Loyalty Day Parade in New York

May 1, 1965 - While thousands of persons stood in the sun along Fifth Avenue today, the bands and banners of the Loyalty Day Parade passed in review. 

Mayor Robert Wagner, the grand marshal, and City Council President Paul Screvane made appearances on the reviewing stand at 69th St.

The parade, the 18th sponsored by the Veterans of Foreign Wars, stepped off from 95th St. at 1 p.m. and marched south to 62nd St., where it turned east and dispersed. 

The New York County Council of the V.F.W. originated the parade in 1947 to offset the usual May Day march by Communists on Eighth Ave., which was later dropped.

About 100 pickets demonstrated at Union Square today against a 2½-hour leftist rally there of about 2,000 persons at its peak.

A group of the pickets, marching behind police barriers on E. 17th St., shouted, “Better dead than Red!” Another group, near the corner of Park Ave. South, carried signs that read, “The only good Communist is a dead Communist.”

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