Document 12I: "100,000 Rally Here With No Disorder; Reds Throng Union Square to Cheer for Revolution -- Their Parade Lasts All Day," New York Times, 2 May 1934, pp. 1, 3.

100,000 RALLY HERE,
WITH NO DISORDER

____________________

Reds Throng Union Square to
Cheer for Revolution--Their
Parade Lasts All Day.

____________________

LEADERS ASSIST POLICE

____________________

100,000 Watch Socialists in
Rival March to Meeting in
Madison Square.

____________________

    May Day was celebrated peacefully here yesterday by rival thousands of Socialists and Communists while nearly 2,000 police looked on. … The parades ended with a mass meeting of the Communists in Union Square and with a similar gathering of the Socialists in Madison Square. At both places were heard fiery speeches on behalf of the working classes.

    In the vanguard of the [Communist] procession was an open automobile carrying five mothers of the Scottsboro defendants, Ruby Bates, who was one of the alleged victims in that case, and Mother Ella Reeve Bloor, 72-year-old radical leader. The Negro women carried bouquets of daffodils and roses and were enjoying their moment.

    Other speakers who received ovations were Mamie Williams, mother of one of the Scottsboro prisoners, who said she had found her true friends among the Communists and credited them with the first efforts to save her son and his fellow prisoners, and Ruby Bates. She repeated her denial that she had been attacked by the Negroes.

    "Scottsboro boys shall not die," the crowd chanted after each of these speakers.


 
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