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THIS WEEK IN PEOPLE’S HISTORY, MAR 5–11, 2025  
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_ Militant Nonviolent Civil Disobedience Catches On (1960), The 20th
Century’s Largest One-Day Demonstration (1930), ‘Bloody Sunday’
(1965), March 8, International Women’s Day _

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_MILITANT NONVIOLENT CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE CATCHES ON (1960)_

MARCH 5 IS THE 65TH ANNIVERSARY of the day when a 5-week-long outbreak
of militant anti-racist protests spread from the South, where it
began, into Boston, New York City, Newark, Washington,D.C., Los
Angeles and Seattle.

After beginning on February 1, the unprecedented wave of challenges to
segregation had shut down scores of lunch counters in 35 population
centers across eight southern states.

The breadth of the movement can be seen in the number of locations
where, in just five weeks, Jim Crow business-as-usual finally began to
meet its match: 

13 cities in North Carolina – Chapel Hill, Charlotte, Concord,
Durham, Elizabeth City, Fayetteville, Greensboro, Henderson, High
Point, Raleigh, Salisbury, Shelby and Winston-Salem

Five in Virginia – Hampton, Norfolk, Petersburg, Portsmouth and
Richmond

Five in South Carolina – Charleston, Columbia, Orangeburg, Rock Hill
and Sumter

Five in Florida – Daytona Beach, Miami, St. Petersburg, Tallahassee
and Tampa

Two in Tennessee – Chattanooga and Nashville

Two in Kentucky – Frankfort and Lexington

Two in Alabama – Montgomery and Tuskegee

One in Houston, Texas

While the tide of protest was still rising in the South, on this day
it spread to the North, where hundreds of pickets, organized by the
Congress of Racial Equality, jammed the sidewalks outside stores owned
by the same national chains – Woolworth, McCrory, W.T. Grant and
Kress – that were helping to enforce Jim Crow in the South. 

To everyone with the slightest connection to the civil rights
movement, the five weeks leading up to March 5 were a watershed.
Demonstrations and sit-ins were not new, but there had never been so
much activity in so many places over so much time. 

And it kept growing, like a chain reaction, inspiring and attracting
an ever widening circle of militants willing to risk their safety by
engaging in non-violent protest in the face of occasionally violent
opposition, willing to risk arrest; and also inspiring a chain
reaction of support from people willing to use their experience and
their influence and their money to help the movement grow.

The substantial daily coverage of the movement’s growth played a
role in the decision of liberals to revive a civil rights bill that
had been languishing, actionless, in the House for seven months. The
House proposal was focused almost entirely on voting rights – not
the right of citizens to equal treatment – but for any pro-civil
rights action to make progress in Congress was nearly unheard of. 

The immediate Congressional response, on March 10, was positive. The
bill sailed over a procedural hurdle by a vote of 312 to 93. Two weeks
later, the House passed the bill by 311-109. It passed the Senate on
April 8 and was signed into law on May 6. It was only the second
federal civil rights law to be enacted in 85 years.

While Congress and the President were discovering value in promoting
civil political rights, the demands of the sit-ins began to gain
traction. On April 5 in Galveston, Texas, the management of all
downtown lunch-counters agreed to serve customers without
discrimination.   

On April 15, the conference that resulted in the creation of the
hugely influential Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee convened
in Raleigh, North Carolina, under the leadership of Ella Baker. On May
6 the Civil Rights Act of 1960 became law, and on May 10, six downtown
Nashville, Tennessee, lunch-counters gave in to the demand they
desegregate.  

Then on July 25, 1960, less than six months after the wave of sit-ins
began in Greensboro, the managers of chain-store lunch-counters in
both Greensboro, North Carolina, and Norfolk, Virginia, abandoned
their refusal to desegregate. And the militant movement was still
gaining momentum, as it would continue to do for years to come. 
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_THE 20TH CENTURY’S LARGEST ONE-DAY DEMONSTRATION (1930) _

MARCH 6 IS THE 95TH ANNIVERSARY of the International Day for Struggle
Against World-Wide Unemployment, during which hundreds of thousands,
if not millions, of unemployed workers and their supporters demanded
“Work or Wages!” in many hundreds of cities and towns on six of
the seven continents. 

It was the 20th century’s largest 1-day international protest
action, which was organized by the Communist International and
coordinated by the International’s member parties.

When the demonstration took place in 1930, the Great Depression was
only six months old. Some 7 million U.S. workers were newly
unemployed. Bad as that was, conditions were going to get worse for at
least another three years by which time the number of U.S. unemployed
would have doubled.

