Word: boston
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...fact remains, however, that even if the fighting in South Boston were miraculously to end tomorrow, the larger problem of racial hostility throughout the city would not: South Boston is but a symbol and, in some ways, a scapegoat for a citywide disease which was allowed to surface in 1974, and which has persisted ever since...
Garrity's order to desegrate the schools became public on June 21, 1974. At that time, close to six million dollars in federal funds had been withheld from Springfield and Boston for over a year, following the Massachusetts Supreme Court decision that found both cities guilty of violations of the U.S. Civil Rights Act. Throughout the remainder of the summer, education administrators, teachers, and police officials rushed to prepare to bus 20,000 Bostonians and 4100 Springfield residents...
While these arrangements progressed, anti busing forces insisted that their fight had barely begun. Groups such as the South Boston Information Center and Massachusetts Citizens Against Forced Busing, sprang up throughout the city, apparently creating organizations and resources solely out of the intensity of their emotions. State Senator and current mayoral candidate Joseph Timilty (D-Mattapan) declared himself a "bitter foe" of busing, and School Committee Chairman John Kerrigan declared, "I'm opposed to desegration and I'm going to fight it in the Legislature and in the Courts...
...shrank as parents insisted that children would either stay home or go to private schools rather than attend school with blacks. Catholic school enrollments swelled particularly quickly in Hyde Park and Mattapan, although parochial schools which accepted students fleeing integration did so against the orders of the Archdiocese of Boston...
MOST REMARKABLE, outside of the emotional fervor exhibited by many parents of school children were the lengths citizens all over Boston explored to avoid busing. One 60-year old Hyde Park resident with no schoolchildren filed suit to stop citywide busing "for health reasons." The exhaust fumes, she argued, endangered her health, and she was entitled to "equal protection." Francesca Galante, also of Hyde Park, who headed the Mass. Citizens against Forced Busing, had bused her children to private school years before, but insisted that officials were "trying to destroy our community" through forced busing. Over 500 Roslindale parents vowed...