Protest and Calling for Change: Images of the Silent Parade | BRIdge from the Past
What was the “Silent Parade”? In this episode of BRIdge from the Past, Mary examines images of a 1917 silent march down Fifth Avenue in New York City to understand why 10,000 African Americans participated. What events precipitated this march? How do these images compare with those of other historical events or protests where Americans have called for change?
0:04 Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of Bridge from the Past. Art across us. History. I’m your host Mary, and this series is for students like you to get ahead in your US history class by using images as a point of a departure to explore complicated and sometimes lesser known topics in American history. Today we’re looking at images of a silent
0:26 protest parade that took place in New York City of July 1917. Why did this parade occur and how does it connect to the timeless question of calling for change when injustices occur? Let’s jump in and see. Here is our first image of the silent protest parade that took place in July of 1917 in New York City.
0:48 We’re thinking about protesting and calling for change. So just taking a minute to make some observations. It’s the first step whenever you see a visual primary source. Some of my initial observations are these are all children. Right now, you can see down here in the caption it says children in the silent protest parade. And there are a lot of them.
1:09 There are many rows of them. They’re all in neat rows and they’re holding hands and they’re all in white. The white is very striking to me. So to have this many young children, I would say these look like elementary schoolish children. From what I can see, holding hands in white, walking neatly is sort of a feet into itself.
1:31 And I can see that many of them are carrying posters or placards, but it’s a little hard to read some of them. So some of my questions right off the bat might be, who are these children? Why are they participating in this parade? Why? What did these posters say? I can see some bystanders over here along the parade route.
1:57 So who’s watching this? Who is the intended audience? Who is this for? So I have some questions, but as with any primary source, it’s important to consider the context. So let’s take a step back. Let’s zoom out and before we can dive back in. So what do we need to know to really understand these images? First of all, it’s July 1917.
2:19 So in July of 1917, America is in World War I. We have joined the war on the side of the Allies. And in President Wilson’s words, we are making the world safe for democracy. Because America is at war, we’re going to have a growing economy. We have to get ready for war. The men need to be equipped. There’s lots of supplies and things like that.
2:40 So the economy is booming. There’s a lot of jobs. I also know during this time period, and this is something that we’ve looked at before on Bridge from the Past, is that African Americans are leaving the south and moving north in pretty large numbers. And this is a large migration known as the Great Migration. Why are they doing this? Well, in part it’s because there are jobs
3:02 and it’s also in part, an escape from Jim Crow laws and segregation in the south. But segregation and discrimination are not only occurring in the south. African Americans are also going to encounter this as they move north into cities like Chicago and St. Louis. So Jim Crow are laws that put segregation
3:24 into place, and there’s also custom or de facto segregation. So even though it’s not officially a law, you’re going to see African Americans really living within one specific part of the city. So you see, this is something that’s important to keep in mind. In May and June of 1917, a race riot occurs in east St.
3:46 Louis Missouri and it leads to the deaths of approximately 150 African Americans. The death toll is unknown, in part because different groups reported the deaths at different levels. A congressional committee investigated the violence and they put the deaths lower. African American reporters such as Ida B.
4:06 Wells reported the deaths higher. It was unknown. Why did this riot occur? Well, again, many African Americans are coming into cities like east St. Louis and they’re going to be seen as competition for jobs. There’s a lot of labor problems and issues happening in the country at this time, and African Americans could be used to break strikes. So that’s going to lead to resentment on the part of whites.
4:29 Discrimination and racism, again, it’s not confined to white people in the south. It’s present in the north as well. So you have these economic pressures, you have social pressures, and you have this outbreak of violence in east St. Louis. As a response to this, the NAACP that stands for the national association for the advancement of colored people is founded in 1909 with the goal
4:53 of ending discrimination against African Americans. You have the NAACP, church and community leaders in New York City saying we need to do something big as a response to this horrible event that just took place in east St. Louis. So they decide to organize a parade of protest, a silent parade. Now I’m back in my first image.
5:14 So this parade, approximately 10,000 African Americans participated. That’s a lot of people. And you can see here you have school children. So children played a large part in this parade. It was led by NAACP officers carrying flags and beating drums. And then men, women, or children, and women followed, and then men again followed.
5:36 In the rear, the women and children were wearing white. If you think about white, the color white symbolizes purity and innocence. So these are little children that are growing up in a world where this violence, this discrimination, is something that’s just sort of a part of their world. And the white is really drawing attention to that and the tragedy of that.
5:59 And I’m going to try to zoom in here on some of the posters, but they still might be a little hard to see. So I’ll just go ahead and tell you, you have some that says suffer the little children and forbid them not so references to the Bible. You have the posters that say they’re participating in the silent parade.
6:19 This one right here is sort of the most poignant one to me. Give us a chance to live really powerful. I said that church and community leaders played a big part in organizing this, as well as the NAACP, and you see hints of that here in this image as well. So we have teachers participating. And you can also see this woman here is a nun in the habit.
6:41 So again, religion would have played a role as education, and the church and religion are a huge part of the African American community. Now I’m going to show you images of the men that are marching in this silent parade. So this picture, I think, gives us a good sense of it’s very busy.
7:01 They’re coming down Fifth Avenue, so they have a pretty large audience. You can see that people are gathered and they’re watching. These are tall buildings. There’s probably people looking out the window as well. And I can see the men are in black juxtaposed with the women and children in white. I can see here a man with a drum. So this really was a silent protest.
7:22 The only noise that the protesters were making was they had drum beats. And I think that’s really powerful, the silence. If you think about New York City and how busy and noisy it must be, that silence would be even more powerful and almost eerie in such a place. I also think it could reflect the fact that when it came to having a political
7:45 voice, a lot of African Americans felt like they didn’t have one because of Jim Crow or because of custom and discrimination. I’m going to go ahead and zoom in on this large poster here in the bottom right. And it’s still a little blurry, but what you see here is the preamble to the Declaration of Independence.
8:08 We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal. And it goes on and down here at the bottom it says, if of African descent, tear off, right. All men are created equal. This poster is so powerful in drawing attention to the fact that this violence that happened in East St.
8:29 Louis, any violence, any Jim Crow law, is in clear violation of the founding principle of equality. And to me, it’s really powerful. We started by asking how this silent protest parade of 1917 connects to a question we’ve looked at before on Bridge from the Past, and we learned that racial violence affected the early 20th century.
8:53 And African American leaders and women, children and men showed up on a swelteringly hot day in July of 1917, bring attention to the injustices that they faced. And this reminds me of this quote I love by Ida B. Wells, an African American leader and journalist.
9:14 And the quote is the way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them. So, as always, there’s so much more to the story. And I’m going to turn it over to you. How do you call for change? What do you want to know more about? What’s the next question in our discussion?
9:34 I’d love to hear from you. If you learned something, be sure to like this video. Subscribe to our channel. We put out videos all the time to help you through the school year. We also have an essay contest going on right now called we the Students. You can learn more about that at mybri.org. So, as always, keep your eyes open. Always look at the pictures.
9:55 And until I see you again, keep asking questions. Take care.
