Chicago, Oct. 22 — Classrooms across the South and West Sides stood nearly empty today as roughly 225,000 Chicago public school pupils, close to half the system’s enrollment, stayed home in a mass boycott against segregated and overcrowded schools.
The protest, which organizers named Freedom Day, was called by a coalition of civil rights and neighborhood groups. Leaders said Negro children were packed into double shifts and portable classrooms while seats sat open in white schools a short bus ride away.
Target: Supt. Willis
Much of the anger was aimed at School Superintendent Benjamin C. Willis. Parents have taken to calling the aluminum trailer classrooms parked beside crowded schools “Willis Wagons,” and several mothers chained themselves to construction equipment earlier this year to stop more of them from going in.
The Board of Education says it follows a neighborhood-schools policy that assigns each child to the school nearest home. Critics answer that the city’s boundary lines were drawn to keep the races apart.
March on the Board
By afternoon a column of marchers estimated at 10,000 had moved through the Loop to the board’s headquarters. Police kept the crowd from entering the building, and the demonstration ended without serious incident.
Organizers said Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who addressed the March on Washington in August, had met with them and encouraged the boycott. They promised that today’s walkout would not be the last.