Together We March Read online

  FOR PEYTON AND ALL THOSE-BOTH YOUNG AND SEASONED-WHO WERE AND ARE READY TO MARCH

  -L. H.

  TO THOSE WHO MAKE THEIR VOICE HEARD, EVEN IF IT’S HARD.

  —T. F.

  There’s something about a march that is very powerful. It’s a powerful weapon, a powerful organizing tool, and it has a powerful influence on those who participate.… You have a definite starting place and definite goal. You’re moving, making progress every step… you get a lot of courage.… The march picks up its own cadence, its own spirit, its own history.

  —Cesar Chavez

  INTRODUCTION

  IN RECENT YEARS, have you noticed more and more people are taking to the streets to protest? These people are using their feet, their voices, the words on their signs, and the strength in their numbers to combat injustice, oppression, inequality, and discrimination. They protest these wrongs, demand change, and call for further action in their neighborhoods, cities, states, and countries, or even in the world, every day. It may feel like this global surge of speaking out is new, but marching and marchers have a long history.

  For decades, marches both great and small have been an invaluable tool to help bring about social change for many marginalized groups. By bringing together people with differing perspectives and experiences under a unified umbrella, the demand that the public, the media, and the government work towards something better for everyone—not just a select few—rings louder and clearer.

  By itself, a march can energize a group of people, welcome newcomers to a cause, or give veterans of a fight the power to go on. But marchers also bring awareness of an issue to the public at large, giving strength to a movement, and putting a plan into action. Though a march can be made up of many or simply a few, they all grow from the determination of people, and the collective might of a group. As people march they are no longer just one individual, one voice, one opinion, or one demand.

  Even though the overall journey to change may be long, marching can be a powerful and pivotal component in a campaign because this show of numbers can grab the attention of the public in ways other efforts cannot. By drawing media attention, marches can put faces to the issues and broadcast a clear message that may turn the heads and hearts of those who have remained indifferent. It can also add pressure on people in power as the world’s eyes turn to them. Marches are most effective when they are part of a larger movement, but on their own, they have been a rallying cry, a shield in the face of hatred, and the hope needed to remind people they are not alone in what they are facing.

  Within these pages you will see when and why people in different eras have marched and continue to march today. You will see how marching brings purpose, support, and optimism to the whole, whether it is at the beginning of a fight, or a continued push.

  Within these pages you will also learn of the tremendous sacrifices many have made not just for themselves but for strangers, their families, and their communities. You will discover people who were confronted with imprisonment, threats, or violence, but who did not back down or resort to violence themselves. People who felt that the hope of a better tomorrow was worth the sting of today, even with many miles still left to go.

  From these incredible marchers, we learn that even when a fight seems impossible, or a situation or circumstance immovable, marching can be the push needed to tip the scales and create a movement.

  You will see how marginalized communities today continue this work in striving for social justice; equal access to things like health care, food, and jobs; and a society where skin color, gender, sexual orientation, ability, or birthplace do not limit these opportunities. You will also see how everyone—regardless of who they are and where they are from—can be affected by gun violence, climate change, war, and the suffering of others.

  Numbers today may have grown, and technology has certainly changed and advanced our ability to spread our messages, but the core reasons why we march remain the same. In the face of extreme doubt and uncertainty, people of all ages and backgrounds continue to choose to march, believing they can create change and go farther on the heels of those who marched before them.

  This book celebrates this rich history and the often-overlooked stories, revered moments, and courageous people who continue to teach us the importance of coming together to march.

  MARCH OF THE MILL CHILDREN

  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Oyster Bay, New York

  July 7 – 29, 1903

  Sometimes it takes extraordinary means to attract ordinary interest.

  —Mother Jones

  TOGETHER WE MARCH TO PROTECT OUR CHILDHOOD

  Today, it’s hard to imagine children as young as five working alongside men and women on dangerous machines, breathing lint-filled air. However, in textile mills in the early 1900s it was commonplace for kids to spend ten to fourteen hours a day working in these hot rooms instead of going to school. In Pennsylvania, the law prohibited children under the age of twelve from working, but that law was rarely enforced. The wages from millwork were tiny, even with the long hours. Nevertheless, families needed to eat, so every able body contributed.

  Factory tasks were often very routine but also dangerous, and mill owners made no effort to make them safer, not even for their youngest employees. So early one June morning in 1903, when the opening bells rang out across Kensington, a neighborhood in northern Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, nearly ninety thousand textile workers, including ten thousand children, did not show up for work. Instead they banded together to strike for better wages, shorter hours, and safer working conditions. Despite this, the mill owners did not fold. They simply waited for their poor, malnourished workers to give up.

  Not everyone ignored the workers, though. Mary “Mother” Harris Jones, an Irish immigrant and prominent labor and community organizer, heard them loud and clear. At almost seventy, she was known to many as “the most dangerous woman in America” because she spoke her mind and was not afraid to act.

