On Monday,
September 8, 1975 (42 years ago today), someone firebombed JFK’s birthplace in
Brookline, near Boston, Massachusetts. But was the fire-bombing directly connected to the busing crisis in Boston?
It was the first day of school for children in Boston. The city was engulfed in protests, police strikes, and anxiety about busing. Some of that spilled over into Brookline.
It was the first day of school for children in Boston. The city was engulfed in protests, police strikes, and anxiety about busing. Some of that spilled over into Brookline.
Senator Ted
Kennedy supported busing, despite consistent and sometimes physical opposition from
black and white Bostonians. White anti-busing protestors blocked him from
reaching his car at an invited speech, slashed his tires in broad day-light, "jabbed
at him with American flags," hit him with their fists, and threw rocks at
him. In one altercation, after voices in
an anti-busing crowd screamed at Senator Kennedy, “Why don’t you put your
one-legged son on a bus for Roxbury,” “Let your daughter get bused there so she
can get raped,” and “Why don’t you let them shoot you like they shot your two
brothers,” members of the crowd aimed tomatoes and eggs at him, and he sought
shelter in the John F. Kennedy Building Federal Building. After he made it inside, the crowd “pounded
on the plate glass windows” and broke one.[1]
But that Monday, sometime after the JFK
Birthplace closed for the day and before the firebomb ignited the historic site,
someone scrawled “Bus Teddy” on the sidewalk in front of the house.[2]
Paradoxically,
Edward “Teddy” Kennedy had never lived at 83 Beals Street; he was born after
his family had moved away.
The national historic site was an unlucky symbol, pointing to the fact
that the Kennedys, though Bostonians by reputation, had always raised their
children outside the public school system of the city that they called
home. Ted Kennedy was, and also came to
symbolize, the white, elite Bostonians who decided the fate of the city’s
children. Brookline had model schools,
spending near state-high levels per student to ensure, and please, a highly
educated population.
Public
response quickly condemned the fire-bombing as an “affront to the nation.”[3] After the 1975 fire, it seems physical
attacks against Senator Kennedy stopped.
But busing didn’t
suddenly become popular among white or black Bostonians. In fact the violence associated with white anti-busing
protests wouldn’t subside for almost a year.
Many of us may have seen images of African American attorney Ted
Landsmark as he was attacked with an American flag by a teen protestor after an
anti-busing rally in April of 1976 in Boston.
There was violence all over the city in the weeks after photos
of the attack were circulated widely. By the fall of 1976, most of the protests had
stopped, but not because Bostonians had accepted bussing. By 1979, 30,000 students had left the Boston
school system, among them at least 1/3 of the white students in the school
district.[4]
Next Up: The
Damage and the Investigation
[1] Bob Sales, “Sen. Kennedy Jeered from Stage at Rally:
Antibusing Crowd Throws Tomatoes, Eggs,” Boston
Globe, September 10, 1974, p. 1.
Jerimiah V. Murphy, “The Day the Crowd Booed a Kennedy in Boston” Boston Globe, September 10, 1974,
p.23. See also Peter Anderson, “Bus Foes
Shout Down Kennedy at Hub Hearing on Airline Fares,” Boston Globe, February 15,
1975, p. 1; Curtis Wilkie, “Busing Foes again Heckle Kennedy in Boston,” Boston
Globe, March 8, 1975, p. 5; Richard Martin and Robert Rosenthal, “Kennedy
Jostled, Rushed by Crowd of Busing Foes in Quincy,” Boston Globe, April 7,
1975; Ken Boatwright, “ROAR Vows to Continue Confronting Se. Kennedy,” Boston
Globe, April 8, 1975, p.1; Boston Globe Editorial Statement, “Assaults of Sen.
Kennedy,” April 8, 1975, p. 26.
[2] Federal Bureau of Investigation, “Kennedy Fire
Investigation – (9/8/75) Report,” Folder 14, Box 4, JFKNHS, Resource Management
Records, 1963-2003, Series I. Management/Administrative Files; A. Central
Files, A2615-A8215, Longfellow House Washington’s Headquarters National
Historic Site, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 21.
[3]
“JFK Site firebombing Shocks Neighbors” and “An Outrage” Viewpoint (editorial) Boston Herald American, September 9,
1975.
[4] Many
scholars have summarized the complicated history of busing in Boston much
better than I can here. Please seek out
Matt Delmont’s Why Busing Failed: Race,
Media, and the National Resistance to School Desegregation (2016) and Jim
Vrabel’s A People’s History of the New
Boston (2014) as starting points.