Embrace Boston hopes to gather 10,000+ for Freedom Rally anniversary

Local News

Marin Luther King III is scheduled to speak at the event.

People mingle around The Embrace sculpture on Boston Common. Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff

Marin Luther King III is joining community leaders for the 60th anniversary of the 1965 Freedom Rally on Boston Common later this month.

The rally, scheduled for April 26 at 12 p.m., aims to honor the historic moment when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led a march of over 20,000 people from Roxbury to Boston Common, protesting racial imbalance in housing and schools, according to Embrace Boston.

“Sixty years later, many of the same issues are still plaguing our society,” Traci Griffith, director of the Racial Justice Program at the ACLU of Massachusetts, told Boston.com. “So it’s important to remember why he was marching.”

At the event, organizers plan to highlight the new designation of the Charles Street entrance to The Boston Common as “1965 Freedom Rally Square.” Community leaders will also march down Boylston Street, retracing the steps of those who took a stand in 1965 from Copley Square to the corner of Boylston Street and Charles Street.

Organizers said they hope to attract over 10,000 attendees to The Embrace on Boston Common, where Martin Luther King III, the eldest son of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, will speak. The Embrace sculpture is inspired by a photo of the Kings, who met in Boston in 1952, embracing one another.

“It’s important that public memory is held, it is celebrated, and it is used as a roadmap for our future,” Embrace Boston president and CEO Dr. Imari Paris Jeffries told Boston.com. “This march is a part of that.”

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, Reverend Willie Brodrick, lead pastor at Twelfth Baptist Church, and participants from over 100 organizations will also be in attendance.

“I hope it serves to highlight the fact that these injustices still exist,” Griffith said. “The hope is that folks will activate, that they will lobby their legislators, and that they will work in whatever capacity they can within their own communities to dispel these disparities.”