ABSTRACT
Over one million Parisians swelled the streets of Paris on 1 May, 1936. Celebrating the Popular Front, the union of the Communist, Socialist, and Radical Parties formed to defend democracy and the French Republic, two immense columns paraded from Place de la République to meet at Place de la Nation “running along the large avenues and the paths of Vincennes a veritable human sea.” A mighty crowd united “shop workers, store clerks, and office workers together, fraternally, with a multitude of technicians and intellectuals . . . to celebrate the success, the power, and the unity of the Popular Front” (L’Humanité, 2 May 1936: 1). The demonstrators marched behind signs representing the full gamut of the popular movement behind the alliance. In addition to banners supporting the Popular Front parties and their demands, marchers proclaimed their union affiliations, support for striking workers, and affirmations of democratic principles. Banners defended the Republic against its domestic enemies, supported the Spanish loyalists and called for international unity against German Nazi and Italian Fascist aggression. Joining millions of demonstrators in other French cities, and throughout the free world from Madrid to London, New York and San Francisco, the marchers who filled Paris on that sunny May Day proclaimed the unity of labor in the struggle for democracy.
