Together We March Read online

  SALT MARCH

  Ahmedabad, India, to Dandi, India

  March 12 – April 6, 1930

  I want world sympathy in this battle of right against might.

  —Mahatma Gandhi

  TOGETHER WE MARCH FOR INDEPENDENCE

  While Black Americans were publicly demanding protection as equal citizens, the people of India were striving to be independent and self-governing after almost two hundred years under British colonial control. English ships had initially sailed to India to partake in trade, but the British Crown soon found heavily taxing Indian citizens to be even more lucrative.

  By 1928, the Indian National Congress (INC), a political party started by the people of India yearning for independence, had had enough. They created a declaration of independence that they formally approved the next year, but the British government ignored it. At that time, Indians had already been engaging in several nonviolent protests and boycotts that challenged unjust British laws. However, one of the nationalist movement’s leaders, the lawyer and well-known social activist Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi, understood stronger, more visible action needed to be taken.

  He proposed a nonviolent protest challenging the Salt Act of 1882. Although salt taxes had been abolished in Britain in 1825, the Salt Act of 1882 kept Indians from collecting and selling salt from the sea as they had always done. Instead, they had to buy it from government shops where it was heavily taxed. Many in the INC initially disagreed with this campaign, not understanding how salt could make an impact. They were wrong.

  Disobeying the Salt Act was a perfect and relatable nonviolent way to rally the whole public to challenge the overall system of unjust rule. Salt was something everyone used, so the tax affected them all. Plans were soon underway, and on March 12, 1930, the sixty-one-year-old Gandhi and seventy-nine of his followers set out from his ashram, or spiritual home, near Ahmedabad, India, to begin the 240-mile journey to a small seaside village, far away on the Arabian Sea. Each day the protesters marched ten to twelve miles, and newspapers across the globe documented their journey. Like the marchers who came before him, Gandhi knew the media attention would raise global awareness of the injustices they faced under British rule and garner public support and sympathy needed for the larger cause of Indian independence.

  People lined roadsides and watched from open windows, tree branches, and anywhere else they might get a glimpse of the marchers. At each stop, Gandhi spoke out against British rule and the salt tax and called for people to protest in whatever way they could beyond this one march—boycotting, demonstrating, or picketing. Sometimes crowds grew larger than twenty thousand, but police did not take action. The government feared a backlash and did not want to make Gandhi a martyr in front of the world.

  The march took twenty-four days and grew with each step. By the time they reached the coastal village of Dandi, the eighty marchers had grown to thousands, and journalists were on hand to witness it. Days before, police had ground the salt crust along the seashore into the wet sand to make it hard for Gandhi and his followers to collect it. But this did not stop him. He did not need pounds of salt to defy the government. He only needed a few grains. Reaching down, he scooped up a handful of salt-rich sand and said, “With this, I am shaking the foundations of the British empire.” Gandhi could easily have taken a car straight to the seashore, but he knew the importance of each step of the march that had brought them there.

  Through his small act of defiance and civil disobedience, he started a movement. Millions followed his lead in breaking the law by making, selling, and illegally buying salt to defy British rule. Although the salt protest did not bring an end to the salt tax, marching to collect a few grains of salt highlighted a foreign power’s oppressive hand and galvanized a nation, soon bringing Britain and India to the negotiating table as equals. Once they had begun, the people of India refused to stop fighting the injustice of British rule until India gained its independence seventeen years later.

  BULGARIAN JEWS MARCH

  Sofia, Bulgaria

  May 24, 1943

  You know what you have to do. Let the trains leave empty, we shall stay here, we shall not go to the slaughter.

  —Rabbi Asher Hananel, Sofia’s de facto chief rabbi

  TOGETHER WE MARCH BECAUSE IT IS THE ONLY WAY

  While the people of India continued their struggle for independence, Bulgaria’s Jewish population was fighting to survive. For hundreds of years, Bulgarian Jews and Christians had lived together as equals. They respected each other’s religious beliefs and on occasion participated in each other’s religious activities. They shopped at each other’s businesses, attended the same parties, spoke the same language, and shared meals. For five hundred years, they’d suffered, starved, and struggled together under Turkish rule, and in World War I, they fought side by side. The Bulgarian constitution and many of its citizens saw all people as equal regardless of religion or ethnicity.

  Then, in the 1930s when Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party rose to power in Germany, life and ideals across much of Europe shifted. King Boris III of Bulgaria agreed to become an ally of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, and some Bulgarian people began to adopt the Nazi hatred against Jews as well. Nazi youth groups began to form, and Bulgaria soon introduced anti-Jewish laws, which saw Jewish people as noncitizens and enemies of the state, stripping them of many rights both personally and professionally.

  Although the Bulgarian government had turned on its Jewish population, many of the country’s non-Jewish citizens had not. Hundreds of open letters, telegrams, and petitions poured into the capital city of Sofia. People from every walk of life opposed this treatment of their Jewish neighbors and friends and demanded these laws be changed.