The total number of demonstrators can only be guessed at, but it seems
safe to say that it was at least a million if not twice that.
According to the CPUSA, the turnout was 110,000 in New York City,
100,000 in Detroit, 50,000 each in Chicago, IL, and Boston, MA, 40,000
in Milwaukee, 30,000 in Philadelphia, 25,000 in Cleveland, 20,000 each
in Pittsburgh and in Youngstown, OH, 17,000 each in Trenton and
Paterson, NJ, 15,000 each in Buffalo, NY, Newark, NJ and Canton OH,
10,000 each in Los Angeles, CA, Waterbury CT, Providence, RI and
Washington, DC, 6000 in Rochester NY, 5000 each in New Haven, CT,
Rockford, IL, Worcester MA and Stamford, CT, not to mention hundreds
and hundreds of smaller gatherings all over the U.S.

In the short run, the day of protest was not particularly effective;
it was not, as many hoped, the curtain-opener for revolutionary
change.  In addition, the federal government would continue to do
little or nothing to provide relief until Roosevelt replaced President
Hoover in March 1933; on a scattered basis, some state and local
governments increased employment and relief expenditures, for fear of
the electoral backlash that was already gathering steam. Many private
charities substantially increased their focus on stemming the growing
immiseration.

In the U.S., the sea change demanded by the March 1930 protest would
not begin to come until November 1932, when the voters created the
largest shift in U.S. electoral history, giving the incoming Roosevelt
administration a mandate to treat the catastrophic reduction in the
standard of living as the national emergency it was.
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_‘BLOODY SUNDAY’ (1965)_

MARCH 7 IS THE 60TH ANNIVERSARY of the first attempt by a group of 600
civil rights activists to publicize the injustice of Alabama’s
refusal to allow the state’s African-American citizens the right to
vote. The events of the day are known as Bloody Sunday. 

The peaceful, unarmed marchers planned to march 54 miles to the state
capitol in Montgomery. When the marchers reached the bridge over the
Alabama River, which marked the Selma city limit, police prevented
photographers and other media workers who were with them from crossing
the bridge with them. The police also prevented volunteer emergency
medical workers from remaining with the march.

When the marchers crossed the bridge their way was blocked by a
phalanx of some 200 state police on foot, dozens of men on horseback
armed with whips and an assortment of members of the public armed with
clubs. The police ordered the marchers to stop and go back. The
marchers, who expected to be arrested, went down on their knees, many
of them to pray. Rather than arrest the unresisting marchers, the
police ran at them striking them with heavy billy clubs.  When the
police literally ran over the vanguard of the kneeling marchers, those
closer to the back of the line stood up to flee.  

Then the horsemen with whips charged anyone who remained on the
bridge, while other police fired teargas grenades at the retreating
marchers.  A few of the marchers lay still on the bridge, some of
them unconscious, others too badly hurt to move. The police literally
forced any marchers capable of running back to the church where the
march began.

At least 17 marchers were hospitalized with injuries inflicted on them
by police and those working in tandem with them. You can watch a
6-minute video reflecting on the events of Bloody Sunday here:
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_MARCH 8, INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY_

Every March 8, early in the day, I make a practice of watching a
2-minute clip of a performance of “Bread and Roses” (with
subtitles) from the 2014 film “Pride”, directed by Matthew Warchus
and produced by David Livingston. I have tried, without success, to
learn who to credit for the vocal performance. The tune is by Mimi
Fariña. The version performed in the film would be even more moving
than it is if it included the entire 1911 poem by James Oppenheim,
upon which the song is based.

Below the complete poem is a link to the clip of the performance in
“Pride”.

Bread and Roses

As we come marching, marching, in the beauty of the day,
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill-lofts gray
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,
For the people hear us singing, "Bread and Roses, Bread and Roses."

As we come marching, marching, we battle, too, for men—
For they are women's children and we mother them again.
Our days shall not be sweated from birth until life closes—
Hearts starve as well as bodies: Give us Bread, but give us Roses.

As we come marching, marching, unnumbered women dead
Go crying through our singing their ancient song of Bread;
Small art and love and beauty their trudging spirits knew—
Yes, it is Bread we fight for—but we fight for Roses, too.

As we come marching, marching, we bring the Greater Days—
The rising of the women means the rising of the race.
No more the drudge and idler—ten that toil where one reposes—
But a sharing of life's glories: Bread and Roses, Bread and Roses.

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For more People's History, visit
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* civil rights movement
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* nonviolent protests
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* The Great Depression
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* unemployment
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* Communist International
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* selma to montgomery march
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* International Women's Day
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