Fear and Loathing in Boston

The first day of busing: only ten of 525 whites assigned to Roxbury High, the black school, showed up; and buses carrying 56 Negro kids (500 had been expected) from Roxbury to South Boston High were stoned. Policemen suffered injuries, adults and kids threw bottles at Negro children, whites set off a chant of “Die, Niggers, Die!” Six white teenage boys were in custody, apprehended for disorderly conduct, assault and battery, resisting arrest. Thomas Atkins—head of Boston’s NAACP, who had worked his way through graduate school at Harvard by serving as a Boston city councilor, failed in a mayoral race, and then won appointment to Republican Governor Francis Sargent’s cabinet—warned on September 7 of legal action against any official who failed to enforce school attendance laws and any parent who kept his kid out of school. That first day of busing, September 12, Atkins urged Negro parents to keep their kids out of school in Southie because of violence. The irony was lost on the Boston media; at least they didn’t note Atkins’ turnabout. The next day, the morning after a day of violence unparalleled in modern Boston history, a day of hatred against outsiders not witnessed here in decades, the Boston Globe flashed its front page headline: “Boston Schools Desegregate, Opening Day Generally Peaceful.”

It’s been that sort of month: massive fear, loathing, hysteria, bitter and vengeful frustration, an experience worse even than foreseen, coupled with

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David Brudnoy

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The first day of busing: only ten of 525 whites assigned to Roxbury High, the black school, showed up; and buses carrying 56 Negro kids (500 had been expected) from Roxbury to South Boston High were stoned. Policemen suffered injuries, adults and kids threw bottles at Negro children, whites set off a chant of “Die, Niggers, Die!” Six white teenage boys were in custody, apprehended for disorderly conduct, assault and battery, resisting arrest. Thomas Atkins—head of Boston’s NAACP, who had worked his way through graduate school at Harvard by serving as a Boston city councilor, failed in a mayoral race, and then won appointment to Republican Governor Francis Sargent’s cabinet—warned on September 7 of legal action against any official who failed to enforce school attendance laws and any parent who kept his kid out of school. That first day of busing, September 12, Atkins urged Negro parents to keep their kids out of school in Southie because of violence. The irony was lost on the Boston media; at least they didn’t note Atkins’ turnabout. The next day, the morning after a day of violence unparalleled in modern Boston history, a day of hatred against outsiders not witnessed here in decades, the Boston Globe flashed its front page headline: “Boston Schools Desegregate, Opening Day Generally Peaceful.”

It’s been that sort of month: massive fear, loathing, hysteria, bitter and vengeful frustration, an experience worse even than foreseen, coupled with