A fellow marshal recently shared a New York Times article from 1937 which includes a discussion of the use of marshals as a new experiment in that year’s May Day march:
May Day was observed in New York yesterday with a parade, special meetings, music and song in a celebration without precedent for size and orderliness. […]
The order was hailed by the May Day committee as a masterpiece of “workers’ discipline.” As an experiment, the committee had obtained police sanction in providing its own corps of marshals. Identified by red arm bands, the marshals kept lanes open, crowds back and performed other such police work.
Time after time as the marchers filed through a fifteen-foot lane in the crowd at the north end of the square, the announcer who was calling out the designations of various local unions through loudspeakers asked the spectators to fall back and make the lane wider. “Let’s show that workers maintain discipline,” his voice boomed again and again. “We don’t want mounted cops to push us back. Let’s push back ourselves and show worker discipline.”Thereupon the marshals, girls in white sweaters and men in white shirts, would push with might and main, the crowd would give a few feet and a little later reclaim the given space. The police watched and grinned and every one seemed pleased.
There are some other fascinating details in here that make it worth reading the entire article:
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