Silent Parade

Background

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.{{cite web |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180510151602/https://lynchinginamerica.eji.org/report/ |archive-date=May 10, 2018 |url-status=live}} States that lynchings began in 1830s.{{efn|name=endlynch|There is no consensus on whether lynchings have ceased in the United States. Some commentators conclude that lynching ceased in the mid-to-late 1900s; others characterize some 21st century killings of African Americans as lynchings.

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.{{cite magazine |access-date= |editor-first=W. E. B. |editor-last=Du Bois |editor-link=W. E. B. Du Bois |access-date=March 29, 2025 |editor-first=W. E. B. |editor-last=Du Bois |editor-link=W. E. B. Du Bois cite magazine |access-date=March 29, 2025 |editor-first=W. E. B. |editor-last=Du Bois |editor-link=W. E. B. Du Bois |The article broke new ground by utilizing undercover reporting to expose the conduct of local white people in Waco, Texas. The Crisis included photographs of the lynching.}} and the lynching of Ell Persons in Memphis, Tennessee.{{cite magazine |access-date= |editor-first=W. E. B. |editor-last=Du Bois |editor-link=W. E. B. Du Bois |editor-first=W. E. B. |editor-last=Du Bois |editor-link=W. E. B. Du Bois |access-date=April 2, 2025 Anger over these lynchings was one of the motivations for the Silent Parade.

World War I

Soon after World War I began in Europe in 1914, anti-war activists held a silent parade in New York on August 14, 1914. One of the co-leaders of the parade was Fanny Garrison Villard, a co-founder of the NAACP. This anti-war parade would later serve as an inspiration for the 1917 Silent Parade.

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.{{ cite magazine |editor-first= W. E. B. |editor-last= Du Bois |editor-link=W. E. B. Du Bois |access-date=April 3, 2025 |author-link=W. E. B. Du Bois |access-date=April 3, 2025

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.{{cite magazine |access-date=July 28, 2017 |archive-date=July 28, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170728211733/http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/east-st-louis-race-riot-left-dozens-dead-devastating-community-on-the-rise-180963885/ |url-status=live }} In May, thousands of white men descended on East St. Louis and began attacking African Americans and destroyed buildings. The rioting died down in June, only to flare up again in July when thousands of white people rioted in the city, beating and killing African Americans.

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.{{cite web |access-date=July 28, 2017 |archive-date=July 28, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170728151035/https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai2/forward/text4/silentprotest.pdf |url-status=live

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.{{Cite magazine |access-date=2017-07-29 |editor-first=W. E. B. |editor-last=Du Bois |editor-link=W. E. B. Du Bois |access-date= |archive-date= |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180206140507/https://library.brown.edu/pdfs/1292426769648500.pdf |url-status=live

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The parade

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.{{cite magazine |editor-first=W. E. B. |editor-last=Du Bois |editor-link=W. E. B. Du Bois |access-date=2 August 2017 |archive-date=6 February 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180206140507/https://library.brown.edu/pdfs/1292426769648500.pdf |url-status=live }} |access-date=
|archive-date=
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170729012408/http://www.blackpast.org/aah/naacp-silent-protest-parade-new-york-city-1917 |url-status=live Initial plans considered a protest at Carnegie Hall, but after the East St. Louis riots, Johnson 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."{{cite news |access-date= |access-date= |archive-date= |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230728064020/https://www.newspapers.com/article/12698371/ |url-status=live }} During the week before the parade, major newspapers in several states published articles announcing the march.{{cite news |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/12696673/ |access-date= |archive-date= |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230728064522/https://www.newspapers.com/article/12696673/ |url-status=live }}{{cite news |access-date= |archive-date= |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230728064521/https://www.newspapers.com/article/12696804/ |url-status=live }}{{cite news |access-date= |archive-date= |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230728064526/https://www.newspapers.com/article/12696852 |url-status=live

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 "Yours in righteous indignation."

The march

|access-date=April 17, 2025}}]]

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.{{cite web |author-link=Lester Walton |access-date=July 28, 2017 |archive-date=July 29, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170729011313/https://www.newspapers.com/clip/12690498/silent_negro_protest1917/ |url-status=live |access-date=July 28, 2017 |archive-date=July 27, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210727150451/https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1917/07/29/96262006.pdf |url-status=live |access-date= |archive-date= |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170731060632/https://www.newspapers.com/clip/7389461/silent_parade/ |url-status=live }} 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.{{efn|After the parade, an issue of The Crisis magazine included an article that listed approximately 60 slogans that were displayed on placards. Some examples:

• "America has lynched without trial 2,867 Negroes in 31 years and not a single murderer has suffered".
• "We have fought for the liberty of white Americans in 6 wars; our reward is East St. Louis".
• "We are maligned as lazy and murdered when we work".
• "Our music is the only American music".

