First Civil Rights March
On 27 April 1968, NICRA held a rally to protest at the banning of a republican Easter parade. On 24 August 1968 the Campaign for Social Justice (CSJ), NICRA, and other groups, held the first civil rights march in Northern Ireland from Coalisland to Dungannon, in County Tyrone. Loyalists organised a counter demonstration in an effort to get the march banned and in fact the rally was officially banned. Despite this the march took place and passed off without incident. The publicity surrounding the march encouraged other protesting groups to form branches of NICRA.
On 27 August 1968, the Derry Housing Action Committee (DHAC), which protested against housing discrimination and provision in Derry, organised another protest in the Guildhall, Derry council chamber. Immediately after the protest Eamon Melaugh telephoned NICRA and invited them to organise a march in Derry.
Read more about this topic: Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association
Famous quotes containing the words civil, rights and/or march:
“Children’s liberation is the next item on our civil rights shopping list.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (b. 1939)
“What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“What if there’s nothing up there at the top?
Where are the captains that govern mankind?
What tears down a tree that has nothing within it?
A blast of wind, O a marching wind,
March wind, and any old tune,
March march and how does it run.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)