Councillor Vellucci Cancels Plans To Hold Freedom Square Protest

Alfred E. Vellucci, Cambridge city councillor, has cancelled his plans for a Freedom Square rally scheduled for next Monday night. Vellucci abandoned the rally idea when he discovered it conflicted with a civil rights meeting to be held at the same time on the Cambridge Common.

Vellucci's rally was to be held both as a protest to Alabama's Gov. George C. Wallace, who speaks at Sanders Theatre 8:30 Monday evening, and as a windup to Vellucci's campaign for city councillor. He has now relocated the Monday rally to East Cambridge, where he expects "to have an overflow crowd."

The civil rights meeting, which is being sponsored by the Harvard Civil Rights Coordinating Committee, will be held as planned on the Cambridge Common at 7:45 p.m. Monday. The CRCC had not known until now that a permit for the use of the Common had been issued.

The main speaker at the CRCC rally will be the Rev. James Bevel, a member of Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Vellucci urged his "many supporters at Harvard" to go to the CRCC meeting. He stressed that he had given up plans for his own rally because he felt it would detract from the total anti-Wallace protest.

"Because of my great popularity with Harvard students and faculty, I didn't want to conflict with the decency rally in support of the oppressed people of Alabama," he said.

Despite the relocation of Vellucci's rally and confirmation of CRCC's use of the Common, the civil rights meeting still has its problems. Curtis S. Engelhard '65, chairman of the rally, has not yet found a faculty member to introduce Bevel.

CRCC expects a reasonably large turnout for the rally, however.