A Testing Ground for Freedom

You don’t have to look back 250 years to find Bostonians joining each other in the streets to fight oppression; we’ve done it in every generation. It was only 60 years ago, on April 23, that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led the 1965 Freedom Rally, the first Civil Rights March in the Northeast. 20,000 Bostonians marched from Roxbury to the Common to protest racial inequality in housing and education, and to hear Dr. King speak from the steps of the Parkman bandstand.

Dr. King knew Boston well. Although born in Georgia, he studied here at Boston University in the 1950s, and it was here that he met Coretta Scott King. When he said, “It would be morally irresponsible were I to remain blind to the threat to liberty the denial of opportunity and the crippling poverty that we face in some sections of this community,” he knew Boston and the racism present here.

On that day, Dr. King said, “I’m here to join with you in reminding the Cradle of Liberty that America has never fulfilled the Democratic vision which it shares with the world among a large segment of her own people, black and white.” Those Democratic visions are still not secured for so many of our fellow citizens and neighbors, and this administration acts to strip them further. As they seek to turn a blind eye to the racism of the past while entrenching racism in the present, Boston must assess our painful past with clear vision and recommit to a future of equality and prosperity for all our neighbors.

We must listen to Dr. King’s words from April 23, 1965 anew, for they are no less relevant April 23, 2025. “Boston must become a testing ground for the ideals of freedom.”

-Silence Dogood

April 23, 2025