A Proclamation. Civil Rights Week, December 8-15, 1963: , November 8, 1963

An official Massachusetts gubernatorial proclamation designating December 8-15, 1963, as Civil Rights Week, issued during the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation and at a pivotal moment in the American Civil Rights Movement. Governor Endicott Peabody invokes Abraham Lincoln's assertion that all men are created equal while acknowledging that racial discrimination continues to deny Massachusetts residents equal opportunities in employment, housing, and education. Recalling the contributions of Crispus Attucks at the Boston Massacre and Peter Salem at Bunker Hill, as well as the Commonwealth's abolitionist heritage, Peabody appeals to Massachusetts citizens to reaffirm their commitment to racial equality, declaring that "none of us is free while some are denied equal opportunity." The proclamation was issued during Peabody's first year in office, following the passage of significant Massachusetts fair-housing legislation expanding protections against racial discrimination. Its recognition of discrimination within the Commonwealth, rather than exclusively in the segregated South, makes it a revealing document of Northern political engagement with the Civil Rights Movement. Issued only two weeks before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and three months after the March on Washington, the broadside captures an especially consequential moment in the struggle for racial justice. Broadside, printed recto only on a 14" x 8 ¾" sheet, with Massachusetts state seal and typographic signatures of Governor Endicott Peabody and Secretary of the Commonwealth Kevin H. White. Horizontal folds, scattered creasing, faint offsetting, a small stain affecting several lines of text, and tears and minor losses along the upper and lower edges; penciled notations to the verso. Although various other Peabody proclamations are in OCLC, we could not find a specific record for this one, although it presumably appears in state institutions.…