A message was sent to the Peoria Board of Education when 200 black Manual High School students walked out of class on a Thursday morning.
The march, organized by the Youth Council of the NAACP, proceeded to march to Roosevelt Junior High School where fifty more students joined the crowd and held hands while singing freedom songs and “Jim Crow must go.” Afterwards they walked on to the Carver Center for a brief, exclusively black, half-hour rally, and concluded the demonstration at Woodruff High School.
Bernard Kennedy, Peoria’s Public Safety Director, addressed the protesters afterwards through black policeman John Timmes.
Timmes reminded the protesters, including the wife of Peoria NAACP president John Gwynn, that because the protest took place without permission the leaders of the demonstration were subject to arrest, a fine of $1000, and a year in the penitentiary.