 It's been over 100 years since the NAACP's first protest parade happened in New York City. Historically known as the Silent March, it was organized by W.E.B. Du Bois as a response to the race-based violence faced by African Americans across the United States in the early 1900s. Sparked by the East St. Louis riots where white mobs attacked and killed blacks in 1917, the goal of the Silent March was to get the attention of President Woodrow Wilson and to strike down the practice of lynching.