Videos:'63 Boycott of Chicago Public Schools Alive in 2013

Project Description

We are all on a journey of sorts. Most experience that life is full of injustices. We each have a dream of equality, but few imagine that they will get there. Alone we try. However, our efforts never seem to be enough. Thus, we look to history and discover that there are lessons. Together we shall overcome! In 1963, that was the situation. Chicago, residents took to the streets to protest deliberate segregation in their schools. The city’s all-powerful Mayor was ignoring the people’s pleas. Parents were frustrated that they had not been able to protect their young from prejudiced policies. And the public school students were tired of being treated like second-class citizens. It was determined that in the city of Chicago, the people had no choice; pupils had only their conviction. The plan was to walk out of school and march in protest.

Today, that thought lives and we March on. Not to commemorate, but to continue the travel, Chicagoans stood strong in support of the “Dream.” On the anniversary of the 1963 March For Jobs and Freedom citizens took to the streets and said “Do Not Close Our Schools!” “Invest in our community and our children!” Parents and pupils proclaimed their desire for an elected representative school board! The dynamic Director of the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, Jitu Brown spoke on the subject, as did a stream of concerned Moms and Dads. While the August 28th Boycott Chicago Public Schools event was small in comparison to a similar staging in 1963, 1500 were in attendance in Chicago, it was an audacious reminder of how journeys for Justice begin.

[Please view the videos.] Remember there were Journeys in Boston, New Jersey, New Orleans and elsewhere. Momentum grows as does the movement towards justice.

Let us think back. It was 1963. Twenty-five thousand were expected to attend a national March on the Capital. Two-hundred and fifty thousand appeared on the Mall that late August day in Washington D.C. One of these was Chicago public High School Teacher Timuel Black. At the August March in the nation’s Capitol, Timuel pondered. “My feelings were, ‘There’s going to be a new world,'” Black says, “because he said, ‘I have a dream.’ And many of us were going to return home to help fulfill that dream.”

And so he did. That October, Timuel Black and other Chicago “Dreamers” staged the largest school boycott in the nation’s history. Two-hundred and twenty-five thousand [225,000] students stayed home from classes. Thousands of parents marched on City Hall. The Board of Education too was shaken by the footsteps of parents and pupils on a Journey For Justice.

City-wide citizens protested the segregation policies that mandated hundreds of learners within city’s burgeoning black community attend classes in rickety trailers. Young Negros were not placed in white schools with plenty of room. No, the Black were relegated to rooms far from the comfortable and spacious white classrooms.

Today, little has changed. Torches have been passed on but policies that disinvest and discriminate remain. School Superintendent Benjamin Willis—the trailers were nicknamed Willis Wagons—has passed on, but Barbara Byrd-Bennett has adequately filled his shoes. It is important to realize that the power behind Willis was the first Mayor Daley. Today, the force that supports the Superintendent is a hand-selected School Board and the Mayor who chose them, Rahm Emanuel.

Little has changed in 50 years. Yesteryear, Daley had his soldiers. Today’s CPS officials and Board members are rubber stamps for Mayor Emanuel.

There was, however, one difference. All those years ago, Mayor Richard J. Daley did not pretend that the Willis Wagons were in the best interests of children. Mayor Rahm Emanuel, on the other hand insists that massive school closures are meant to better educate the city’s young students of color.

What is the same and deeply troublesome is what Timuel Black, now 94, remains troubled by what he sees and hears. The Journey For Justice and the struggle continue. Another event will be held in Chicago on October 22nd, to honor the past and bring it back to the future when progress will, once again be made. Please join us. Pack your bags and perhaps discover as Timuel Black did fifty years ago. “There was a sense of harmony and unity — as we marched,” Black says upon reflection. That is what occurs when we Journey for Justice together.