![]() Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse and Donald Duck during Hands Across America Disneyland.Ĭelebrities were common sights along the entire route, but the stars truly came out for the event in Los Angeles. Singer Robert Goulet was helicoptered to sparsely populated Vicksburg, Arizona, with the resident of a homeless shelter to bury a time capsule commemorating the event. In some places, ranchers filled the voids by placing their cattle hoof-to-hoof. The chain was not without its missing links-particularly through the searing deserts of the Southwest. Fifty Abraham Lincoln impersonators did the same in Springfield, Illinois, only to be topped by the 54 Elvis Presley lookalikes in Memphis. In Pittsburgh, nuns and Hell’s Angels clasped hands. “He’s part of the problem.”įrom the nation’s capital, Hands Across America moved westward. “We resent him standing there grabbing hands like he’s part of the effort to eliminate homelessness and hunger,” social activist Mitch Snyder told ABC News. Not everyone, however, was happy with the participation of the president, whom political opponents blamed for not doing more to address the issue. It also passed inside the gates of the White House where President Ronald Reagan, dressed in a polo shirt and blue jeans, joined with First Lady Nancy Reagan and others on the steps of the North Portico. Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial, where it was joined by Coretta Scott King, widow of Martin Luther King Jr., who had stood on the spot 23 years earlier to deliver his “I Have a Dream” speech. ![]() In Washington, D.C., the route ran by the U.S. Inside New Jersey’s Rahway State Prison, hundreds of inmates linked hands as did divers in Maryland under the surface of the Susquehanna River. The line of people then stretched along the World Trade Center, over the George Washington Bridge and south through Philadelphia and Baltimore. First in line was six-year-old Amy Sherwood of Brooklyn, who had spent most of the prior year living with her family of seven in a welfare hotel populated by drug addicts and prostitutes. The chain began in Battery Park at the southern tip of Manhattan where the Statue of Liberty and a fireboat pumping red, white and blue water provided the picturesque backdrop. Singer Yoko Ono and son Sean Lennon and actress/singer Liza Minnelli attend the Hands Across America. (Another one million people outside the official route participated in mini-versions such as “Hands Across Massachusetts.”) As hundreds of radio stations across the United States simultaneously played “Hands Across America,” nearly 5 million people joined hands along the planned event route. Eastern on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. In spite of the road bumps, Hands Across America came off as planned at 3 p.m. Once the 4,125-mile route through 16 states and Washington, D.C., was announced, organizers also faced unexpected protests from cities whose civic pride was wounded by being excluded from the event. A music video studded with celebrities from Barbra Streisand to “Star Wars” robot C3PO, the faces of adorable children and images of amber waves of grain ran for weeks on MTV.įaced with expenses upwards of $16 million-liability insurance cost $3 million alone-USA for Africa recruited corporate sponsors such as Coca-Cola to defray the costs of staging the event. “Hands Across America” was eventually released, but unlike “We Are The World” it lacked any superstar recording artists-or any industry names at all outside of the group Toto, which provided instrumental tracks. Organizers pulled the song, and Americans who tuned in to watch the Chicago Bears maul the New England Patriots were instead treated to a commercial featuring Hands Across America celebrity co-chairs Bill Cosby and Lily Tomlin. ![]() Composed by New York jingle writers, “Hands Across America” was set to premiere during halftime of Super Bowl XX until Michael Jackson protested because he believed it upstaged “We Are The World,” which he co-wrote with Lionel Richie. Hoping to replicate the success of “We Are The World,” USA for Africa produced another charity power anthem to be played on radio stations across the United States to promote the event. Time Picture Researcher Martha Bardach during Hands Across America.
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