Led by John Gwynn, Peoria’s NAACP chapter staged a “singing sit-in” in front of the school administration building for four hours. The seven protesters \u2014 later supplemented by a group that included six white ministers \u2014 wanted to discuss with the Peoria school board their grievances and recommendations for Peoria’s school system.<\/p>\n
The list of recommendations suggests the breadth of NAACP protest in Peoria. Many were employment-related: better procedures to ensure more black administrators, teachers, counselors, custodians, bus drivers, and construction workers. Some were curricular: the teaching of black history and the replacement of “biased, stereotyped school books with newly available books…that accurately reflect the history of Negroes and other minorities,” books chosen from a 200-book list that Gwynn presented.<\/p>\n
The school board listened to the demands and responded that there was no racial discrimination in school hiring, but agreed to a special meeting in a week to address the full slate of recommendations.<\/p>\n
During the school board meeting, the protesters were not disruptive and the school board deferred pressing charges for the earlier incident.<\/p>\n
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Led by John Gwynn, Peoria’s NAACP chapter staged a “singing sit-in” in front of the school administration building for four hours. The seven protesters \u2014 later supplemented by a group that included six […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,398,368,153,9,26,24],"tags":[125,188,186,182,228,176],"class_list":["post-3413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1963-1969","category-2-freedom-now","category-the-fight-to-desegregate","category-the-movement-takes-a-radical-turn","category-peoria-an-introduction","category-schooled","category-segregation-desegregation","tag-1960s-civil-rights","tag-civil-rights-movement-in-peoria","tag-discrimination","tag-education","tag-john-gwynn","tag-national-association-for-the-advancement-of-colored-people-naacp"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n