The city of Brookline, Massachusetts, was on edge.
On September 8th, 1975 parents and school children woke up
to the start of a new school year and to the beginning of Phase II of Boston’s
controversial busing plan, which aimed to desegregate Boston’s public schools.
That morning nearly 26,000 students were
to be bused to new schools. That is if
they and their parents weren’t boycotting the first day of school
altogether. Many parents, both those opposed to busing
and those who supported it, planned to keep their children at home that day, because
they anticipated violence. Just the day
before schools opened for classes, 10,000 people protested busing at Boston’s
City Hall Plaza. The city had been “occupied” for two days with some 600
national guardsmen –there at the order of Governor Michael Dukakis.
These guardsmen were specially trained to put down riots, and they were there in such high numbers because 965 of the city’s police officers participated in an organized “sick out” strike that same day. Many Boston officers refused to participate in drills to prepare for the first day of school, while others were angered at recent changes in overtime pay.
Things had gone so poorly with Phase I of Boston’s court-ordered
busing that a federal judge ordered that no protests could happen within
100 yards of a school, with the implementation of Phase II. This time, the
city planned that each of the 288 school buses would have adult monitors to keep
children safe from protesters and themselves; school officials would walk students
from buses into the classroom; and that 1000 Boston police officers, 350 state
police officers, 250 MDC police officers, and 100 federal marshals would protect
students on their way to and from school. [1]
In nearby Brookline, Massachusetts, where John F. Kennedy
had been born, and where his birthplace had been made into a national historic
site, there had been busing concerns as well. Brookline’s population had strong community
engagement in anti-racist politics and policies in areas of housing and education. The town had been one of the first
communities to sign up in 1966 for a new state program called METCO (short for
the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity Program) that bused black
students from Boston in to Brookline.[2] However, these students, and the cost to educate
them, were not universally supported by all Brookliners.[3]
By 1975 a federal court decision decided that Boston should bus students within
the city limits, rather than sending “promising students” to the suburbs. [4]
Though the town of ~58,800 was surrounded by Boston on three sides, things were quiet that day in Brookline. But just after 10:00 P.M., someone threw a bottle bomb (sometimes called a Molotov cocktail) through the back door of the Kennedy birthplace. The firebomb exploded, immediately engulfing the tiny entryway and kitchen, and spread quickly into the hall.
Though the town of ~58,800 was surrounded by Boston on three sides, things were quiet that day in Brookline. But just after 10:00 P.M., someone threw a bottle bomb (sometimes called a Molotov cocktail) through the back door of the Kennedy birthplace. The firebomb exploded, immediately engulfing the tiny entryway and kitchen, and spread quickly into the hall.
[1]
David Rogers and Joe Pilati, “Antibusing Leaders Urge Nonviolence,” Boston Globe,
September 8, 1975, 1, 14. Michael Kenney and Robert Ward, “600 Guardsmen moved
to city; protests follow,” Boston Globe,
September 8, 1975, 1, 15; James Worsham, “25,000 pupils in grades 1-12 to be
bused,” Boston Globe, September 8,
1975, 1, 15. Stephen Curwood, “Chinese
parents vote to keep children home,” Boston
Globe, September 8, 1975, 13.
Michael Kenney, “Both sides agree: Central issue in Boston police
sick-out is money,” Boston Globe
September 8, 1975, 15. Robert J.
Rosenthal, “Guardsmen in Boston specially trained to assist police,” Boston Globe, September 8, 1975, 15.
[2] Lily
Giesmer has identified Brookline’s Fair Housing Committee as one of the first
in the Boston area to organize and canvas for fair housing. They saw 80% of Brookliners who were asked
supported equal access to housing, see Giesmer’s “Good Neighbors for Fair
Housing: Suburban Liberalism and Racial Inequality in Metropolitan Boston,”
Journal of Urban History, Vol. 30, No. 3, 454-477. For a study of METCO students and their experiences
see Susan E. Eaton’s The Other Boston
Busing Story: What's Won and Lost across the Boundary Line (New Haven, Conn.:
Yale University Press, 2001).
[3] An
organization opposed to the “cost” of educating Boston students forced a Town Meeting
on the subject of submitting a bill to the commonwealth for the difference in
cost between that paid by the state per student ($1,474) and that actually
expended per student by the Town of Brookline per student ($2,458). At the town meeting, a majority voted to
“postpone indefinitely” any such request.
Fletcher Roberts, “Brookline delays asking state to pay for Metco,” Boston Globe, Oct 27, 1976, 7.
[4]
Note on Brookline Medium income.
National median income for the U.S. was at $11,800, and $12,339 in the
Northeast, see http://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/historical-income-households.html. Brookline’s official population in the 1970 census
was 58,886 and in 2010 was nearly the same, at 58,732.
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