Nation: King Moves North

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The next day, which had been decreed as "Martin Luther King Day" by Governor Volpe, King showed up more than an hour late for the march's start. Finally the marchers, including Mrs. Malcolm Peabody, mother of former Democratic Governor Endicott Peabody and herself a veteran of last year's St. Augustine, Fla. civil rights demonstrations, stepped off from Roxbury's Carter Playground. By the time they reached Boston Common, they numbered some 18,000. Despite a drenching rain, King spoke for 40 minutes, said: "The vision of a new Boston must extend into the heart of Roxbury and into the mind of every child now being stifled in segregated schools. Boston must become a testing ground for the ideals of freedom, and so I come to Boston on behalf of the future of America, on behalf of those frustrated people, black and white, to whom Jesus referred as 'the least of these my brethren.' "

He would, he said, be back this summer to lead demonstrations in several Northern cities, including New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit and Baltimore.