  As soon as she saw the stooped frames, bent knees, and sickly faces of the child strikers, she knew they needed more than just a shorter work week—they needed protection under the law. However, since the mill owners owned stock in the newspapers, the papers never covered these abuses, and the general public did not seem to know or care about the plight of the mill children.

  But Mother Jones had a mind to change that! On July 7, 1903, she and some say almost two hundred children—known as her “industrial army”—along with about one hundred adults set out from Kensington led by a fife and drum. The children carried banners reading, WE WANT TO GO TO SCHOOL and WE ONLY ASK FOR JUSTICE. Their plan was to march over ninety miles to New York City to gain the public’s attention.

  Mother Jones held rallies and gave speeches in the towns they marched through. She lifted the youngest children up high, showing their hollowed chests, deformed shoulders, and mangled fingers. Soon pastors and universities all over the country were talking about Mother Jones and the mill children. People were finally listening.

  This gave Mother Jones another idea. Wouldn’t more people hear them if they marched their concerns right to the president? Their final destination quickly changed to Oyster Bay, New York, which was another thirty-five miles away and where President Theodore Roosevelt vacationed with his family.

  Day after day, carrying knapsacks and banners, the young marchers faced heat, rain, mosquitoes, and other hardships. Even though their bodies were frail and overworked, they were eager to do their part. Farmers gave them fruit and vegetables, and other supporters provided donations, clothes, and shelter to help them.

  Unfortunately, many children had to turn back because they weren’t strong enough to complete the journey. Undaunted, Mother Jones and three determined y
oung crusaders journeyed to the president, arriving on the twenty-second day of their march. Though the president refused to see them, the rest of the country did not. Their march brought much-needed attention to the cruelty of child labor practices and the effect they had on these children, as thousands came to hear Mother Jones and the children at each stop. And this attention helped lead to the creation of the National Child Labor Committee one year later. Progress was slow, but after twelve years, in 1915, Pennsylvania finally passed a law prohibiting children under the age of fourteen from working. A year after that, the federal government created its first child labor law, which would start to protect children across the country.

  The march of the mill children was one of the first juvenile marches in US history. Alone, their voices might have been small; however, together, they were mighty, showing that kids just like you can make a difference.

  MUD MARCH

  London, England

  February 9, 1907

  Rise up, women, for the fight is hard and long;

  Rise up in thousands singing loud a battle song.

  Right is might, and in strength we shall be strong,

  And the cause goes marching on.

  —“Rise Up Women!” song by Theodora Mills

  TOGETHER WE MARCH FOR A WOMAN'S RIGHT TO VOTE

  While the mill children of Pennsylvania were picking up their signs, women in Great Britain were campaigning for a woman’s right to vote. They thought it only fair that since they were expected to follow the laws, they should get a say in who was passing them.

  However, not everyone agreed on how to achieve this goal. Some believed in more reserved, law-abiding approaches, like leaflets, petitions, and public meetings. Others had grown tired of being nice and felt more active protest was needed. A suffrage organization called the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) became known for standing on chairs, disrupting government meetings, and being willing to break the law. Soon members found themselves in jail for assaulting police or for refusing to pay fines. Although the public often disapproved, for some it was also fascinating to see women employing these methods.

  Other groups, including the leading suffrage organization, the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), disagreed with the WSPU’s tactics. Still, their leader, Millicent Fawcett, noticed something very crucial: the WSPU garnered press attention in a way her group did not. She realized it was the perfect time to embrace the determination of the “suffragettes”—a term used for the more extreme campaigners—and find a way to continue the momentum they’d started, through more peaceful means.

  Millicent and her female “suffragists” decided they’d hold a public procession in the streets at the next opening session of Parliament. Although this may not seem controversial or daring today, in the early 1900s the idea of women parading in the street was almost scandalous! However, after many telegrams, letters, some telephone calls, and two newspaper advertisements, hundreds of women, even noblewomen, agreed to attend. For some suffragists, this meant risking public shaming, their employment, and friendships. But their determination was greater than the risk, and they were ready to show the government and public by their numbers how committed they were to getting the vote.

  On the day of the march, the weather was cold and dreary, so the organizers weren’t certain who might attend. But on that rainy, fog-filled Saturday, women from all over Britain, wealthy and aristocratic ladies, scholars in university caps and gowns, high school headmistresses, artists, textile workers, typists, nurses, seamstresses, and teachers, all showed up to march. More than forty organizations and three thousand soaking-wet women in silk and velvet, with sashes and banners, sloshed through the muddy streets of London.

  Onlookers pressed in, not believing the sight. Some laughed or pointed, but many were simply astonished that white women from all classes had put aside their differences and were marching side by side, their long skirts sweeping across the mud. The suffragists marched, heads held high, about a mile and a half, from Hyde Park Corner to Exeter Hall, near Trafalgar Square. They carried signs and embroidered organization banners, stating GENTLE, BUT RESOLUTE and BE RIGHT AND PERSIST. The procession of women, three female bands, and a line of motorcars, wagons, hansoms, and carriages stretched for half a mile.

