Takeover in Boston

From the time Federal Judge W. Arthur Garrity Jr. ordered the Boston schools to desegregate 18 months ago, many of the city's whites--especially in South Boston--have been fighting a tenacious rear-guard action against the ruling. Last week, after hearing black students at South Boston High School testify that they had been beaten by white students and ignored by white teachers, Garrity's patience was at an end. He stripped the all-white School Committee of its control over "Southie," the city's racial trouble spot, and placed the school in federal receivership. He also ordered Southie Headmaster William Reid, its other administrators and Football Coach Arthur Perdigao transferred to some other school.

Garrity's extraordinary ruling aroused fury in South Boston. That night the N.A.A.C.P.'s storefront headquarters in downtown Boston was firebombed. Next morning whites lined the pavements near South Boston High School, shaking fists and shrieking curses as six buses, with police motorcycle escorts, arrived carrying blacks from Dorchester and Roxbury. Once the students entered the building, passing through metal detectors that searched for concealed weapons, the school erupted with racial fighting. Reporters outside heard the sounds of breaking glass. "It's wild in there," one breathless teacher told them. "They're going crazy." Police finally herded blacks and whites into separate "holding rooms" off the lobby to keep them apart.

Last week's turmoil came after a month of hearings on a motion by the N.A.A.C.P. seeking to close Southie entirely. The motion maintained that conditions in the school were so bad that it was impossible for students to learn. Testimony by black students underlined that charge. One black girl said that a policeman assigned to Southie held down a black student while a white student kicked him; another black testified that a white student came to school on crutches, claiming that they were his new "nigger beaters." A third charged that a white student picked up a chair and bashed a black over the head with it. Others said that Football Coach Perdigao told white players to "get" blacks trying out for the team; Perdigao denied it. Headmaster Reid, however, admitted that most of the charges were "basically honest."

In the midst of the hearings, Garrity had gone to the school himself--his first trip inside the building. He found that only 271 of the 771 whites assigned to Southie, and just 106 of the 446 blacks, were actually attending classes. He later went back to the school "because I could not really believe what I saw on the first visit."

Lost Freedom. In making his ruling last Tuesday, Garrity placed the federal court in charge of Southie. He assigned Joseph McDonough (whose brother John is chairman of the School Committee) to take over operations of the school. McDonough seemed to be an appropriate choice; a longtime Boston school administrator, he earned praise from both blacks and whites last year for his work in supervising the desegregation of Patrick F. Gavin Middle School. His selection did nothing to mollify antibusing forces. One of their leaders, City Council Member Louise Day Hicks, charged that the takeover "smacks of a totalitarian type of government." She joined others in declaring Friday "a day of mourning" for Southie's lost freedom and called for a complete white boycott of the school. White antibusing motorists observed the day by blocking rush hour traffic.

At week's end South Boston was tense, its angry mood summarized by newly printed signs posted on billboards, telephone poles and doorways: "Remember Black Tuesday."

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