King Will Lead Rights March Here And Speak at Boston Common Rally

Martin Luther King will lead a march from Roxbury to Boston Common a week from Friday to protest racial imbalance in schools and housing.

Starting from Carter Playground, at the corner of Columbus Ave. and Camden St. in Roxbury, the march will pass through Boston, stopping at schools and slums along the way. On the Common, King will speak on the "focal points of the Freedom Struggle in Boston": slum housing, municipal code enforcement, anti-poverty programs, and education. Virgil Wood, president of the Massachusetts branch of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, said yesterday that King would probably comment on the Boston School Committee.

Wood said that King had asked for a tour of Roxbury to familiarize himself with the area's problems. King will also meet with members of the Interdenominational, Interracial, Ministerial Alliance of Boston and Vicinity and the Boston Catholic Interracial Council. Both organizations have given their support to the march.

Attendance at next week's rally will probably be greater than that at a rally held last month, Wood said, because the Easter vacation will allow more students to participate.

Wood announced that $19,796 of a projected $100,000 had been raised to pay for the march to Montgomery and to sponsor SCLC's summer project. Hosea Williams, one of King's assistants, will visit Harvard April 24, to recruit students for SCOPE (Summer Community and Political Education), which will work on voter registration, poverty, and education.

A statement from the Massachusetts Freedom Movement hailed the March on Boston as long overdue. "Slum Housing and poor, segregated schools destroy thousands of people everyday. Massachusetts Freedom Movement calls upon its 14 affiliated units and all those who supported the two school stayouts to March on Boston," a spokesman said.