In New York City, the NAACP and church and community leaders organized a silent march of at least 8,000 people to protest violence directed towards African Americans.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is an American civil rights organization formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E. B. Du Bois, Mary White Ovington, Moorfield Storey, Ida B. Wells, Lillian Wald, and Henry Moskowitz. Over the years, leaders of the organization have included Thurgood Marshall and Roy Wilkins. The NAACP is the largest and oldest civil rights group in America.

The Negro Silent Protest Parade, commonly known as the Silent Parade, was a political protest in New York City on July 28, 1917. The primary objective of the march was to draw national attention to the widespread racial violence and entrenched systemic discrimination endured by African Americans. It was organized in direct response to a series of racially motivated attacks in 1916 and 1917, including the East St. Louis massacre and lynchings in Waco and Memphis.

African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group who as defined by the United States census, consists of Americans who have ancestry from "any of the Black populations of Africa". African Americans constitute the second largest racial and ethnic group in the U.S. after White Americans. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of Africans enslaved in the United States. According to annual estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau, as of July 1, 2024, the Black population was estimated at 42,951,595, representing approximately 12.63% of the total U.S. population.