Listening in Union Square.  This bareheaded man listens intently to a speaker in Union Square, probably at a demonstration during the 1930s.

The image was featured in a 2003 exhibit at The American Labor Museum/Botto House entitled Union Square:  America’s Soapbox.”  The exhibt was curated by FrancineTyler, who says of the people demonstrating in the square:   “Their protests and demonstrations exercise the Constitutional rights of free speech and free assembly, and their actions remain a symbol still alive in people’s minds, of how ordinary people, together, can make their own history.”

Current Events: See also the rights to free speech and free assembly being utilized in the demonstration on Union Square for Trayvon Martin on March 21, 2012. 

Undated photograph by Clifford Sutcliffe. New York City Municipal Archives.