A coalition of civil rights groups staged Freedom Day, a mass boycott and demonstration against segregated schools and inadequate resources for African American students in Chicago.
In the aftermath of the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling, Chicago’s schools were overcrowded and underfunded, and the Chicago Board of Education refused to allow Black students to transfer to white schools.
The Chicago Board of Education disregarded the Brown ruling to integrate schools by claiming they were following a neighborhood schools policy that required students to attend a school if it was within walking distance of their home.
In response to overcrowding, the Board of Education brought in mobile classrooms, which community members referred to as “Willis Wagons,” after the head of the Board of Education, Benjamin C. Willis. The board claimed these were temporary solutions, but for many of Chicago’s Black residents, they were endemic of the racial inequality in schooling.