  But even in the face of protests and local support, oppression of the Jewish population increased. Hitler and pro-Nazi Bulgarian leaders wanted all Jews deported from Bulgarian territories, so in March of 1943 over eleven thousand Jews from Bulgarian-controlled territories were sent to Nazi-run death camps in Poland with very little protest. However, when word spread that the same fate awaited Jewish families, friends, and neighbors in the “old lands,” Bulgaria itself, people across the country finally moved to act.

  On May 24, 1943, a national holiday of Bulgarian alphabet, knowledge, and culture, Metropolitan Stefan of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church gave a few harsh words at the end of his speech in front of many government officials and non-Jewish citizens in Sofia saying the celebration was “flawed” because the Jewish students were no longer permitted to be a part of the festivities. On that day instead, many in the Jewish population were meeting in a small synagogue in a Jewish neighborhood to pray and discuss their fate. Hundreds more surrounded the synagogue as well. With the news of their almost certain deportation, there began rumblings about public protest, and after some hesitation, the Jewish public gathered there agreed to march.

  Hundreds of Jews from Sofia and some non-Jewish supporters were ready to march to the palace of the king to demand he protect the Jewish population because they were Bulgarian citizens. Wearing their government-mandated yellow stars of David, the Jewish citizens, marching behind a national flag, were bold in their act of defiance against Hitler and the pro-Nazi government of Bulgaria. With each step, Bulgarian Jews showed they were willing to fight for their survival and would not go quietly. Jewish men, women, and children marched from the synagogue a number of blocks before they were confronted by police armed with rifles, submachine guns, and whips. Many Jews were beaten and hundreds were arrested, though some were able to hide in sympathizers’ homes, churches, and even in a non-Jewish bakery. The march did not make it far, but it showed Jewish resilience and the bonds of neighbors and friends as non-Jews rallied alongside them. In no other country during the war did such a protest happen.

  Although the Jewish population of Sofia and most other large cities and southern towns was transported to labor camps and transportation centers in the north, no trains ever reached Poland. In fact, they ne
ver left Bulgaria. King Boris III had changed his mind. Due in large part to Christian and Jewish leaders and the citizens of Bulgaria demanding protection of all citizens, 48,000 Jews from Bulgaria were saved during the Holocaust.

  Though the war would not end for two more years, and many more Jewish people were killed throughout Europe, this march was an important lesson that even those with little power can make heroic things happen by standing up for one another.

  WOMEN STRIKE FOR PEACE

  Nationwide, United States

  November 1, 1961

  The sit-in strikers have reminded us, as the suffragettes did long ago, of the tremendous power for good in each single person.

  —Patricia Kempler, a WSP march organizer in Los Angeles

  TOGETHER WE MARCH TO SAVE THE HUMAN RACE

  During World War II, while the Jewish community of Sofia marched against orders for their forced removal, America and the Soviet Union, which included Russia and fourteen other surrounding countries, fought as allies against Hitler and the Nazis. However, these two countries did not share the same political and economic views. While the United States is a democracy and values individual freedom, the Soviet Union was communist and believed in shared ownership by government and community. After the defeat of Germany and its allies, as Europe debated how to rebuild, Americans and Soviets soon began to think that the other was planning to destroy their political system and threaten their way of life.

  Each nation believed that in order to contain the other’s might, it needed increased military and nuclear capability. Soon the two superpowers were in an “arms race” to build the most advanced nuclear weapons. And to do so, they needed to test them. Although the US government told Americans that aboveground nuclear testing was safe, a number of scientists and physicists around the world disagreed. Studies showed that after an explosion, the fallout—particles of harmful radioactive dust—could be carried on the wind, or fall to the ground and be consumed by grazing animals, especially cows. Their milk would then affect humans who drank it, even causing radioactive compounds to grow in children’s bones.

  When children’s book illustrator Dagmar Wilson and six friends discussed these issues in her Washington, DC, home in 1961, little did they know it would be the start of a movement. They didn’t consider themselves activists, but they realized if they could spread the reports of the effects of contaminated milk on children, mothers and other women especially would rally to protest nuclear testing on their behalf. And so “Women Strike for Peace” was formed.

  Their focus was to highlight dangers of aboveground testing, to demand “Pure Milk Not Poison,” and to call for a ban from both the US and Soviet powers on nuclear weapons testing. They planned a large rally and march to the White House, but also urged individuals in communities across the country to create their own protest activities under the umbrella of the larger organization. Within six weeks, through word of mouth and Christmas card address lists, the group had notified women across the country about their goals for the nationwide protest.

