The national demonstration apparently was spotty in nature. There was no estimate of the total number taking part.

In Boston, Episcopal Bishop Norman B. Nash told 800 worshipers - about a third of them Negroes - that discrimination exists "right here in Boston.”

"The guilty are not only 'they' but also 'we,'" he said. "Right here in Boston, in matters of housing, education, employment and church membership, and in many other ways, there is a responsibility for each of us to acknowledge.

"Ignorance cannot be pleaded. There is no excuse for that ignorance. The facts are undeniable. The facts begin at home, and not in Alabama or South Africa."

The "National Deliverance Day of Prayer" originally was conceived as a brief nationwide work stoppage accompanied by prayer. However, the work stoppage idea was discarded.

Rep. Adam Clayton Powell (D-NY), New York clergyman, was the leader of the passive demonstration. He said its backers represented 10 million Negro churchmen.

Some of the demonstrations were scheduled for Wednesday night, including those in New York and New Haven.

A crowd of more than 5,000 filled Manhattan Center and overflowed into the grand ballroom of the Hotel New Yorker next door to hear Powell suggest that clergymen hold their own conference on racial issues if President Eisenhower fails to call one.

Powell has requested that Eisenhower convene a White House conference to help ease racial tensions.

"Let us continue to pray that the President will hold such a conference," he told the meeting, "but in the meantime let's not wait for him.

"Let us who are the spiritual leaders of our nation hold a conference ourselves and invite the President to come. I cannot envision him refusing to meet with the spiritual leaders of this country. When one raises the hue and cry 'go slow' our only answer is: ‘All right - but at least go.'"

The Negro congressman, who is pastor of Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist church, appeared in clerical clothes.

He suggested "massive passive resistance," led by the clergy, as another alternative "to be used only when absolutely necessary" in combating racial bias.

"If Gandhi could do it in India, then the omnipotent God can do it anywhere in the world," Powell declared.

Protestant, Catholic and Jewish religious leaders backed the Massachusetts demonstration.

The Massachusetts Legislature suspended for an hour at noon in an official "expression of sympathy."

In Boston's historic old North Church - where lanterns were shown for Paul Revere in 1775 - prayers were offered for 24 Negro ministers and 47 laymen arrested in the Montgomery boycott.

Rabbi Joseph S. Shubow told Jewish worshipers at Temple B'nai Moshe that "the shame of segregation in the South . . . is proof that the struggle for freedom is never completely won."

Catholic Archbishop Richard J. Cushing in a Holy Week message said that "Whenever racial intolerance shows itself in any part of our nation . . . then is Christ crucified again.'"

More than 600 persons, mostly Negroes, took part in Washington's observance. The Rev. E. N. French, one of the indicted Montgomery clergymen, told this audience:

"We are relying solely on spiritual and moral forces, and we believe that somehow God will give us victory. Whatever the price may be we are perfectly willing to pay it."

Some 150 white and Negro ministers sponsored the Washington observance.

Episcopal churches in the southern two-thirds of Indiana offered sympathy prayers at Masses. Illness prevented Episcopal Bishop Richard A. Kirchhoffer from carrying out his intention to pray in the diocese's only all-Negro church.

In Montgomery, itself, there were no special prayer meetings. However, Negro churches kept their doors open throughout the day for anyone wishing to offer prayers.

Many of the Montgomery Negro ministers indicted on charges of violating a state antiboycott law were appearing at observances in other cities.

A Chicago Packinghouse union estimated that 10,000 of its members stopped work for five minutes of prayer at different periods during the day.

A prayer-protest rally Tuesday night in Los Angeles drew another 10,000 persons. The Rev. Ralph D. Abernathy, one of the leaders of the Montgomery boycott, told the meeting that within five years there would be a tangible improvement in the dispensation of justice in the South.

Fifty Negro churches in Newark, N. J. kept their doors open all day. In New Brunswick, N. J., Negro and white pastors joined in a service at First Methodist church.

At the Bayonne, N. J. Naval Supply Depot, civilian employes held a prayer meeting at a YWCA nearby after an employee spokesman said Navy officials had denied use of the depot's chapel because of "political implications."