Abstract
ON FEB. 15, NEARLY EVERY European capital city was packed with protesters against the impending invasion of Iraq. Yet the Western leader poised to make the most crucial decisions about war found his views unobstructed on that day. The coalition that helps organize American protests had chosen to focus its energy on New York: a world city, arguably even the world's capital city-but not our country's. Has the march on Washington become obsolete in an age of globalization and e-mail petitions? Yesterday's chief antiwar event, the Emergency Convergence on the White House, suggests the D.C. demonstration is still alive and kicking. No surprise there, says Lucy Barber, a historian at the California State Archives in Sacramento. As she points out in her new book, "Marching on Washington: The Forging of an American Political Tradition" (University of California Press), the space around the White House and Capitol has for more than a century been near-sacred ground for political protest. Both the courts and the public seem to accept the notion. The post-9/11 ban on demonstrations in the Ellipse lasted less than a month, and the Supreme Court, even in the current sub-zero climate for civil liberties, recently affirmed that demonstrators have an inalienable right-of-way on sidewalks around the Capitol. For more than a century, Washington has been where Americans can always go to demonstrate not just their specific opinions, but their citizenship itself. "Marching on Washington" traces this tradition of public protest back to the day in 1894 that Jacob Coxey of Ohio marched on Washington with 500 followers to present a petition demanding "good roads" for the countryside and more federal investment in the cities. Coxey promptly got arrested for walking on the Capitol grass. His lieutenant Carl Browne retaliated by showing up the next day on Pennsylvania Avenue cross- dressed as a mysteriously sunburnt "Goddess of Liberty." Why did the tradition take so long to get started? Nineteenth-century American was richly endowed with public political theater. In cities and small towns, there were parades and marches-military, vocational, and ethnic-aplenty. But they remained local affairs. Actions for redress, yes. Spectacular street installations, undoubtedly. But peaceable national demonstrations challenging the democratic credentials of Congress and the Oval Office? Not until 1894. By that year, all the pieces were in place: the historical memory of Revolutionary-war era civil disobedience; the legacy of violent political upheavals such as the New York City Draft Riots of 1863 and the 1888 Haymarket clash; and plenty of patriots familiar with the quasi-military garb and gait of a parade. And then there was the increasing importance of the federal government, and of Washington itself, after the Civil War-not to mention the growth of a vast, efficient, and news-hungry national press, eager to illustrate and report on any kind of political action with national ambitions. Browne, Coxey, and their ragged followers initiated a tradition whose efficacy probably peaked in 1963, when more than 200,000 marchers assembled around the Tidal Basin to hear Martin Luther King tell them he had a dream. Coxey's essential innovation was to crib from the church the idea of a group pilgrimage and, as he put it, to offer the government a "petition in boots." Beginning in his hometown of Massillon, Ohio, Coxey's "Commonweal of Christ," including his wife and infant son, Legal Tender, made their long, slow way to Washington. Coxey's Army wanted a 75 percent increase in the federal budget. What they got was a quick legislative consideration (and rejection) of their proposals and a speedy decision to enforce, for the first time, an 1882 law that allowed police to use force against trespassers on the Capitol grounds. Although he had stayed on paved paths, Coxey was arrested for walking on the grass and for bearing a banner-which turned out to be a lapel pin measuring three by two inches. He retreated to Ohio a broken man who had been unable to mumble more than a few words of his speech. Browne's cross-dressing stunt the next day only confirmed journalistic opinion that the odd couple were adventurers, not credible challengers to Congress. The score: Gilded Age-one, common man-zero.