  By today’s measure, these numbers may appear small, but in 1907 the Mud March was one of the largest marches ever held. It was also the first led by women for the rights of women. By marching, they’d not only gained the attention of London, but also the world. Newspapers in the US, Canada, and Australia carried their story. In Britain they were even front-page news!

  Although no immediate action was taken in Parliament, the momentum and publicity encouraged the NUWSS to continue holding marches. By 1911, their demonstrations had swelled from three thousand to forty thousand women. Due in large part to the muddy marchers, women over age thirty with British university degrees and property gained the right to vote in 1918, and full rights were granted to all women over age twenty-one in 1928.

  By pushing themselves to defy expectations of a woman’s role for all the world to see, these suffragists challenged the ideas and justifications men in power used to keep the vote away from them. There was still a long way to go for full equality, but with their voices and their feet, women marching together let those who opposed them know that they belonged everywhere men did—including the voting booth!

  SILENT PROTEST PARADE

  New York, New York

  July 28, 1917

  We live in spite of death shadowing us and ours. We prosper in the face of the most unwarranted and illegal oppression.

  —NAACP flyer for the march

  TOGETHER WE MARCH TO BE TREATED AS EQUAL CITIZENS

  At a time when women were demanding voting rights, Black Americans were also demanding the vote and equal protection under the law. It had been more than fifty years since the end of the Civil War and their emancipation from slavery; however, Black citizens were far from free or equal. In the South, Jim Crow laws segregated access to schools, pools, elevators, hospitals, and more, by designating many as “whites only.” Also, southern Black citizens often faced bleak economic opportunities, and many were denied voting rights through poll taxes they couldn’t afford, literacy tests they weren’t meant to pass, and other forms of racial oppression. And discrimination wasn’t just by law. Black Americans faced the constant threat of violence as well.

  In the first five months of 1916 alone, thirty-one Black Americans were publicly killed by mobs, but the white perpetrators of the lynchings were never charged. Frustrated and angered by these countless acts of violence, as well as by segregation laws and poor job prospects, hundreds of thousands of Black citizens fled the South in what became known as the Great Migration. They hoped for a safer and more prosperous future in the North, where factories were growing to meet the demands of the First World War. However, due in part to limited housing and jobs, not all northern cities were welcoming, and Black Americans faced violence there, too.

  When a factory owner in East St. Louis, Illinois, hired newly arrived southern Black workers as strikebreakers, displacing local white workers, and a white officer was killed during racial tensions, white mobs set fires to houses in Black neighborhoods. They intentionally cut water supplies, shot or stoned Black people trying to flee the burning buildings, and ultimately burned ten blocks of homes. The rioting went on throughout the night as the National Guard and the mayor did little to help. As many as two hundred Black citizens were killed, including the young and disabled, and six thousand were left homeless.

  The executive committee of the Harlem, New York City, branch of the newly formed National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) quickly came together after the terrible incident to figure out a response. Many wanted to hold an urgent meeting, but prominent member and noted civil rights activist James Weldon Johnson suggested a silent parade: no colorful clothing, chanting, or singing; simply deter
mined Black souls marching as one in silence against injustice. Silence would provoke a striking scene, but also speak to the fact that for far too long, the government and the public had been silent on the violence faced by Black citizens. Through a big showing of their own silence and dignity, marchers hoped to draw attention and force the government to confront the issues.

  More than ten thousand Black residents of the greater New York area heard the call. So, at 1:00 p.m. on a hot July day in 1917, Johnson strode out in front of the crowd with other Black leaders, including NAACP founding member and scholar W. E. B. DuBois and Rev. Dr. H. C. Bishop, the president of the parade. Women and children all in white marched hand in hand, while men marched behind in dark suits and military uniforms. While Boy Scouts distributed leaflets to inform onlookers about the discrimination, segregation, and lynching of Black Americans, muffled drums were the only sounds heard.

  During the two-mile-long march from Fifth Avenue, New York’s wealthiest street, to Madison Square, protesters let their banners and posters tell the story of why they marched. Never had such a sight been seen in New York, or in all the world. When certain banners passed onlookers, applause rang out in agreement from both white and brown hands. After the march, a petition was sent to the White House urging President Wilson to support anti-lynching legislation.

  Even though marchers were unified in their belief, sadly the rest of the country did not unite behind the cause. Instead of heeding their call for protections under the law, President Wilson went against his campaign promises to support Black Americans and further segregated the federal government. However, while the Silent Protest Parade didn’t achieve its ultimate goal, the march was the beginning of mass nonviolent protest marches against racial violence that would continue through the Civil Rights era and beyond.