Today is the 100 year anniversary of the Silent Parade. On July 28, 1917, about 10,000 people marched in silence down New York's Fifth Avenue to Madison Square protesting African-American rights in the U.S.

The demonstration was one of America's first mass protests of lynching and other anti-black violence and was led by the NAACP, including leaders James Weldon Johnson and W.E.B Du Bois.

The protesters, who carried banners with slogans reading "Thou Shalt Not Kill” and “Your Hands Are Full of Blood", were demanding then-President Woodrow Wilson take legislative action to protect the civil rights of African Americans.