Freedom Facts and Firsts. Jessie Carney Smith
various issues confronting them, such as women in prison, independent schools for African Americans, hiring practices for African American women, crime, teen pregnancy, and the need to increase the number of black women in business and politics. Some were concerned that there were issues that many women’s groups ignore, such as human rights abuses against blacks; they were also worried about what they felt was CIA involvement in the crack trade in black communities.
The event was modeled after the Million Man March held in 1995; women from all walks of life organized it. The daylong activities addressed the theme “Repentance, Resurrection, and Restoration” and began at the Liberty Bell with a prayer service; inspirational speeches and music followed. Some women had staked out their positions by 5:00 A.M. Speaking at the occasion were Congresswoman Maxine Waters; Winnie Mandela, former wife of South African activist Nelson Mandela; and rapper Sister Soulja. During the breaks, the marchers chanted several phrases or messages, such as “MWM, MWM,” for “Million Woman March.” March cofounder and grass-roots activist and local entrepreneur Phile Chionesu told the crowd, “We are taking back our neighborhoods.” Chionesu, a retired Chicago police officer, and Cheryl Thomas-Porter wanted the march to counteract the negative images of African American women so prominent in the media and popular culture. They called black women the epitome of strength in America and said that they “want to prepare our women, no matter what their status in life, to look at how we can begin to invest as black women and how we can begin to vote in blocs as black women.”
Asia Coney, the first to recognize the need for a march, was cofounder of the event with Chionesu. She said in “Million Woman March Seen as Step Toward Unity” that, from the beginning of life for black women in this country, “We’ve taken care of white women, white men, white children … our own men, our own children. And now it’s time that we take care of ourselves.” The march ended at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Estimates are that 2. 1 million people lined the march route along Benjamin Franklin Parkway by early afternoon, and law enforcement officers estimate that the crowd ranged in size from 300,000 to 1 million. The march officials estimated 2. 5 million people participated in the various activities and generated about $25 million in business for Philadelphia over a three-day period. The belief was that the march demonstrated the “capability and brilliance of African-centered self-determination and creativity.”
On October 26 through 28, 2007, the Million Woman March Organization sponsored a reunion to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the Million Woman March. Called “From March to Movement: The Resurrection,” this celebration was also held in Philadelphia.
Jessie Carney Smith
Millions More Movement (2005)
A decade after the Million Man March, several leading African Americans, including Louis Farrakhan and then-U.S. Senator Barack Obama, planned another march on Washington called the Million More Movement that was to be a three-day affair. Planners aimed to mobilize black people to create a movement—not just a march—that would appeal to blacks to address the conditions of the poor. Issues included unity, spiritual values, education, economic development, political power, reparations, health, artistic/cultural development, and peace. The event was held in Washington, D.C., opening with a mass meeting at the National Mall on October 15, 2005; this was followed by a mass ecumenical service on October 16. Both the NAACP and the Congressional Black Caucus endorsed the event. The celebration called for a Day of Absence on October 14, meaning that black men should march instead of going to work. Those who did not march should stay at home and refuse to make purchases in order to demonstrate the significance of blacks on the economy. Farrakhan also called for women and youth to join in the movement. Economist Julianne Malveaux, who later became president of Bennett College for Women, was one who criticized the march of 1995 for its focus on black men, but she supported this new effort. In Crisis magazine, she said she saw the Millions More Movement in a different light and, after talking with Farrakhan, was assured that the new effort was an inclusive march and that “everyone was welcomed at the table.” The movement called for unity in black leadership, too.
Jessie Carney Smith
Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955–1956)
The Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955 marked the beginnings of mass protest among African Americans when Rosa McCully Parks refused to render her seat to a white man on the Cleveland Avenue bus driven by James F. Blake. Arrested and sent to jail, Parks inspired African Americans, under the leadership of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., to boycott Montgomery’s public transportation system. A 13month boycott ensued after Parks’s arrest and ended when the U.S. Supreme Court agreed that Montgomery’s racial bus seating requirements were unconstitutional in the Browder v. Gayle case.
Before Parks’s arrest, though, African American women, through the Women’s Political Council (WPC), had focused their attention on the Jim Crow bus rules a year earlier. In 1954 Jo Ann Robinson, president of the WPC, met with W. A. Gayle, the mayor of Montgomery, and enumerated desired changes to the Montgomery bus laws. The sought-after changes included: no one should have to stand next to empty seats; a decree that African Americans not be made to pay at the front of the bus and then enter from the rear; and a directive that required buses to stop at every corner in African American neighborhoods, just as they did in white neighborhoods. The March 1954 meeting yielded no changes, however, and Robinson followed up by sending Gayle a letter restating the WPC’s requests and communicating the possibility of a citywide bus boycott.
The bus where Rosa Parks staged her famous protest that sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott is proudly preserved at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan (AP Photo/Paul Warner).
A year later, buses remained segregated. On March 2, 1955, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin was arrested nine months before Parks, when she openly refused to surrender her seat to a white passenger. Seven months later, on October 21, 18-year-old Mary Louise Smith was arrested for the same violation. Neither of these cases galvanized the African American community like that of Rosa Parks. Following the December 1, 1955, arrest of Rosa Parks, Robinson printed flyers asking African Americans in Montgomery to stay off the city’s buses on December 5, the day of Parks’s trial. On that day, African American citizens of Montgomery complied with the request. Later in the day, the African American clergy and leaders decided to launch a long-term boycott. This meeting gave birth to the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) and brought the young Martin Luther King Jr. into the national spotlight.
Functionaries of the MIA met with city commissioners and bus company officials on December 8, 1955, and they issued a list of formal demands similar to those issued earlier by Robinson and the WPC. Both the city and the bus company refused to relinquish the Jim Crow seating rule on Montgomery buses. Black Montgomery continued the boycott. Following the paradigm set by the Reverend T. J. Jemison and the 1953 bus boycott in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the MIA developed a carpool system to aid in the transportation needs of African Americans in Montgomery. Women played a critical role in sustaining the boycott, especially the anonymous cooks and maids who made long walks to and from home for a year to sustain the efforts of desegregation. After the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear appeals in the Browder v. Gayle case, the MIA voted to end Montgomery’s 381-day bus boycott. On December 21, 1956, blacks returned to riding a now-desegregated Montgomery public system of transportation.
Linda T. Wynn
NAACP Silent Protest Parade (1917)
The NAACP’s Silent Protest Parade, also known as the Silent March, was held on 5th Avenue in New York City on Saturday, July 28, 1917, and was spurred by violence toward African Americans and race riots and outages in Waco, Texas; Memphis, Tennessee; and East St. Louis, Illinois. Typical of this unrest was the East St. Louis Race Riot, also called the East St. Louis Massacre, which drove almost 6,000 blacks from their burning homes, and left hundreds of blacks