In which state was the black farmhand lynched in 1916 in with over 10,000 spectators, that prompted Silent Parade with about 10,000 African Americans along Fifth Avenue starting at 57th Street in New York City the next year?
Silent Parade The Negro Silent Protest Parade was a silent march of about 10,000 African Americans along Fifth Avenue starting at 57th Street in New York City on July 28, 1917. The event was organized by the NAACP, church, and community leaders to protest violence directed towards African Americans, such as recent lynchings in Waco and Memphis. The parade was precipitated by the East St. Louis riots in May and July 1917 where at least 40 black people were killed by white mobs, in part touched off by a labor dispute where blacks were used for strike breaking.
Brother Blue Hugh Morgan Hill, (born Cleveland, Ohio on July 12, 1921, died Cambridge, Massachusetts November 3, 2009) who performed as Brother Blue was an African American educator, storyteller, actor, musician, street performer and living icon in Boston, in Cambridge, at Harvard University, MIT, and in the global oral storytelling community. After serving as First Lieutenant from 1943 to 1946 in the segregated United States Army in World War II and being honorably discharged, he received a BA from Harvard College in 1948 (cum laude in Social Relations), was accepted into the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) before transferring to receive a MFA from the Yale School of Drama and a Ph.D. (Divinity with pastoral sacred storytelling) from the Union Institute, having delivered his doctoral presentation at Boston's Deer Island Prison, accompanied by a 25-piece jazz orchestra, with a video recording for his dissertation committee's further consideration. While performing frequently at U.S. National Storytelling Festivals and flown abroad by organizations and patrons from England to Russia and the Bahamas, Brother Blue regularly performed on the streets around Cambridge, most notably in Harvard Square. He was the Official Storyteller of Boston and of Cambridge by resolutions of both city councils, a most unusual honor, doubled.