  On November 1, 1961, more than twelve thousand women in sixty cities throughout America took part in the strike. Female college students, teenagers, mothers, widows, university professors, teachers, and grandmothers marched together to local government buildings. Some held babies or pushed strollers and many carried signs. Dagmar Wilson’s group, along with more than a thousand others, even marched to the White House and the Soviet Embassy in DC. There they delivered letters to First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy and to the Soviet Union’s First Lady, Nina Khrushchev, urging them to speak with their husbands to stop this harmful testing. Women marchers demanded that the country “End the Arms Race, Not the Human Race.”

  Some of them were met by applause, others with blank stares. While some officials agreed to carry their message of peace to the president, others told them to redirect their anger to the Soviets or refused to give them an audience at all. Regardless, the women continued to march and gained nationwide attention. Many newspapers marveled at their ability to come together from all different backgrounds in such force in just six weeks for this protest. It was a message to everyone that one person reaching out to even just a few people, like Dagmar Wilson did, can make a difference.

  In part because of their voices and the attention paid to their cause by the media and political groups, two years later the Soviet Union and the United States signed the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which banned nuclear weapons tests in the air, in outer space, and underwater. While nuclear weapons have not yet been eliminated, this was an important step toward making the world safer.

  These women are a reminder that even if you do not consider yourself an activist, taking even a small action can start a whole movement!

  CHILDREN’S MARCH (THE CHILDREN’S CRUSADE)

  Birmingham, Alabama

  May 2–7, 1963

  Don’t worry about your children, they’re gonna be all right. Don’t hold them back if they want to go to jail. For they are doing a job for all of America and for all mankind.

  —Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

  TOGETHER WE MARCH FOR AN END TO "SEPARATE BUT EQUAL"

  Much like the newly engaged activism of members of “Women Strike for Peace,” Black youth in the south understood they were needed. Action was just as necessary as it had been during the Silent Protest Parade in the 1920s and beyond. In the 1940s, ‘50s, and ‘60s Black demonstrators continued to demand protection and equal rights under the law because they did not truly garner the same rights as white citizens anywhere in the US, especially not in the South.

  Injustices were happening all over the country, but nowhere more so than in Birmingham, Alabama. There had been more bombings of Black homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other American city. Black workers were paid far less than their white counterparts, and “whites only” and “colored only” signs hung throughout the city’s downtown. Local Black leaders, led by Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, made countless attempts to meet with Birmingham’s white leadership to negotiate changes on behalf of the Black community, but they were ignored. They needed direct action. So on April 3, 1963, they boycotted local businesses, had sit-ins at white lunch counters and libraries, took part in kneel-ins at white churches to gauge the churches’ openness for desegregated worship, and held mass meetings to discuss further strategies.

  White city officials fought back. They went to the courts to legally stop protesters. However, Black citizens kept protesting, and soon thousands were jailed. As more people were arrested and concern grew among them about losing their jobs or being evicted from their homes if they protested, it was proposed that children could lead the campaign. At first, not many agreed. Protesting could be dangerous. But adults were not the only ones who wanted change. Young people were tired of department stores and libraries being closed to them. They were tired of looking through fences at playgrounds and ball fields they couldn’t use and amusement park rides they couldn’t ride. Like their parents, they wanted to fight, and marching was something they could do.

  By word of mouth the plan spread and thousands of young students—some as young as six or seven years old—agreed to march on May 2, 1963, a day they called “D-Day” (Demonstration Day). When the signal was given, these kids climbed out of schoolhouse windows and rushed through doors to get out and march. Some came from as far as eighteen miles away.

  In groups of fifty, they left the 16th Street Baptist Church and headed toward downtown Birmingham. After only a few blocks, local white authorities arrested them for parading without a permit. But as soon as they did, fifty more students marched from the church. By day’s end, more than eight hundred students had been carried to jail in school buses and police wagons. By the second day, Double D-Day, jails and holding facilities were full almost to bursting and Black classrooms were nearly empty. Nevertheless, the students kept on coming. In frustration and hatred for the parading children and what they stood for, Public Safety Commissioner Eugene “Bull�
� Conner roared at fire departments to spray the peaceful young marchers with high-powered water hoses. But still more students came. Soon, additional force was ordered, and policemen clubbed nonviolent marchers with batons, while attack dogs pulled at their bodies and clothes.

  And yet the young people still kept coming.

  The nightly news broadcast the alarming scenes into living rooms across the country. Newspapers splashed the troubling stories on their pages. The world saw what happened to Black children in Birmingham when they asked for equality. So, as the world watched, moved by the children’s courage and determination and not wanting any more harm to come to them, pressure built and negotiations began from as high as the White House. Just as people had upon seeing the mill children with Mother Jones, Americans could no longer ignore the students’ demand for fair treatment.

  By May 10, an agreement had been reached. “White” and “Colored” signs would come down, lunch counters and fitting rooms would become open to all, and every jailed protester would be released. Over three thousand young people in Birmingham fearlessly marching together would not soon be forgotten. There was still a long way to go, but their brave efforts gave much-needed momentum to the nationwide call for racial equality and showed us the power to take a stand is possible within even the youngest of us.