Join the Freedom Ride to Boston. March Against Racism/Dec.14

Boston: Ad Hoc Committee for December 14, 1974. Printed poster, 17 x 11 inches, folded. Somelight wear, crease to center, ownership marks to verso, very good plus condition overall. With the ownership stamp of J. Wesley Miller, with "J.W. Miller - duplicate" written in ink. Federal District Judge W. Arthur Garrity ruled in 1974 that Boston must integrate its school system. The group ROAR, or Restore Our Alienated Rights, led a broad effort against integration, supported by the School Committee, most members of the City Council and many teachers and police. Early efforts to block the desegregation efforts centered around South Boston High School, where some parents of white students harassed and threw stones and bottles at arriving African-American students, scenes repeated in some other white middle class neighborhoods.

On December 14, over fifteen to twenty thousand people marched on Boston Common in support of the desegregation efforts. Offered here is a poster from the event, published by the Ad Hoc Committee for Dec. 14. The poster shows an image from the Central High School desegregation efforts in 1957 above an image from Boston in 1974. No copies located, though one is likely held at Miller's unprocessed as of 2021 archive at UMass-Amherst. A note on the front reads "10-11x-1974," suggesting that he found the poster over a month before the planned event.