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 WWI. 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.”

Over 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 "the 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."

Legacy

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.{{cite web |access-date= |archive-date= |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170727203004/http://www.boweryboyshistory.com/2017/07/listening-silent-parade-1917-forgotten-civil-rights-march.html |url-status=live

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.{{cite web |access-date=June 8, 2025 |access-date=June 8, 2025

President Wilson

|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.{{cite news |access-date=June 10, 2025 |access-date=April 3, 2025

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• {{Cite web |access-date=April 22, 2025

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.{{cite news |access-date=1 March 2025 | access-date = July 29, 2019 }}{{efn|In May 1919, following the first serious racial incidents of the Red Summer, W. E. B. Du Bois published the editorial "Returning Soldiers" in The Crisis which read, in part: "We return from the slavery of uniform which the world's madness demanded us to don to the freedom of civil garb. We stand again to look America squarely in the face and call a spade a spade. We sing: This country of ours, despite all its better souls have done and dreamed, is yet a shameful land.… We return. We return from fighting. We return fighting." |access-date=March 29, 2025 |author-first=W. E. B. |author-last=Du Bois |author-link=W. E. B. Du Bois |author-link=George Edmund Haynes |access-date=1 March 2025

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.{{cite web |access-date=March 30, 2025 |access-date=March 29, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220330040839/https://www.npr.org/2022/03/29/1086720579/lynching-is-now-a-federal-hate-crime-after-a-century-of-blocked-efforts |archive-date=March 30, 2022 |url-status=live}}{{Cite web |access-date=
|archive-date=November 6, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231106221308/https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/01/politics/house-passes-emmett-till-antilynching-act/index.html |url-status=live

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.{{cite news |access-date=April 17, 2025 |access-date=March 29, 2025 |editor-first=W. E. B. |editor-last=Du Bois |editor-link=W. E. B. Du Bois

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 over 35,000 people participated.{{cite web |access-date=
|archive-date=
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151021092501/http://articles.latimes.com/1989-08-27/news/mn-1753_1_supreme-court-decisions |url-status=live }}{{Cite magazine |access-date= |archive-date= |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230728064522/https://books.google.com/books?id=orsDAAAAMBAJ&q=%22silent+march%22+1917&pg=PA6 |url-status=live }} After two African American transexual 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.{{cite web |access-date=June 8, 2025

100th anniversary

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 over 35,000 people participated.{{cite web |access-date=
|archive-date=
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151021092501/http://articles.latimes.com/1989-08-27/news/mn-1753_1_supreme-court-decisions |url-status=live }}{{Cite magazine |access-date= |archive-date= |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230728064522/https://books.google.com/books?id=orsDAAAAMBAJ&q=%22silent+march%22+1917&pg=PA6 |url-status=live }}

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.{{Cite magazine |access-date= |access-date= |archive-date= |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170729225421/http://atlantablackstar.com/2017/07/29/many-learn-of-silentparade-for-first-time-after-google-honors-iconic-civil-rights-march/ |url-status=live |access-date= |access-date= |archive-date= |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170729052322/http://www.bnd.com/news/local/article159379064.html |url-status=live |access-date= |archive-date= |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170714090111/http://www.stlamerican.com/news/local_news/esl-commemorated-th-anniversary-of-unparalleled-racial-terror/article_3fd5d24c-61e0-11e7-ba6b-d76f6593c28c.html |url-status=live

A group of artists, along with the NAACP, reenacted the silent march in New York on the evening of July 28, 2017.{{Cite news |url=http://theartnewspaper.com/news/arts-group-to-restage-historic-civil-rights-protest-in-new-york/ |title=Arts Group to Restage Historic Civil Rights Protest in New York |access-date= |archive-date= |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170729052505/http://theartnewspaper.com/news/arts-group-to-restage-historic-civil-rights-protest-in-new-york/ |url-status=dead |access-date= |archive-date= |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170729155232/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/29/naacp-silent-parade-100th-anniversary-march-new-york-city |url-status=live

References

Notes

Citations

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• {{Cite journal |article-number=2378023119841780 |doi-access=free }} Charts showing per-year counts of lynchings are Figure 5 and Figure 6.

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