1967 Philadelphia student demonstration

The November 17th, 1967 Philadelphia student demonstration and march was a student strike and subsequent police riot which took place on November 17th, 1967. The demonstration was part of a larger trend of racial tension and unrest in the United States during the 1960s and early 1970s stemming from the closure of public schools to African American student attendance in at least one state in the southern United States of the latter 1950s.

Numerous small segregationist, separatist, White Nationalist groups would demonstrate at the Philadelphia School Board regularly in opposition to integration of the schools.

The events of the 17th of November changed all hints of racist domination of the schools.

Causes

The demonstration was led and planned, organized, and operationalized, in part, by the student-run and organized Central Coordinating Committee (CCC). The CCC demanded better schools for all students in Philadelphia, especially African-Americans, and an end to tracking and the forced vocational education system which affected African-American students at that time.

The main in-high-school-local-teams planning the demonstration and engaged as the prime leadership was the African American Student Society (AASS) posted out of Gratz HS and Gillespie Jr. HS, respectively. Germantown HS had a very active presentation and was a part of the AASS, which with student assistance, debated the difference between becoming a student union or a student association.

The Student Action Committee (SAC) was another organizing force behind the demonstrations. It was made up of high school students from various schools, public and religious, across Philadelphia. SAC met for at least three years before the demonstration, and published and distributed a student-run newsletter. SAC was active in a number of demonstrations in that period, such as the Philadelphia Post Office demonstration to demand hiring of African-Americans on an equal basis, the Girard College integration marches, various marches connected to the Civil Rights Movement as well as a number of anti-war marches. Also, the draft and the need for counselors of the students' draft problems was held as a demand. Student Rights especially for published student materials, and was a portion of the student demands.

The school board released a booklet on student rights in 1968.

Members of SAC were also active with SNCC (The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) and CORE (the Congress of Racial Equality), which both had offices in south and north Philadelphia, respectively.

THE CCC was in negotiations with public school Superintendent Marc Shedd, who was known as a reformer, for at least a year before the demonstration. A number of demands had been presented to school administrators attending meetings held at the Church and World Institute on North Broad Street. The issue of ending vocational tracking and other situations drew supporters from all areas of the city of Philadelphia. Other demands included the removal of uniformed police officers from public schools, and the addition of African-American studies to the curriculum. The CCC also met with white students a number of times outside and inside Philadelphia to discuss joint demands for a student bill of rights.

Lack of action after those discussions with the school board prompted the November demonstration, and major steps forward were made in that student demands were allowed by the Superintendent of schools in the negotiations before police intervention into the demonstration.

All demands of the students were won in negotiations at the School Board. Many demands were placed in action, and enforced after the march and demonstration.

Student strike and police response

On November 17th, 1967, by police count, 3,500 students did not attend classes and assembled around the Board of Education building at 21st and the Parkway.[1] Student organizers disputed this number, stating there were many more students present than the police projected, and, interestingly, most of the photos and video of the demonstration are missing from a number of archives. The demonstrators included youth groups, Catholic high school students, public junior high and high school students.

The demonstrators were attacked around midday by two busloads of police parked along the JFK Parkway, and the encounter quickly turned violent. Twenty-two people were seriously injured, 57 were arrested.

A possible 10,000 students were prevented from attending the demonstration by action of school administrators and police activity locking school doors, turning students away from the demonstration, and picking up and holding students through the afternoon.

The Commissioner of Police Frank Rizzo was on the scene, and witnesses quoted him as telling his officers to “Get their Black asses!” [1]

Aftermath

Reaction to the demonstration was split. Some criticized the brutal response of police officers against unarmed student, while others praised Rizzo's action to suppress the demonstration.[1] The North City Congress, a social service organization, produced a report on November 29, 1967, entitled, “A Comparison of Police Action in Kensington Riots of 1966 and at the School Board Demonstration, November, 1967” noted the discrepancies in the actions of the Philadelphia Police Department, in the decision to attack the students at the Philadelphia school board demonstration as opposed to a riot which had occurred in a white community.

At least two court cases were filed against the Philadelphia Police Department for their role in the riot: Heard et al. v Rizzo et al. and Traylor et al. v. Rizzo et al. [2]

Frank Rizzo was exposed to direct and intense criticism for the actions of the police at that demonstration, but he was not credited with keeping the peace. He was later elected Mayor of Philadelphia but in an attempt to gain a third term, the same forces as in the 17th Demonstration defeated his bid for office and a change in the City Charter to allow the third term.

Mark Shedd made some initial reforms in the aftermath of the riot, including granting student demands for draft-counseling services, drafting a students’ bill of rights, and granting them a voice in curriculum and disciplinary procedures. However, his reforms were not well-received, and he was eventually forced to resign.[3]

Although the demands were won In 1967, in 2005, African American History became a requirement for high school students in the School District of Philadelphia to graduate. In "Discipline, Contradiction, and the Mis-Education of Philadelphia: The African and African-American Curriculum in Philadelphia High Schools and the Challenge of Junior ROTC, 1967-2005", Wes Enzinna's History Honors Thesis pointed out the strategy of authorities in opposing the demonstration was to increase the ability of those authorities to move youth into the military. The struggle continues, as at least one of the military academies have closed since 1990.

See also
  • Community Organizing

Further reading

References
  1. Ron Whitehorne. "1967: African American students strike, survive police riot to force change". Archived from the original on 23 July 2011. Retrieved 27 June 2011.
  2. "COOK v. UNITED STATES 392 U.S. 646 (1968)".
  3. "Education: Ousting a Reformer". Time. Dec 20, 1971. Retrieved 27 June 2011.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.