EASTER PARADE IN NEW YORK

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 69, Issue 160, 19 April 1949, Page 3

EASTER PARADE IN NEW YORK

Anti-War Pickets Demonstrate

NEW YORK, April 17. While record - breaking crowds in their Easter finery strolled along Fifth Avenue to-day in New York’s traditional Easter Parade, anti-war pickets demonstrated outside St. Patrick’s. Cathedral. The pickets represented organisations known as the “Peacemakers,” the “Fellowship of Reconstruction,” and the “War Resisters’ League.” They walked up and down outside .the Cathedral as thousands of worshippers inside commemorated the Resurrection.

The pickets elbowed people in the Easter Parade aside to clear a path in the crowded street, hut their demonstration was halted when a United States marine became involved in a fight with a picket. The police intervened, and ordered the demonstrators to disperse. Two of the demonstrators refused, and the police arrested them. The vast crowds parading slowly up and down, to see and he seen, had clear blue skies and a mild spring-day for their fashion show. Fifth Avenue from Forty-second Street to Central Park was a sea of gay Easter bonnets, jammed brim to brim. The crowds were densest near St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and traffic was halted for blocks around. Flowers, feathers, and even gas-filled balloons festooned women’s hats. The dresses mainly were simple and dark. Some looked like last spring’s models, but almost every woman had a gaudy new hat.