August 3, 1935.
Harlem, New York City
The sun sat high above 135th Street.
Posters flapped against brick walls, carried by hand-painted signs and armbands reading "Hands Off Ethiopia!" and "Fascism is Colonialism by Another Name."
By noon, the crowd stretched from the steps of the Abyssinian Baptist Church to Lenox Avenue and spilled down side streets like a flood with nowhere else to go.
The call had gone out through churches, union halls, corner newspapers, and backroom meetings.
Today wasn't about Harlem alone.
It was about dignity.
About Africa.
About not standing still while another empire sharpened its knives against Black skin.
A man stood on the flatbed of a delivery truck-turned-podium.
He was tall, sharply dressed, his collar unbuttoned, his face lined with years of sermons and war against silence.
His voice rang through a cheap amplifier that whined with every word.
