The NYPD Surveillance Film collection has it all—environmental activists, antiwar protestors, elected officials, Black Panthers. There is even a film documenting a Labor Day parade complete with burlesque performers, horses and political candidates.
Labor Day is a national holiday because at one point, our national leaders believed that honoring working people was the right thing to do, as well as smart politics. Labor unions were a force to be reckoned with. After peaking at 35% in 1954, union membership in the United States has declined to 10.8% in 2020, according to the latest estimate from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In New York City, union membership has held at about 22%, partly thanks to Mayor Wagner’s 1958 Executive Order No. 49, which gave many municipal employees the right to collective bargaining. Likewise, participation in New York City’s annual Labor Day parade has waxed and waned in concert with the level of union employment.
Recently digitized film footage of the 1968 Labor Day parade in the Municipal Archives collection vividly illustrates this history. On September 3, 1968, the New York Times reported that 125,000 marchers participated “….in a long and spirited Labor Day parade up Fifth Avenue.” With the presidential election that year just two months off, Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey took the opportunity to connect with voters along the parade route. The Times article added that President Richard Nixon spent the day working in his apartment at 812 Fifth Avenue, “… within earshot of the day long marching brass, fife and drum corps and bagpipes.”
The parade occurred just days after the conclusion of the bloody 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Some New Yorkers were not happy that the “Happy Warrior” presidential candidate was walking in their midst. Like true New Yorkers, they made their opinions known.
Take a moment or two this Labor Day holiday weekend to view footage of the 1968 Labor Day Parade in the Archives collection gallery .