50 Demonstrators March On School Board Offices

Fifty Negro and white demonstrators, including a number of Summer School and Harvard students, marched on the offices of the Boston School Committee yesterday to protest the Committee's refusal to meet with the education committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

As of last night the Committee continued to resist attempts by NAACP leaders to force a discussion of grievances voiced by Boston's Negro community. Demonstrators were planning another march tomorrow on the Committee's office at 15 Beacon St.

At the School Committee yesterday the marchers linked arms and blocked the main entrance to the building, but a side door remained open, Christopher C. Schwabacher '63, one of the marchers, said last night.

Schwabacher said several people tried to break through the row of demonstrators, but failed to reach the entrance. He noted that more than one of the persons trying to seek entrance might have been a reporter, purposely creating a good picture for the crowd of photographers on hand.

The Christian Science Monitor, however, reported that "a small group of men and one or two women" did manage to push through the pickets.

Suspicion Fortified

Schwabacher's suspicion was fortified by the Boston Traveler yesterday afternoon, which ran a banner headline and several huge pictures describing the "scuffle" its reporter had with the demonstrators.

The Boston School Committee has refused to meet with the NAACP group, maintaining it has already established an ad hoc committee of 10 Negro leaders to discuss school problems. The NAACP charges the ad hoc group is "hand-picked," Schwabacher said, and "would do nothing" in pressing for the resolution of Negro grievances.

Segregation Charged

The NAACP's chief complaint is that de facto segregation exists in the 13 schools located in Roxbury and Dorchester, the areas of Boston in which most of the city's Negroes live. Reiterating a charge that has been heard in many Northern cities of late, the NAACP says not only population patterns but the zoning of school contributed to the situation.

While de facto segregation is their major grievance, Negro leaders are also protesting low relative expenditures in Roxbury, the condition of school buildings, inadequate text books, lack of crucial supplies, and the fact that only 40 of the school system's 2000 teachers are Negroes.