The Collective Double Voice: Mobilizing Resistance While Stifling Racial Violence in the Silent Protest Parade

ABSTRACT On July 28, 1917, between 8,000 and 15,000 Black men, women, and child protesters gathered in the streets of New York City to protest the continued lynchings of Black Americans. The Silent Protest Parade enacted silence to safely mobilize a double voiced critique. Drawing on Du Bois’s concept of double consciousness, I consider how double consciousness (i.e. “double voice”) functions in protest as a rhetorical device through the lens of “collective rhetoric.” I argue that protesters’ doubled rhetoric enacted a collective resistance while stifling the possibility of racialized violence. This essay illustrates a collective double voice as a rhetorical strategy in protest and underscores the importance of reexamining historical events often silenced by forces of white supremacy.