Biography
Jacob Sechler Coxey Sr. was the Ohio businessman who led "Coxey's Army," the first significant march of unemployed Americans on Washington, D.C., during the Panic of 1893. The march arrived in Washington on May 1, 1894 demanding a federal public-works program. Coxey was arrested on the steps of the U.S. Capitol for walking on the Capitol grounds — an obscure D.C. ordinance. He served 20 days in the D.C. jail and was fined $5. The arrest became a national symbol of Gilded Age class repression. Coxey was 96 when he died and lived to see the New Deal enact every major plank of his 1894 program.
Ohio quarry owner, Greenback-Labor populist, and originator of the modern protest march on Washington. In response to the catastrophic unemployment of the Panic of 1893, Coxey organized the 'Commonweal of Christ' — popularly called Coxey's Army — and led roughly 500 unemployed men on foot from Massillon, Ohio beginning March 25, 1894 to demand a federal $500 million good-roads program funded by non-interest-bearing currency. The march reached Washington on April 30. On May 1, 1894, attempting to deliver his 'petition in boots' from the Capitol steps, Coxey was arrested by Capitol Police along with chief lieutenant Carl Browne and Philadelphia delegate Christopher Columbus Jones. The trio was charged with carrying banners on the Capitol grounds and walking on Capitol grass. Convicted May 8, 1894 in police court before Judge Thomas Miller; sentenced May 21, 1894 to 20 days in the District of Columbia jail and a $5 fine. Released June 10, 1894. The arrests provoked national outrage and made the right to demonstrate on the Capitol grounds a pivotal civil-liberties question. Coxey continued advocating for federal jobs programs for the next forty years; he eventually delivered his unread 1894 speech from the Capitol steps in 1944, on its 50th anniversary, by congressional invitation.
