SILENT PROTEST SPEAKS VOLUMES AT SUPREME COURT

THOUSANDS QUIETLY EXPRESS ANGER AT 'LEGAL LYNCHING OF BLACK AMERICA'S HOPE'

The drumbeat was muffled, the dress was solemn black and white, and there was an eerie and eloquent hush yesterday as tens of thousands of civil rights marchers walked in silent protest past the U.S. Supreme Court.

It was not a day of chants or shouts, of splashy protest rhymes or fists raised in anger. But the outrage came through, as civil rights advocates from around the nation demonstrated against a string of recent Supreme Court rulings that many believe have stripped away many of their hard-fought gains.

The phalanx of silent protesters took more than an hour to pass the court, and estimates of how many joined the march varied widely. The U.S. Park Police put the number at 35,000, while march organizers said the crowd swelled to more than 125,000.

The march was patterned after a protest in 1917, when the fledgling NAACP brought thousands to New York to stride down Fifth Avenue in a silent demonstration against segregation and lynchings.

Yesterday, many of those who converged on Washington from Atlanta and Memphis, from Winter Park, Fla. and Tazewell County, Va., said the times are no less perilous today for the civil rights movement.

Glenda Davis, an English professor from Elizabeth City, N.C., said she was drawn to the march because she could no longer ignore "the trends, the sort of unsaid racial tension that permeates our country."

In the late 1950s, when Davis, then a college student, protested outside a dime store in Durham, N.C., seeking a seat at the lunch counter, blacks "knew what we couldn't do or how others felt about us," she recalled. "But now it is not obvious. It is hidden . . . . And what the Supreme Court did is symbolic of the change in racial relations, with so much bubbling beneath the surface."

The demonstration was aimed specifically at four controversial Supreme Court rulings handed down this year -- rulings that NAACP Director Benjamin L. Hooks called the "legal lynching of black America's hope . . . to become full partners in the American dream."

The protest drew many of the nation's top civil rights leaders, who spoke at a post-march rally on the grounds of the Capitol. They vowed that they would not see the movement's gains unraveled and would work in Congress for legislation to overturn the court's decisions.

The four decisions, according to civil rights advocates, have dealt blows to a wide variety of hard-won laws. In their view, the court's ruling in a Richmond case made it more difficult for localities to establish programs that set aside business for minority contractors. In a case involving Alaska cannery workers, civil rights lawyers said, the court has made it much more difficult to prove discrimination in hiring practices.

Civil rights activists have criticized a ruling in a Birmingham, Ala., case that allowed white firefighters to challenge an affirmative action plan previously sanctioned by the court. They have criticized a ruling in which the court decided an 1866 civil rights law did not cover racial harassment by employers.

Yesterday, D.C. Mayor Marion Barry welcomed protesters, but said he was "saddened" by what had drawn them here. "If we close our eyes for a minute," he said, "all we worked for can be taken away."

It was that sentiment that brought out a crowd that spanned generations.

Seventeen-year-old Terance Brown, in wire-rimmed sunglasses and a vest, came with friends from Central High School in Memphis to "be part of history." Nearby, Richard Charlton, a 77-year-old dressed in somber black and white, recalled the historic 1963 march when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. electrified the crowd with his dream of equal justice.

"I wish things would get straightened out so I wouldn't have to come back," Charlton said. "But I do come back because I think pressure brings about change."

Many parents came with toddlers, and talked of their fears and dreams.

Carolyn Harris, of Oxon Hill, held tight to her sons, Neal, 6, and Malcolm, 4. Although they wanted to stay home and watch wrestling, she marched them past the court. "This march is trying to . . . make sure they'll be judged by what they know and not by the color of their skin," Harris said.

Kevin and Mary Joyce Ricks, of Indian Head, said that 17 months was not too young for their son, Donovan, to learn his first lesson in civil rights.

"We don't want him to have to go back to race riots, and all that we went through," said Mary Joyce Ricks. " . . . We figure there is power in numbers. If we teach him to be active now, he'll know he can make a difference."

Articles appear as they were originally printed in The Washington Post and may not include subsequent corrections.