Nuns March in Harlem

Mar. 14, 1965 - Fifteen thousand persons, including nuns, priests, ministers, rabbis, members of civil rights organizations, trade unionists, and students, marched through Harlem today to protest the events last week in Selma, Ala. After the parade — silent and grim — civil rights leaders called for Federal intervention in Selma, which is in the throes of a campaign for Negro voter registration. Two men, one Negro, one white, have been killed in the area during the registration campaign.

The parade began at 3:30 p.m., at the Theresa Hotel at 125th St. and Seventh Ave. Participating in the march were Bayard Rustin, organizer of the March on Washington in 1963; John Lewis and James Forman, leaders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; James McCain, director of organization for the Congress of Racial Equality; and Nathan Schwerner, father of Michael Schwerner, one of the three civil rights workers murdered in Philadelphia, Miss., last year.

Behind them were 200 nuns of the order of the Sisters of Charity. They wore black habits. There was also a smaller group of Maryknoll sisters in gray habits. Some of them wore CORE buttons.

Many of the marchers wore black arm bands in memory of the Rev. James Reeb, a white Unitarian minister from Boston who was fatally beaten in Selma last week, and in memory of Jimmie Lee Jackson, a Negro who was killed Feb. 18 during an attack by the Alabama state police on a night march in Marion.

James Farmer, national director of CORE, declared to the demonstrators that “within a week there will be a triumphant march from Selma to Montgomery.”

“Johnson got our votes,” Farmer said, “but he must be told that he hasn’t got us in his pocket.” 

He urged Johnson to go to Selma to “see for himself what is happening there.”

While the demonstrators were marching in Harlem, an interfaith memorial service for Mr. Reeb and Mr. Jackson was held in the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine. Nearly 2,000 persons attended the service.

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