RESOLUTION HONORING THE BURNSIDE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL DESEGREGATION SIT-IN 52nd ANNIVERSARY
WHEREAS, The Burnside Elementary School Desegregation Sit-In, which honors a watershed moment in modern local civil-rights history, is celebrating its 52nd Anniversary honoring the fight for educational opportunity and equality in public educational institutions in Chicago during June 2014; and
WHEREAS, This august body has been informed of this important milestone by the Honorable Michelle A. Harris, Alderman ofthe 8th Ward; and
WHEREAS, May 17, 2014 marked the 60th Anniversary ofthe landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education and July 2, 2014 marks the 50lh Anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act; and
WHEREAS, The movement to desegregate schools ir» Chicago began on a cold winter day -January 2, 1962, with a sit-in at Burnside Elementary School. It was organized by a group of dissatisfied PTA mothers and in many ways was the spark that ignited the Civil Rights Movement in Chicago; and
WHEREAS, The sit-in was in response to a highly unpopular and widely considered demeaning plan to relieve overcrowded conditions at Burnside Elementary School. The Chicago Board of Education ordered 7th and 8th grade students living east of the former South Park Blvd. (now Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive) and south of the railroad tracks to transfer to Gillespie Upper Grade
| Center located at 9301 S. State Street. This order came in late December. 1961, right before the Christmas Holiday vacation. This action would force some students to now walk 17 blocks to school. The Chicago Board of Education, which was then under the leadership of school superintendent
\ Benjamin C. Willis, preferred transferring Black students rather than integrating the then predominantly white Perry Elementary School (now Harold Washington School), located at 9130 South University, which was a few convenient blocks from Burnside Elementary School; and
WHEREAS, Since its launch in 1962...
Click here for full text