Last Resort in Boston
True, Michael
ica and, since the U.S. is the breadbasket for much of the wider world, the needy abroad--as distinct from the affluent who are anxious only to eat better. Several detailed suggestions are...
...Since September 12, 18,200 of Boston's 92,000 school children have been on the move, with white children bused to predominantly black Roxbury and black children bused to predominantly white South Boston...
...Although the antibusing forces appear strong at the moment, both men were soundly defeated in bids for public office this September, one for District Attorney and the other for sheriff of Suffolk County...
...and he seems singularly insensitive towards the underprivileged...
...MICHAEL TRUE (Michael True, a frequent contributor, is a professor at Assumption College in Massachusetts...
...Since the same advisors who helped devise Nixon policy are around now, the worry is that the country will get more of the same in the Ford Administration, whatever the fine intentions expressed Oct...
...Anyone who can enthuse over a food stamp program as a return to the free-enterprise system is not exactly the person to be heading a Department of Agriculture when people are going hungry...
...Boston's school were first desegregated in 1855, when Theodore Parker's fellow abolitionists forced the state legislature to pass a kind of racial imbalance law and got Boston schools to follow the exemple of Salem and Newburyport...
...Civil Rights Commission, said the hostility she saw in Boston was worse than what she saw in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1965...
...leadership in the establishment of a world food bank...
...From all indications, the situation, for poor white as well as poor 25 October 1974:76 black children, remains pretty much as it was described in Kozol's bestseller, in 1967...
...and three large scrapbooks of clippings tell the long and painful story of irresponsibility that has made the present crisis, in some ways, inevitable...
...It looks like a long and difficult struggle...
...0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 THE BUSING CONTROVERSY _9 RESORT IN BOSTON The City-Wide Educational Coalition, founded in 1971 as a volunteer citizens group for quality education in Boston public schools, is housed in a building dedicated to the memory of Theodore Parker, the great 19th-century abolitionist...
...It was a depressing example of President Ford's ineptness when it comes to dealing with the old Nixon "team...
...The ferocity of the busing opponents, particularly in the Irish Catholic stronghold of South Boston, came as a shock to "liberal" Massachusetts and to the rest of the country as well...
...The response of the Nixon Administration to proposals like these was invariably more political and monetary than it was humanitarian...
...At noon on Monday, September 30, Carolyn Ward, a director of the Coalition, walked across the Boston Common to join other black parents from Hyde Park, Jamaica Plain, and other sections of the city in front of the Massachusetts State Capitol...
...Father Paul Rynne has worked actively on behalf of the Archdiocesan Commission on Human Rights...
...His departure seems a necessary precondition to any kind of enlightened and effective food program...
...Busing came to Boston as a result of a ruling handed down by Judge W. Arthur Garrity, Jr., in Federal Court last June...
...A few days later, he declared through a spokesman that Dr...
...With funding from the local government, the Coalition continues to work for better schools, but since last June it has had to devote its energies almost exclusively to the problems of court-ordered integration, serving as a contact point and memory bank, with some staff members working as monitors in area high schools...
...and (IV) expansion of the school committee to eleven members, five at-large and six from districts...
...Here lives are at stake, and budgets...
...But changing the political structure of the governing boards of the public schools probably is...
...and the Rev...
...Since it has the backing of Mayor Kevin White, there is some chance it will pass...
...A large wall map in bold red and green lines...
...He evaded the question, saying 'Tm not going to pass judgment at this time...
...There is hope among this community of people that busing, the last resort, may eventually lead to better schools for Boston's children-black and white...
...Butz in the key position of Secretary of Agriculture...
...But this time more is at stake than the good humor of the public over a pardon...
...9. In this context, it is especially disturbing that President Ford should be determined to retain Dr...
...Mrs...
...Although blacks make up only 33 percent of the city's total population, they number over 80 percent of the population in some schools--a sure sign that federallyordered desegregation has not taken place...
...Briefly, the plans are (I) expansion of the school committee from five to eight members, all elected at-large...
...The neglect of Boston public schools is a familiar enough story to readers of Jonathan Kozol's Death at an Early Age: The Destruction o] the Hearts and Minds o] Negro Children in the Boston Public Schools...
...And Mrs...
...Butz would be staying on, that on balance the Agriculture Department under Dr...
...With a long history of public neglect, Boston schools have deteriorated faster than those in other big cities...
...or of Spain over a newly proposed ambassador...
...Senator Kennedy, for instance, has urged a food-for-peace program, the protection of energy resources for food, a quickening of food-relief efforts, and U.S...
