1lUJInY

Discovering Boston’s Civil Rights StoryAugust 1965 –Ellen Jackson and others founded Operation Exodus, which provides transportation forAfrican American students to go to more integrated schools.1965 – The Bay State Banner appeared, with Bryant Rollins as the first editor.1966 – Metco was established, allowing minority students to be bused to suburban schools.June 1966 – Reverend Virgil Woods confronted school committee member Louise Day Hicks at thegraduation ceremony at the Patrick T. Campbell Junior High School.February 1967,– Mel King became the director of the New Urban League.June 2, 1967 – Mothers for Adequate Welfare staged a sit-in at the Grove Hall Welfare Office. Efforts toevict the women led to confrontation between Boston police and local residents that culminated whatlocal activists termed as a “police riot” at Grove Hall.November 1967 – Thomas Atkins was elected to Boston City Council.April 4, 1968 – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. assassinated in Memphis.April 5, 1968 – James Brown Concert at Boston Garden was held. The concert would be an effort to keepBlack teenagers and young adults off city streets in the aftermath of the King assassination.1968 – Nearly five thousand people attended a rally at White Stadium in Franklin Park.Organized by the Black United Front, the demonstrators demanded an end to discrimination.1968 – Students protested at English High School after a student was denied entrance forwearing a dashiki.1968 – The Unity Bank opens, a full service Black bank in Boston.1968 – WGBH began to air Say Brother on subjects relating to the African Americancommunity of Boston.1969 – Mel King protested the treatment of Boston’s African American community at aUnited Way luncheon at the Statler-Hilton Hotel.1969 – The William Monroe Trotter schools opened as a magnet school to encourage integration.1970 – The Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts performed the first production of Black Nativity.1972 – Doris Bunte became the first African American woman elected to the Massachusetts statelegislature.1972 – The class action suit, Morgan v. Hennigan, was filed in federal district court in Boston, chargingthe Boston School Committee with deliberately creating two school systems, one for blacks and one forwhites.46101 Walnut Street, Watertown, MA 02472 * 617.923.9933 * www.primarysource.org