Also naming N. College Avenue between W. College Avenue and Ridge Avenue as "Freedom Fighters Way."

Also naming N. College Avenue between W. College Avenue and Ridge Avenue as “Freedom Fighters Way.” WHEREAS, Girard College was founded in 1833 as an independent boarding school for “poor, white, male orphans” and remained so segregated for over a century; and WHEREAS, The fight to open Girard College to students of all races was one of the key northern civil rights battles of the 1960s, beginning in the nineteenth century but peaking in 1965 when the “Philadelphia Freedom Fighters” took direct action to desegregate the school; and WHEREAS, Pioneering civil rights leader Cecil B. Moore led the effort to integrate Girard College, and the Freedom Fighters answered his call by protesting outside the school’s walls every day from May 1st to December 17th, seven months and seventeen days total; and WHEREAS, These protests were met with police resistance, with 1,000 police officers lining the walls of the College at the direction of Police Commissioner Frank Rizzo to bar the entry of the Freedom Fighters, arresting protestors attempting to scale the walls of Girard College; and WHEREAS, Days into the protest, the police turned to repressive tactics including foot and motor charges into the crowds, firing gas canisters and running over protestors with horses; and WHEREAS, On August 2, 1965, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. addressed the protests at the front gates of Girard College, likening the walls surrounding Girard College to “a kind of Berlin wall to keep the colored child…