I had intended to continue to roll out the story of organizing Mass Machine Inc. into the United Electrical Workers in June of 1973, but the 40th anniversary of court ordered school busing in Boston forcefully interrupted me. The Boston Globe in particular has been running a lot of multi-media remembrances of the busing crisis. I decided that OO#9 had to deal with the busing crisis as a retrospective. We will return to the Odyssey chronology in #10, but it is important to mark September 12, 1974 with some commentary.

It was that fall day in Boston that the buses rolled carrying black students from Roxbury to South Boston High School where they were met by mobs of white youth and adults throwing bottles, bricks and stones. The rest of 1974 and into 1975 was consumed with white racist mobs assaulting buses and blacks. The rest of the next decade was marked by outrageous acts. In 1977 Theodore Landsmark, a prominent black attorney was assaulted in front of city hall during an anti-busing rally by a white youth who attempted to impale him on a flagpole carrying the stars and stripes (here and here) In 1979 Darryl Williams a 15-year-old high school football player was shot and paralyzed by a sniper’s bullet after scoring a touch down at Charlestown High School. There were numerous attacks on blacks moving into white sections of Dorchester, and into the white neighborhoods of East Boston and Hyde Park. All these incidents put a spotlight on the racist segregated character of Boston where blacks knew that it was not a good idea to be caught in South Boston, the traditional Irish-American neighborhood after dark or in broad daylight. The Cradle of Liberty was not such a cradle for people of color.

Court ordered busing was not conceived as a broadside against latent Boston racism, although it certainly revealed all of that. It was the result of a lawsuit by the NAACP that alleged separate but unequal schools for black and white children. The concept was to eliminate disparities by breaking the segregation of neighborhood schools that reflected the segregated neighborhoods of the City. Federal Judge Arthur Garrity was an Irish American who made the ruling and issued the court order. In a lengthy finding in June of 1974 Garrity documented the “separate but unequal” character of the schools. No question that the white Boston School Board had funneled resources to the white schools at the expense of schools where the enrollment was minority majority. The documentation in his ruling shows the depth of the segregation. In most cases schools were 90% white or black. Since the 50’s black community leaders like Mel King and Chuck Turner had fought the School Committee to cough up the resources to improve the schools of color and to make logical changes to existing school boundaries that would have naturally integrated schools. Finally the NAACP filed a lawsuit in March of 1972 entitled Morgan vs. Hennigan. Morgan was the lead African-American parent plaintiff and James Hennigan was then the head of the Boston School Committee.

The case was made that there were inequities in the existing quasi apartheid system; blacks schools suffered from the comparative lack of resources. Busing would force a redistribution of resources and equalize the schools. So ordered by the courts. Most of the left and liberal organizations took a position of supporting busing as a way to end segregation.

The opposition to busing was led by the infamous Restore Our Alienated Rights or ROAR. ROAR became the political vehicle for a whole slew of opportunist white Boston politicians. Louise Day Hicks of the Boston School Committee who later was to run for Mayor using the slogan: “Every little breeze seems to whisper Louise”. John Kerrigan, the Chairman of the School Committee. Elvira “Pixie” Paladino from East Boston, a largely white Italian neighborhood and Jimmy Kelly, a building trades guy from Southie who later became a City Councilor. The official appeal to the white community was one of fighting for neighborhood schools, for the right to stay at the home school. Judge W. Arthur Garrity was seen as a pointed headed liberal imposing his rule from his comfortable suburb of Wellesley, Massachusetts. In a famous public moment School Committee Chairman Kerrigan rolled out a chart showing the racial composition of schools in Boston and Wellesley. The comparison was telling; 35% of Boston school enrollment was people of color, 1.8% of Wellesley’s schoolchildren were minorities. In fact there was a busing plan that addressed these inequities called Metco that transported students between wealthy suburbs and urban high schools. But it was a voluntary program and very limited.

“Paper positions on politics are made more powerful by the actual ability to move change in the real world”

The organization that I was part of took a different tack from the rest of the left. We argued that busing was an attack on the whole working class. We looked at the massive inequalities between the suburban schools where Garrity and his family lived and the urban schools for all students white, black and latin. We posited that the busing plan was an attack on workers driving them to fight each other over crumbs rather than fighting for real improvements in the City’s schools. Because of our anti-busing stance we were ridiculed by the rest of the left for siding with the racists. Certainly it was hard to stomach the racist attacks and our position was hard to defend in the emotional moments of that year.

