Aug. 6, 1964 - Before a background of placards denouncing war and the Government’s policies in Vietnam, 1,000 persons demonstrated today at New York City’s Washington Square.
The rally, sponsored by nine local groups supporting peace and disarmament, also commemorated the atomic-bomb attack on Hiroshima 19 years ago today.
Earlier in the day, beginning at 8 a.m., demonstrators staged an anti-war “vigil” in Times Square. The demonstrators, standing silently on the curbs, held signs that read, “No more Hiroshimas” and “End the war in Vietnam.”
The Times Square protest ended at 5 p.m., and the demonstrators left for Washington Square, where they heard several speakers, including Bayard Rustin, the civil rights leader; Norman Thomas, the Socialist; and Miss Miyoko Matsubara of Hiroshima, who was badly burned by the 1945 bomb explosion.
Mr. Thomas said there was no democracy in South Vietnam, adding that “this is a civil war in a country where we don’t belong.”
Mr. Rustin likened the problems of the people of Vietnam to those in Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant. Mentioning “police brutality,” Mr. Rustin said, “The answer to this problem of Vietnam is that the people will no longer tolerate being without dignity and being poor.”
A statement by Senator Wayne Morse (D-Ore.) was read at the meeting. It said, in part, that “I am satisfied that the present rulers of South Vietnam could not long continue their civil war unless the war were expanded.”
As 10 policemen stood by, the demonstrators held aloft signs, some of which read: “End war in Vietnam,” “A world without war,” and “United States troops belong in Mississippi, not Vietnam.”
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