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1 pp. 12½x9". Signed with addresses of eight Gary, Indiana residents.

“We, undersigned white and negro citizens of Gary, Indiana protest against the secret agreements made in settlement of the Froebel School strike, in which Negro parents were not permitted to take part. We petition that Principal Nuzum remain at Froebel School as before. Otherwise the school board will have performed a Munich sell-out on the Negro people of Gary and all democratic minded people of this city. We hold that an investigation should be made…of those who organized the strike-conspiracy which threatened race riot. These conspirators want Principal Nuzum’s head because he opposed the conspiracy to violate state law against segregation in the schools…We are in favor of equal rights for all children at Froebel School…” One month after the end of World War II, white students at the only integrated high school in Gary, Indiana, boycotted their classes, demanding that the school’s 1,000+ Black students be transferred elsewhere and that the school’s white Principal Richard Nuzum, who vigorously supported racial integration, be fired. This petition, printed by liberal unions, supported Nuzum and denounced the strike, which attracted national notoriety and threatened to raise the city’s racial tensions to the point of violence. After the strike had gone on for a month, America’s best-known pop singer, 30 year-old Frank Sinatra, canceled a $10,000 engagement to hold a free concert in Gary for 6,000 fans at which he called the walkout “the most shameful incident in the history of American education” and said adults who encouraged their teenagers’ race prejudice, should be “run out of town”. Eleven days later, the Froebel School Strike ended.