Discrimination, Disfranchisement, LYNCHING and the host of evils that are forced on us.
The organizers also called on “all classes of the Race”, from the “laborer” to the “professional man”, to walk together, because “the growing consciousness and solidarity of race coupled with sorrow and discrimination have made us one”.
This article comes directly from content in the video series African American History: From Emancipation through Jim Crow. Watch it now, on Wondrium.
James Weldon Johnson
The initial thought had not been to march. There really was no precedent for that. Instead, the plan was to hold a massive rally at New York City’s Carnegie Hall. But James Weldon Johnson, the poet, songsmith, and playwright who had joined the NAACP as a field secretary at the end of 1916, suggested the more dramatic silent protest to underscore the fierce urgency of the moment, and to introduce more people to the eight-year-old civil rights organization. The protest did both.
The march was held on a Saturday. Participants began arriving at the rendezvous spot near 59th Street shortly before noon. The procession started promptly at one o’clock. Four drummers led the way, marking time with a steady beat. Behind them marched a row of NAACP officers, including James Weldon Johnson. The lyricist responsible for ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’ walked next to scholar activist W. E. B. Du Bois, the editor of the NAACP’s official organ, the popular Crisis magazine.
A Procession of Flags
In the procession, a line of flag bearers followed, carrying the national banners of America, Britain, Haiti, and Liberia. It was a logical selection when viewed through the prism of American race relations.
The US flag represented the citizenship claims of African Americans. The British flag reflected the common perception that America’s mother country was further along on matters of race, offering a model for the US to follow. The Haitian banner stood for the revolutionary Black spirit. Haiti was the first independent Black nation in the American hemisphere, having won its liberation from France at the start of the 19th century. And the Liberian flag highlighted the close connection to Africa. The US had established Liberia as a quasi-self-governing destination for Black emigrants, so the marchers were staying ‘true to our native land’.
Representing Innocence
Some 20 rows of children came next. Dressed in Sunday morning finery, they marched 15 abreast, holding hands. The girls filled the first dozen rows. They wore white from head to toe—white bonnets, white dresses, white stockings, and white shoes—to represent the innocence of childhood. Every couple of rows, a young man carried a sign. ‘Give us a chance to live’, read one. Two others quoted the Book of Matthew:
Suffer little children and forbid them not [to come unto me]” and “[whatever you did] unto the least of these my brethren [you did it to me].” If white people wouldn’t listen to Black people, perhaps they would listen to God.
Black Anger, Outrage, and Determination
Next came a seemingly endless stream of women. They too wore white, representing the vulnerability of the victims of racial terrorism in East St. Louis and elsewhere. They marched behind a sign that read: “Race prejudice is the offspring of ignorance and the mother of lynching”.
Trailing them were the men, marching shoulder to shoulder with military precision. They wore dark suits to represent Black anger, outrage, and determination. They too marched with signs, including one that read: “Your hands are full of blood”. In his autobiography Along This Way, James Weldon Johnson observed,
The streets of New York have witnessed many strange sights, but, I judge, never one stranger than this; certainly, never one more impressive.
Contributing to the awesome spectacle were the onlookers, numbering as many as 20,000. At some intersections, the crowd was 15 people deep. They too were silent, in solidarity. Uniformed police officers were there as well, but not as allies.
Interspersed along the route, some with arms folded, others with hands on hips, they stood ready to stop any violence that might erupt—or just as likely, judging from history and from their billy clubs too, to start some trouble themselves.
Common Questions about the 1917 NAACP Silent Protest Parade
The wanton murder of Black people in East St. Louis, Memphis, and Waco topped the list of ‘recent horrors’ that organizers of the Negro Silent Protest Parade had identified as reasons for the march.
In the procession, a line of flag bearers carried the national banners of America, Britain, Haiti, and Liberia. It was a logical selection when viewed through the prism of American race relations. The US flag represented the citizenship claims of African Americans. The British flag reflected the common perception that America’s mother country was further along on matters of race, offering a model for the US to follow. The Haitian banner stood for the revolutionary Black spirit.
The men marched shoulder to shoulder with military precision. They wore dark suits to represent Black anger, outrage, and determination. They too marched with signs, including one that read: “Your hands are full of blood”.
