Salem United Founder's Protest March Aims To 'Take Black Back'

SALEM, MA — Salem United founder and president Doreen Wade is preparing to embark on what she called a "solo solidarity march" across the Witch City later this month in protest of what she called the "confiscation of the city's Negro Election Day festival."

Wade has been involved with an ongoing dispute with the city in recent years over the state holiday recognition and festival that had included a parade, flag raising, speakers, music, and vendors at Salem Willows.

• Salem Funding Dispute Threatens Annual Black Negro Election Day Events

The day celebrates the first democratic voting system in America, designed by free and formerly enslaved Africans around the New England colonies 35 years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Gov. Charlie Baker signed a proclamation declaring Negro Election Day an official state holiday in 2022.

Wade annually organized the festival to commemorate the day, but has clashed with Salem officials in recent years over what she said is her trademark ownership and her ability to run it obtain funding as she chooses.

She said in a letter to Patch that she intends to march alone, along the original parade route with a short distance added, to "protest the appropriation of Negro culture and the attempt to sell it, for financial gain, up to $150,000."

The march is set for July 19 at 11 a.m. from Congress Street to Salem Willows Park. She said she will march with a sign reading "We have got to take Black back."

"Taking Black back means we have got to maintain control of our culture, our history and our legacies," she said. "We can no longer allow our culture to be appropriated for financial gain. We cannot allow our celebrations to be a means to have a furniture sale, on MLK Day. We cannot allow our flags to be used for coasters, clothing and paper goods.

"We are selling the value of what our struggles stand for, especially, when those funds do not go towards our own economic prosperity."

Wade, 65, said she has been forced into retirement as the Salem United Inc. founding president and event organizer, and "should be allowed to own something without being harassed into working with her enemies."

She said this march will come about 30 years after she participated in the original Million Women's March on Oct. 25, 1997.

"I remember when I attended the first march, needing to go to the bathroom with the children I sponsored," she said. "The churches, businesses, schools and more had been locked, some chained their doors, so we could not have access. I feel today Massachusetts leadership has locked and chained me in the same manner and I am still fighting the same self-determination struggles I marched for in 1997."

Wade said she intends to walk in honor of Civil Rights activist James Meredith, whom she said is her hero, and her mother, Lorraine Wade, who she said taught her to "have a voice."

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)