Today in Black History: February 3, 1964 New York City Public School Boycott, Nearly a Half Million Children skip Class

Though segregation in New York was not codified like the Jim Crow laws in the South, a de facto segregation was evident in the city’s school system.

Picketers, made up of teachers, parents, students and activists, marched at 300 of the city’s 860 schools, The New York Times reported. The protest culminated in a march across the Brooklyn Bridge to the Board of Education building on Livingston Street in downtown Brooklyn.

Directing the boycott was long-time civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, who had been a chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington and had helped organize the first Freedom Ride in 1947.