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Resolutions of protest and delegations to the governor were supplemented
by mass meetings, mass education, and demonstrations. Street demonstrations,
however, occurred infrequently and were largely led by the Communists or
Communist Party-related forces. The march of the ILD delegation through the
streets of Baltimore to Ritchie's office has already been mentioned. In addition,
the Communist Party mounted a demonstration of about 100 militants at City Hall
Plaza on the day after the lynching, replete with angry denunciations of Ritchie,
Duer, and Robins from the back of a truck mounted with a gibbet and noose. That
same day the CP-led League of Struggle for Negro Rights, attempting to precipitate
anti-lynching protests over Armwood's death over a wider region, led one of several
demonstrations against that lynching in Harlem, New York. °
However, protest meetings, not demonstrations, were the main form of the
mass anti-lynching mobilization. And there were a variety of protest meetings. An
unknown number of these meetings were spontaneous - regular gatherings of
Black community institutions that shifted their attention to the lynching of
Armwood. At the regular Friday night meeting of the City-Wide Young People's
Forum, the scheduled speaker, white Baltimore clergyman T. Guthrie Speers,
prefaced his prepared presentation with remarks with on the lynching and the room
fell silent. After Speers finished his talk, the body as a whole took up the subject of
the lynching at length. And in the churches on the Sunday following the lynching,
ministers made Armwood's death and the circumstances around it the subject of
27
many angry sermons. '
Other protest meetings were specially organized, and some were quite large,
attracting as many as 1500 people. These meetings were usually the product of an
ad hoc coalition, and national speakers were often brought in. For example, a
rapidly-called "indignation meeting" was held on Sunday, October 22, sponsored by
"a committee of prominent and interested citizens," and featuring as speakers
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