In 1960, Galamison, Annie Stein, Thelma Hamilton and other members of the Parents' Workshop began a campaign to pressure the New York City Board of Education to integrate the schools. After years of fruitless struggle to effect meaningful change, the Galamison organized the Citywide Committee for Integrated Schools, a collaboration of the Parents' Workshop, the NAACP, the Congress of Racial Equality, the National Urban League, and the Harlem Parents' Committee, to stage a one-day boycott of the New York City public schools. On February 3, 1964, known as Freedom Day, nearly half a million students opted to stay away from school in what was the largest civil rights demonstration of the 1960s.
