#330 The Silent Parade of 1917: Black Unity in a Time of Crisis

The Bowery Boys: New York City History

Tom Meyers

Places & Travel, History, Documentary, Society & Culture

4.7 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 4 June 2020

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

"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." -- New York Times, July 29, 1917 EPISODE 330 The Silent Parade of July 28, 1917, was unlike anything ever seen in New York City -- thousands of black men, women and children marching down Fifth Avenue. Today it is considered New York's (and most likely America's) first African-American civil rights march. The march was organized by the NAACP in direct response to a horrible plague of violence against black Americans in the 1910s, culminating in the East St. Louis Riots, a massacre involving white mobs storming black neighborhoods in sheer racial animus. There were no chants or rallying cries. The women were dressed all in white, the men in black. Thousands of onlookers had lined the parade route that day out of curiosity, amusement, pride, anger and joy. How did this unusual protest come to be? How did New Yorkers really react? And why has the Silent Parade gone mostly forgotten for most Americans? FEATURING: W.E.B. Du Bois, Madam C.J. Walker, James Weldon Johnson, Lillian Wald and more boweryboyshistory.com Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/boweryboys

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi there, welcome to the Barry boys. This is Greg Young. Tom Meyers and I have a
0:06.6	really great show for you actually that we were preparing. That we think that
0:11.4	you'll love. It's a story involving immigrants and transportation in the late
0:16.4	19th century. I know a lot of you are excited to have Tom back on the show and
0:20.8	he will be but this week is not the time for that show so we will hopefully get
0:27.9	that to you by next week. Today I wanted to explore a subject that I wrote
0:34.3	about on our website a few years ago about a march which occurred in New York
0:40.2	City on July 28th 1917. A march that is known as the Silent Parade. Now this
0:49.6	week in New York City and throughout the country and the world tens of
0:54.7	millions of people have gathered to protest systematic racism and police
0:59.6	brutality in the murder of the Minneapolis man named George Floyd. Now we've seen
1:05.3	these protests before. In 2014 protesters here in the city took to the streets
1:11.1	for days marching after the death of Eric Garner. In 2006 marching after the
1:17.7	murder of Sean Bell in 1999 after the murder of Amadou Diallo.
1:23.8	Throughout modern history and back and back and back Rodney King the murder of
1:30.2	Martin Luther King the civil rights protests people take to the streets to have
1:36.2	their voices heard to express outrage sorrow demanding acknowledgement and
1:42.0	demanding change and all of these marches and protests all of them link back to
1:48.9	the year 1917 and to the Silent Parade which is sometimes considered to be the
1:55.6	first civil rights march in America or at least the first large scale protest
2:01.7	parade almost entirely comprised of black men and women. This is one of the most
2:07.3	extraordinary moments of solidarity ever displayed in New York City from the
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