Sarah Roberts Walks Boston

Sarah Roberts Walks Boston

On  February 15, 1848 5-year-old Sarah Roberts (“a colored child…, a resident of Boston, and living with her father.”) had applied for admission to her nearest school. The school committee refused her application “on the ground of her being a colored person.”

Rather than walk past the five white schools to get to her assigned black school, Sarah Roberts “went into the primary school nearest her residence, but without any ticket of admission…and was…ejected from the school by the teacher.”

Sarah’s father Benjamin sued.

Sarah Roberts Walks Boston

Roberts v The City of Boston

On December 4, 1849,  the case of Roberts v. The City of Boston began. Massachusetts Supreme Court Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw presided.

Sarah Roberts Walks Boston
Charles Sumner was the lawyer for Sarah Roberts

Abolitionist, and later United States Senator Charles Sumner and Robert Morris, a young Black abolitionist, represented Sarah Roberts. Their argument asserted that all persons, regardless of race or color, stand as equals before the law in Massachusetts.

Sarah Roberts Walks Boston
Robert Morris represented Sarah Roberts

In April 1850 Judge Shaw decided in favor of the Boston Board. Shaw discounted the objection to the extra distance that Sarah had to walk as  trivial. “In Boston,” he pointed out, “more than one hundred thousand inhabitants live within a space so small…it would be scarcely an inconvenience to require a boy of good health to traverse daily the whole extent of it.” In light of this, he concluded, the extra distance that Sarah had to walk did nothing to make the committee’s decision “unreasonable, still less illegal.

Sarah Roberts Walks Boston
cover to Sarah’s Long Walk about Sarah Roberts and others

Stephen Kendrick and Paul Kendrick wrote Sarah’s Long Walk (2004).

Five years later, on April 28, 1855, Massachusetts desegregated the state’s public schools with a law that stated: “no distinction shall be made on account of the race, color, or religious opinions, of the applicant or scholar.”

Despite that progress, on May 18, 1896, the US Supreme Court, in Plessy v. Ferguson upheld the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in public facilities (including schools) under the doctrine of “separate but equal.”

It was another 58 years, on May 17, 1954, that the US Supreme Court overturned Plessy and unanimously ruled in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kans that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. It was a victory for NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall, who became the first black US Supreme Court justice.

Sarah Roberts Walks Boston

Busy Beatle December 1963

Busy Beatle December 1963

It was a busy Beatle December in 1963. I always thought that I’d decided to like the Beatles on my own. In retrospect, Uncle Capitol Records may have had a hand in it..

December 4, 1963: Capitol Records issued a press release announcing that it would start selling “I Want To Hold Your Hand” in the US on January 13, 1964.

The Beatles Christmas Record

Recorded in October, it was on December 6, 1963 that the UK Beatle Fan Club released the first Christmas recording: The Beatles Christmas Record.

Busy Beatle December 1963

CBS TV

On December 10, 1963, CBS TV broadcast the four-minute Beatle piece that the JFK assassination had pre-empted.

Busy Beatle December 1963

WWDC DJ Carroll James

On December 17, 1963, WWDC DJ Carroll James played a UK copy of  “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” A 15-year-old girl from Silver Spring, MD had written to him  requesting Beatles music after seeing the CBS story.  James arranged to have a stewardess buy a U.K. copy of the Beatles’ single.

Busy Beatle December 1963
WWDC DJ Carroll James with the Beatles

Capitol Records threatened to sue WWDC , but  changed its mind and decided to rush-release “I Want To Hold Your Hand.” It cancelled Christmas leaves and pressing plants and staff geared up.

Busy Beatle December 1963
How many of you still have your copy from 1964?

On December 23, 1963, Capitol Records issued a memo outlining an extensive “Beatles Campaign” using various promotional items: trade ads, a fake tabloid Beatles newspaper, buttons, stickers, wigs, and a battery-powered, “Beatles-in-motion,” bobble-head-like, window display for music stores.

Busy Beatle December 1963
flip side “I Saw Her Standing There”
Busy Beatle December 1963

December 23, 1963

December 26, 1963, Capitol Records started to distribute “I Want To Hold Your Hand.”  It was a perfect storm with teenagers home for the holidays to listen to their radios and buy records.  In New York City, 10,000 copies were sold every hour.  In the first three days, 250,000 copies were  sold.  Capitol was so overloaded it contracted Columbia Records and RCA to help with the pressings.

Busy Beatle December 1963

Released

December 26, 1963: Capital released “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”  In the first three days after its release, 250,000 copies had been sold; 10,000 were reportedly sold every hour in New York City.

That same day, back in the UK, the Beatles began their 16-night run of their Christmas Show.

On December 27, 1963, William Mann of the London Times “legitimizes” the Beatles music by writing a very complimentary article about it. In part, he said, “…the songs of Lennon and McCartney are distinctly indigenous in character, the most imaginative and inventive examples of a style that has been developing on Merseyside during the past few years. And there is a nice, rather flattering irony in the news that the Beatles have now become prime favourites in America, too.”

Busy Beatle December 1963

December 30, 1963

December 30, 1963, a two-page ad from Capitol Records pitching the Beatles’ recordings ran in Billboard and Cash Box.  These ads had already been distributed to Capitol’s sales agents for use with radio stations and in enlarged,  easel-scale size for use in music store displays.

Busy Beatle December 1963