Civil rights march in Rochester

Source: Post-Bulletin, Rochester, Minn.新蒲崗迷你倉Aug. 24--It was the civil rights march that almost no one remembers.On Aug. 22, 1963, five days before the March on Washington, whose 50th anniversary is being observed this week, a group of sign-waving Rochester people staged a civil rights march of its own through downtown Rochester.The march, the first of its kind in Rochester, was modest in scale. Only 38 people participated. But it was enough to provoke an ugly backlash: A burning cross was thrown at the foot of the Avalon Hotel on North Broadway, a then-hotel that served black visitors to Rochester, soon after the event.The incident underscored how the battle over civil rights was far from a settled question, even in seemly placid northern communities like Rochester, which was far from the front lines of places like Selma and Montgomery. Rochester was not ruled by Jim Crow, but it had an unwritten segregationist code, barring blacks from certain restaurants, service clubs and hotels at the time.At the time of the march, Rochester was, for all practical purposes, a white community. So infinitesimal was Rochester's black community that it barely raised a demographic blip in a 1965 special census. Only 59 were identified as black in a population of 47,797 Rochester residents -- or 0.1 percent of the city's population. Today, 21 percent of Rochester's population is minority, including 6 percent black.To today's 21st century ear, the labels used to describe the marchers in the Aug. 23, 1963, Post-Bulletin article have an odd ring. The marchers were called "integretionists," African-Americans "Negroes." The men were dressed in white shirts and ties and wore black military-style glasses, the women in skirts. They marched through a far smaller and less developed downtown, carrying signs that proclaimed "We are for Civil Rights for all" or "There is only one race -- The Human Race."Still, the message trumpeted by the 15 blacks and 23 whites as they started their march from the Silver Lake fire station and headed south toward downtown was not well-received by some. As the marchers reached what is now Michaels Restaurant, a group of kids began pelting the marchers with eggs from a nearby roof, splattering four of them.The marchers were not without their supporters. Hundreds of people lined the sidewalks along Broadway. A group of spectators broke out into applause to encourage the marchers following the egg-throwing incident.At the corner of South Broadway and Fourth Street, the marchers were subjected mini storageo heckling."There are some white-lookin' n -- -- -- in there," jeered one bystander."You're heading in the right direction," another yelled, referring to the fact that the marchers were heading south.The demonstrators wound up their 40-minute march at Soldiers Field at 7:20 p.m. An hour-and-a-half later, according to the article, a group of six boys tossed a burning wooden cross in front of the hotel."All my guests are sick people from out of town," said the hotel's proprietress. "They were all frightened -- nothing like this has ever happened before. For 19 years, we've lived here. This is the first time we've had any trouble."The march and the racist reactions that it provoked led the Rochester Post-Bulletin, in an editorial four days later, to argue for a go-slow approach in the fight for civil rights. They counseled against the Washington march that was to take place two days later, warning that a "racial holocaust" might ensue from an event attended by 100,000, given the fever pitch of emotions. Look at what had happened in Rochester? An "innocuous little civil rights parade" had led to ugly egg-throwing and cross burning.Later, when the March on Washington went off without a hitch, the PB editorialized that "we were deeply impressed by the march," tacitly admitting it had been wrong.The Rochester march largely has passed from Rochester's collective memory. Most, if not all, of the participants have passed on. In interviews with a retired police sergeant and civil rights activist who lived in Rochester at the time, one in his 90s, the other 85, neither could remember the march or the cross-burning incident.Still the incident revealed that Rochester was hardly free from the racist attitudes that plagued other southern cities and that it had a long way to go in becoming a community that welcomes diversity. Several weeks later, IBM had to dispel rumors that it was engaging in an all-out drive to employ blacks. It had in fact hired only oneBut in the end, IBM became an agency for injecting more diversity into Rochester and changing the community. That one hire referred to by IBM was George Gibbs, who went on to become a leader in the civil rights movement and a Rochester legend. Among his accomplishments: After garnering national attention for being refused membership in the Rochester Elks Club, Gibbs broke the color barrier at service clubs in Rochester.Copyright: ___ (c)2013 Post-Bulletin Visit the Post-Bulletin at .postbulletin.com Distributed by MCT Information Servicesself storage