...Of the numerous hangers-on from the Nixon Administration, it is difficult to think of one who is personally more objectionable and professionally less suited for his assignment...
...Butz "has done a good job...
...Closing the parochial and private schools in Boston, where they have always received favored treatment, is neither a sure nor a likely solution...
...Roy Wilkins, president of the NAACP, after a visit with Mayor White, said "Boston should be ashamed of itself...
...Several detailed suggestions are already on the table from citizen groups and individuals, such as Senators Kenfiedy and Humphrey...
...Many people committed to fundamental change in the Boston public schools count on the voters to adopt Plan III, favoring increased neighborhood involvement and community control...
...or of NATO nations over a new commander...
...reserves held as part of a world grain reserve be kept in private hands...
...He is a notorious opponent of curbs on farm exports--although the new policy is allegedly one of export control...
...This fall, over a century later, the federal government is the one forcing a change...
...Frankie Freeman, a member of the U.S...
...Commonweal: 77...
...For the sake of hungry people everywhere, for the sake of the poor and the financially pressed, Earl Butz must go...
...Several popular politicians, ineluding former School Committee member and Congresswoman Louise Day Hicks (who vigorously resisted integration) have contributed to the present confusion...
...III) replacement of the school committee by decentralized administrations for each of the intermediate school districts and high schools...
...But," she adds, "the closing of the parochial schools would probably be the best thing that ever happened to the Boston public schools...
...Let President Ford act immediately...
...After early October's grain fiasco, President Ford was asked whether he intended to dismiss Dr...
...In spite of continuing disputes and boycotts---with rabble-rousing by members of the Nazi party and the Ku Klux Klan and with school absenteeism above normal in several schools, much of the system had been successfully integrated by the fourth week...
...At that time, a reviewer in the Christian Science Monitor said that Kozol, in writing about the Boston system, "could be writing of the system in almost any city in the country"--a statement that is only partly true...
...But they also pointed out that busing seems the only way to focus light on the badly neglected school system...
...Among those attending the peaceful demonstration were Gloria Joyner, director of the Task Force on Education, mainly a black and Spanish-speaking group, and Jack Robinson of the Archdiocesan Commission on Human Rights...
...II) expansion of the school committee to eleven members, one elected from each of eleven zones...
...Bradford H. Bryant, a Methodist minister, helped initiate and provide office space for the Coalition, in the Theodore Parker Memorial Building...
...like almost everyone involved, they spoke somewhat cautiously about the positive effects of busing: "Why bus kids from one school to another, when the schools are equally bad...
...That, at the moment, promises the best hope for change, and pro-busing forces are confident that in the long run the court-ordered integration of the schools will help people find a means of realizing that...
...The traditional five-person board, elected at-large, has been a major impediment to fundamental change over the years...
...In November, Boston voters have an opportunity to choose between four alternative models for governance of the public schools...
...The religious community has provided some support: Cardinal Medeiros testified in favor of correcting the racial imbalance, last spring...
...Busing, in other words, is a kind of last resort, not a solution itself, but a means by which the city may eventually be brought to recognize a serious problem in public education and work collectively and politically to solve it...
...Kevin White narrowly missed the Democratic Vice Presidential nomination in 1972, and he would undoubtedly like to have Boston look better in 1976 than it does in 1974...
...he insists, to the dismay of humanitarians generally, that any U.S...
...Boston schools were, in other words, "unconstitutionally segregated...
...But there are numerous groups, like the City-Wide Educational Coalition, who are committed to seeing it through...
...For one thing, the Boston School Committee, in the long process that led up to the busing this September, has lost the respect of everybody...
...Leonora Grant, a long-time resident of Hyde Park, mother of ten children, and one of the original volunteers of the City-Wide Education Coalition, describes another central problem...
...The 152-page document said, among other things, that the defendants, the Boston School Committee, "knowingly carried out a systematic program of segregation affecting all the city's students, teachers and school facilities," and that the Committee "intentionally brought about and maintained a dual school system...
...Then parents, who can now afford (some by working two jobs) to send their children to private and parochial schools, might take a great interest in the city system...
...She is not willing, she says, to sacrifice her children to the present Boston schools as long as the parochial schools provide a better alternative...
...Presently, the Coalition, struggling with city-wide busing problems, faces issues as difficult as those Parker confronted a century ago...
...Butz for gross mismanagement...
...Two members of the present committee, which remains in office through January 1, 1975, openly fought integration of the schools...
...Their purpose was to express support for their children, now caught in the middle of the turmoil over busing, in the nation's oldest school system...
Vol. 101 • October 1974 • No. 4