We didn’t shirk from propagating our position at ROAR rallies and wherever people were marching in opposition to busing. The leaders and members of ROAR certainly differentiated our position. One of our members was beaten severely with a baseball bat for distributing a flyer questioning busing but opposing the racist attacks. Several of our members had to be relocated from South Boston under threat of being burned out of their houses. We tried to walk a very difficult and maybe impossible line of opposing busing as an attack on the working class, but also opposing the racist nature of the anti-busing movement. Looking back I think that the physical attacks on us were not so much driven by a quibble with our anti-racist position, but more because we were hated as Reds.

Paper positions on politics are made more powerful by the actual ability to move change in the real world. Our position had little impact except in left wing debates in the new Communist movement. But if there had been a union local or a community organization that united people of color with whites that could have opposed the racism but argued for a radical redistribution of educational resources not just busing kids around then there might have been the basis to advance a position similar to ours. That would have required organization that certainly we and the rest of the left did not have.

One exemplary organization that did grow out of the busing crisis was the Boston School Bus Drivers Union affiliated with the United Steel Workers of America. Prior to forced busing there was a very limited bus driver work force. Children walked to their segregated neighborhood schools. In 1974 hundreds of bus drivers were put on to deal with escalated need for transport across the city. This workforce was a reflection of Boston demographics with major representation from all the neighborhoods and women and men. In 1977 when their pay was cut by 88 cents per hour, organizing began to form a union. The organization became a living, breathing example of multi-racial unity because as one leader of the drivers said, “We were all being stoned together”! They issued a famous flyer that was distributed to children to pass to their parents calling for an end to racist attacks (Link). The Local became a beacon for a multiracial revival of the Boston labor movement in the 1980’s, including playing an active role in supporting the historic Mel King for Mayor/Rainbow Coalition campaign.

“Our correct analysis of the class inequities between suburbs and the Hub led us to downplay the history of racial inequity…”

Dialing forward forty years what was the result of busing? Did it serve to equalize resources and the quality of education in the Boston public schools? Did the forced busing crisis force Boston to shed its veneer of cultured liberalism and come to grips with the deep-rooted racism in its neighborhoods? Busing exposed the racism of Boston, and the Hub was labeled by many as the most racist city in America. Quite a shameful label for the birthplace of the American Revolution. While Boston’s racial profile has improved in the last 40 years, the schools probably haven’t. And because of white flight to the suburbs and the Catholic schools the system is almost completely children of color, 87%, even though Boston remains a majority white city.

Certainly one thing busing did not do was confront the ocean of inequity between City schools and the wealthier suburbs. Those inequities remain to this day as they do in all urban/suburban areas in the USA promoted by policies whereby schools are largely funded by property taxes.

So do these continuing inequities and deficiencies absolve our position against busing? NO. Our correct analysis of the class inequities between suburbs and the Hub led us to downplay the history of racial inequity in the City’ schools and the roiling racism that led many in the white community to follow the demagogic lead of ROAR and the South Boston Marshals. In fact our desire to find a common platform to unite the working class missed the fact that such unity is only built upon the recognition of the inequities in every facet of life. The recent events in Ferguson, Missouri are hugely illustrative. The shooting of Michael Brown has peeled back the outrageous practices of small communities surrounding St Louis, some like Ferguson that are majority black. The municipal coffers are fueled by random traffic stops of poor blacks that lead to arrest warrants and cascading fines. In short there is a new Jim Crow!

Recently Richard Trumka, the President of the national AFL-CIO traveled to St Louis to address the Missouri State AFL-CIO convention. In a powerful speech (here and video here) he explained to delegates, “We must take responsibility for the past. Racism is part of our inheritance as Americans. Every city, every state and every region of the country has its own deep history with racism. And so does the labor movement.” Trumka got what we scientific socialists missed in Boston, that it is only through fighting racist terror and inequitable treatment that the working class can fight together against its corporate enemies. Contrast Trumka’s sharp denunciation of inequity and white racism to the equivocating musings on the 40th anniversary of busing of newly elected Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh, “ At some point, we need to have a conversation about what busing did to Boston and not be afraid of the conversation. I know black people that are still angry about busing. I know white people that are still angry about busing…. They are angry on all sides”. (Boston Globe September 13)

Busing was a blunt and ineffective instrument in dealing with the historic racism of the Boston School Committee and the white political establishment. The court order arose however in response to years of community advocacy and struggle. We had no freedom to influence the broader question of the inequities between suburbs and urban schools that we pointed to so of necessity we needed to dedicate our selves to opposing the racist attacks, pointing out the inequities and holding up the example of the Boston School Bus Drivers. 40 years hindsight coupled with the events of Ferguson focuses the mind.

Next OO#10 and back to 1973 and organizing the UE at Mass Machine in the heart of Roxbury.

PBO 9-20-14

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