5,000 March Silently Past the White House to Protest Lynching
Considered to be perhaps the first peaceful march for civil rights in Washington, D.C., 5,000 African-Americans quietly marched past the White House and the U.S. Senate building to denounce lynching and to demand a federal anti-lynching law.
On July 28, 1917, the NAACP had organized a silent march of 10,000 people down Fifth Avenue in New York City to protest racist violence. The 1917 march was in response to the East St. Louis race riot that began on July 2, 1917. Congress never passed a law outlawing lynching, however, due to opposition from Southern state legislators.
An anti-lynching bill was introduced in the House of Representatives but it was defeated in 1922 and not revived. A new anti-lynching bill was introduced in the early 1930s. But because of the power of southern segregationists, particularly in the Senate and no support from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, it never passed.
The Senate on June 13, 2005 apologized for never passing an anti-lynching law.
On April 20, 1939, the great jazz singer Billie Holiday recorded the famous anti-lynching song, “Strange Fruit.”
Learn more about the NAACP anti-lynching campaign: http://www.naacp.org/pages/naacp-history-anti-lynching-bill
And more about the Dyer anti-lynching bill: http://www.blackpast.org/aah/dyer-anti-lynching-bill-1922
Read the 2015 report on the number of lynchings: Equal Justice Initiative, Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror (2015)
Learn more about the march: http://washingtonspark.wordpress.com/2013/02/06/before-1963-the-1922-silent-march-on-washington/
Read: Robert Zangrando, The NAACP’s Anti-Lynching Crusade Against Lynching, 1909 to 1950 (1980)
Learn more about the history of marching on Washington: Lucy Barber, Marching on Washington: The Forging of an American Political Tradition (2002)