| March 7, 1932 The Ford Hunger March began on Detroit’s east side and proceeded 10 miles seeking relief during the Great Depression. Facing hunger and evictions, workers had formed neighborhood Unemployed Councils. Along the route, the marchers were given good wishes from Detroit Mayor Frank Murphy as well as two motorcycle escorts, and thousands joined the marchers along the route.  At the Detroit city limit, the marchers were met by Dearborn police and doused by fire hoses. Despite the cold weather, they continued to the Employment Office of the Ford River Rouge plant, from which there had been massive layoffs. Five workers were killed and nineteen wounded by police and company “security” armed with pistols, rifles and a machine gun.   Dave MooreAccording to Dave Moore, one of the marchers, “That blood was black blood and white blood. One of the photos that was published in the Detroit Times, but never seen since, shows a black woman, Mattie Woodson, wiping the blood off the head of Joe DiBlasio, a white man who lay there dying . . . It’s been 75 years, but when you drive down Miller Road today, your car tires will be moistened with the blood that those five shed.” Grave markers with the words “His Life for the Union” pay tribute to the fallen hunger marchers in Woodmere Cemetery on Detroit’s west side. |
| March 7, 1965 525 civil rights advocates began a 54-mile march on a Sunday morning from Selma, Alabama, to the capital of Montgomery, to promote voting rights for blacks. Just after crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge on the outskirts of Selma, the marchers were attacked in what became known as Bloody Sunday.  Enforcing an order by Governor George Wallace, the group was broken up by state troopers and volunteer officers of the Dallas County sheriff who used tear gas, nightsticks, bullwhips and rubber tubing wrapped in barbed wire. John Lewis, then head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and a leader of the march, suffered a fractured skull.John Lewis was elected a member of Congress from Georgia in 1986 and served till his death in 2020.ABC television interrupted a Nazi war crimes documentary, “Judgment at Nuremberg,” to show footage of the violence in Selma, confusing some viewers about who was beating whom.  Injured in Selma Selma 1965 – Edmund Pettus Bridge, video excerpt from a PBS documentary with Rep. John Lewis and others who were there Read more |
| March 7, 1988 A Federal Court ruled in Atlanta, Georgia, that a peace group must have the same access to students at high school career days as military recruiters.  the anti-recruitment movement today: LEAVE MY CHILD ALONE! |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorymarch.htm#march7
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