Civil Rights movement
Doctor Chester Boyd was born in the early 50’s in Newport News. As a young African American male Dr. Boyd join the youth branch of The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a civil rights organization for ethnic minorities in the United States. The purpose of the youth movement was to stress the importance of young people and women in the organization by recruiting members, raising money, organizing local campaigns, conduct meetings, go to hearings and rallies, support protests and demonstrations. He became the president of that chapter in 1965 which enrolled more than 1,100 young people. When asked what prompted him to become a member he remarked that an incident involving his mother and a white police officer forever changed his life. The office accused his mother of running a red light when she insisted that she did not he call her a “lying black bitch” as he redressed the office he pulled out his gun pointed it at my head and told my mother if she don’t “ tell the little nigger to be quiet he would blow his got-damn brains out”. So she begged me to be quiet. It was not long after that incident that he became more active in the Civil Rights Movement. Even though the law of the land was integration most of the schools were still segregated.
At the age 11 Dr. Boyd was able to attend the march on Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963. This march was attended by some 250,000 people, it was the largest demonstration ever seen in the nation’s capital where for the first time and last time he would see Dr. Martin Luther King in person. Hundreds of people boarded the bus that morning going to what would be a historical event. By age 16 he became chapter president of the Tidewater youth chapter of the NAACP. This honor afforded him the opportunity to become involved in national planning sessions in Washington and Detroit where he met people such as Kivie Kaplan, a businessman and philanthropist from Boston, who served as president of the NAACP from 1966 until 1975, Roy Wilkins, and Jesse Jackson and A. Philip Randolph.
Dr. Boyd also related other incidents such as when the principal told all the “whites to go home and said the niggas stay”. The result was a riot in which all of the white students was chased from the school at which time the police were call and the school was surrounded by the police. When the parents of the black students showed up fights broke out as the parents moved to protect their children.
When ask if things have changed he quoted a statement from the NAACP article stating “As millions of African Americans continued to be afflicted as urban poverty and crime increased, de facto racial segregation remained and job discrimination lingered throughout the United States, proving the need for continued NAACP advocacy and action.”
Chester Boyd
Kymberly Brewton 