Category Archives: Processions or Marches or Parades

Eleanor Antin “100 Boots” (1971-73)

These photographs of staged boots were printed as 51 postcards. Viewers can read these works knowing they were influenced by the Vietnam War and ideas of protesting, parading, trespassing, and communing with nature. The images start and California and end as the boots march into the Museum of Modern Art.

“Christopher Street Liberation Day March” (1970)

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The first Pride march for gay rights was held in New York City on June 28, 1970. The event — officially known as the Christopher Street Liberation Day March — was spearheaded by a group of activists that included Craig Rodwell, Fred Sargeant, Ellen Broidy, Linda Rhodes and Brenda Howard, for the first anniversary of the Stonewall uprising.

The march’s route covered about 50 blocks and drew just a few thousand participants. Though the numbers were small, marches in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles that year eventually led to hundreds of Pride parades.

This was an important move towards civil rights, or guarantees of equal social opportunities and protection under the law, regardless of race, religion, sexual identity, or other characteristics.

Read the full article: How the Pride March Made History – The New York Times

Martin Luther King, Jr. “March on Washington” (1963)

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The March on Washington was a massive protest march that occurred August 28, 1963, when some 250,000 people gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Also known as the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the event aimed to draw attention to continuing challenges and inequalities faced by African Americans a century after emancipation. It was also the occasion of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s now-iconic “I Have A Dream” speech.

This event is one of the most famous events of the civil rights movement

Mahatma Gandhi, “Salt March” (1930)

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The Salt March, which took place from March to April 1930 in India, was an act of civil disobedience led by Mohandas Gandhi to protest British rule in India. During the march, thousands of Indians followed Gandhi from his religious retreat near Ahmedabad to the Arabian Sea coast, a distance of some 240 miles. The march resulted in the arrest of nearly 60,000 people, including Gandhi himself. India finally was granted its independence in 1947.

Salt Tax

Britain’s Salt Act of 1882 prohibited Indians from collecting or selling salt, a staple in their diet.

Indian citizens were forced to buy the vital mineral from their British rulers, who, in addition to exercising a monopoly over the manufacture and sale of salt, also charged a heavy salt tax. Although India’s poor suffered most under the tax, all Indians required salt.

Mohandas Gandhi and Satyagraha

After living for two decades in South Africa, where Mohandas Gandhi fought for the civil rights of Indians residing there, Gandhi returned to his native country in 1915 and soon began working for India’s independence from Great Britain.

Defying the Salt Act, Gandhi reasoned, would be an ingeniously simple way for many Indians to break a British law nonviolently.

Gandhi declared resistance to British salt policies to be the unifying theme for his new campaign of “satyagraha,” or mass civil disobedience.

Salt March Begins

First, Gandhi sent a letter on March 2, 1930 to inform the Viceroy Lord Irwin that he and the others would begin breaking the Salt Laws in 10 days. Then, on March 12, 1930, Gandhi set out from his ashram, or religious retreat, at Sabermanti near Ahmedabad with several dozen followers on a trek of some 240 miles to the coastal town of Dandi on the Arabian Sea.