The summer of 1963 was a busy time for the Boston black community. After the Boston School Committee rejected a petition from the NAACP for a meeting, a major demonstration occurred outside their offices on July 29.                 Many community members travelled together later in the summer to […]

Immediately after the June 11 sit-in, a “Freedom Stay-Out” Day was announced, organized by the Mass Freedom Movement headed by James Breeden and Noel Day. Students were to boycott school for one designated day, showing the Boston Public School (BPS) how large a community the sit-in members represented. The first announcement of the boycott came […]

Ironically, the catalyst for the movement happened the same day Governor George Wallace barred black students from entering the University of Alabama and John F. Kennedy gave his civil rights is a “moral issue” speech. On June 11, 1963, the Boston NCAAP Education Committee, attended a Boston School Committees (BCS) meeting and staged a sit-in. […]

Boston’s history of civil rights and education reform might make it surprising that Boston became a battleground around de facto segregation. De facto segregation results from factors other than segregation laws. After World War II, educational quality and funding decreased in Boston, and the first victim was commitment to equality. The city’s demographics changed, affected […]

Massachusetts was the first state to codify integration in schools. Following boycotts, lawsuits, and state legislation, the state Supreme Court ruled against segregation in Boston v. Roberts in 1855. This decision was referenced in Brown v. Board in 1954, a federal Supreme Court decision against de jure, or by law, desegregation. 20 years before the […]