Pastor urges white students to return to class: 1954
The Rev.Jack Boelens, pastor of the Garden Memorial Presbyterian Church at 1720 Minnesota Ave. SE, urges white Anacostia High School students who staged a walkout to protest integration October 4, 1954 to return to class.
Boelens told the students:
“I want to remind you that Jesus loves you all and He died for al, white and colored. If He loved all, that’s enough for me and we should all try to do likewise.”
“The Bible says if a man says he loves God and hates he brother, he is a liar. You’ve got to look back to the very basis of your religion to make this decision and you’ve got to decide it with your God.”
Few heeded Boelens’ plea.
Upwards of 1,000 white students staged a strike and a noisy demonstration and clashed with several black students outside of Anacostia High School.
About 300 students at McKinley High School also staged a strike October 4th, the first day of integration.
The student strike spread to Eastern and six junior high schools on October 5th.
McKinley students marched to the Board of Education building October 5th and were herded into Franklin Park by police. A delegation of three students met with assistant school superintendent Norman J. Nelson.
Eastern and Anacostia students attempted marches to link up to build support for a school boycott October 5th, but were largely prevented from joining forces by District of Columbia police who halted them on the Sousa Bridge on Pennsylvania Ave. SE.
By October 6th, the strikes and school boycotts collapsed with attendance near normal.
Integration of D.C. school in the fall of 1954 followed the Supreme Court’s decision in the Bolling v. Sharpe case in May 1954.
The suit was brought by the Consolidated Parents Group, composed of working class African Americans living along the H Street/Benning Road corridor.
The Group waged a seven-year fight beginning in 1947 to improve conditions for African Americans that began with a boycott of deplorable conditions at the all black Browne Junior High on Benning Road and ended with the Court’s school desegregation order.
The District of Columbia was one of the few major segregated school systems that moved quickly to integrate schools in the wake of the four May 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decisions outlawing school segregations, including the Bolling v. Sharpe decision banning Jim Crow public schools in Washington, D.C.
However, the school system soon implemented a track system where black students were placed in the lowest tracks that included no college preparation courses and effectively segregated most black students within the schools.
The June 1967 Hobson v. Hansen decision broke up the track system, but by then white flight to the suburbs had effectively re-segregated District of Columbia public schools.
For a background post on the fight to break up D.C.’s Jim Crow schools, see washingtonareaspark.com/2015/08/20/dcs-fighting-barber-th...
For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHskivJu7g
The photographer is unknown. The image is a Washington Daily News photograph courtesy of the D.C. Public Library Washington Star Collection © Washington Post.
Pastor urges white students to return to class: 1954
The Rev.Jack Boelens, pastor of the Garden Memorial Presbyterian Church at 1720 Minnesota Ave. SE, urges white Anacostia High School students who staged a walkout to protest integration October 4, 1954 to return to class.
Boelens told the students:
“I want to remind you that Jesus loves you all and He died for al, white and colored. If He loved all, that’s enough for me and we should all try to do likewise.”
“The Bible says if a man says he loves God and hates he brother, he is a liar. You’ve got to look back to the very basis of your religion to make this decision and you’ve got to decide it with your God.”
Few heeded Boelens’ plea.
Upwards of 1,000 white students staged a strike and a noisy demonstration and clashed with several black students outside of Anacostia High School.
About 300 students at McKinley High School also staged a strike October 4th, the first day of integration.
The student strike spread to Eastern and six junior high schools on October 5th.
McKinley students marched to the Board of Education building October 5th and were herded into Franklin Park by police. A delegation of three students met with assistant school superintendent Norman J. Nelson.
Eastern and Anacostia students attempted marches to link up to build support for a school boycott October 5th, but were largely prevented from joining forces by District of Columbia police who halted them on the Sousa Bridge on Pennsylvania Ave. SE.
By October 6th, the strikes and school boycotts collapsed with attendance near normal.
Integration of D.C. school in the fall of 1954 followed the Supreme Court’s decision in the Bolling v. Sharpe case in May 1954.
The suit was brought by the Consolidated Parents Group, composed of working class African Americans living along the H Street/Benning Road corridor.
The Group waged a seven-year fight beginning in 1947 to improve conditions for African Americans that began with a boycott of deplorable conditions at the all black Browne Junior High on Benning Road and ended with the Court’s school desegregation order.
The District of Columbia was one of the few major segregated school systems that moved quickly to integrate schools in the wake of the four May 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decisions outlawing school segregations, including the Bolling v. Sharpe decision banning Jim Crow public schools in Washington, D.C.
However, the school system soon implemented a track system where black students were placed in the lowest tracks that included no college preparation courses and effectively segregated most black students within the schools.
The June 1967 Hobson v. Hansen decision broke up the track system, but by then white flight to the suburbs had effectively re-segregated District of Columbia public schools.
For a background post on the fight to break up D.C.’s Jim Crow schools, see washingtonareaspark.com/2015/08/20/dcs-fighting-barber-th...
For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHskivJu7g
The photographer is unknown. The image is a Washington Daily News photograph courtesy of the D.C. Public Library Washington Star Collection © Washington Post.