Common Ground (65 page)

The demonstrators grew still. The Massacre proceeded, with Medford’s 64th Regiment of Foot portraying the squadron of seven British soldiers who fired into the crowd of colonials, killing five of them. But as the shots echoed off the glass-and-steel skyscrapers, all 400 demonstrators dropped to the pavement, lying there for a moment as still as Liberty in her coffin, as if to say: We, too, are victims.

If the Townies differed on how to commemorate the Massacre, there was nothing equivocal about June 17, 1975, the two hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill. This was Charlestown’s big day, its moment in the Bicentennial spotlight, and the Town’s factions temporarily shelved their differences to mount a splendid show. Militia companies from thirteen states took part in a reenactment of the battle—hundreds of defenders in shirt sleeves and red-stained bandages manning a redoubt beneath the Monument, cannon salvos echoing across the harbor, and the relentless line of redcoats pressing up
the hill until they overran the gallant defenders. Thousands of onlookers packed the sidewalks to watch the spectacle. But the threat of Garrity’s order hung like the clouds of cannon smoke over the hill, and Powder Keg lost no opportunity to draw parallels with 1775. One large banner draped from a Monument Square rooftop said it all; in bold black letters against a red background it proclaimed: “We’re right back where we began 200 years ago.”

To The Last White Class—already primed by Project ’76—such parallels seemed self-evident. As one senior wrote in a history paper that fall: “The dictatorship our ancestors fought to defeat has been reestablished here. We are living in a new tyranny. Garrity is the same as King George. He is appointed for life. Nobody can say nothing to him. His decisions are like laws. They are as unjust as taxation without representation. Senator Edward Kennedy is like one of the Tories, a traitor to his own people. And the people of Charlestown have no choice but to revolt.”

Such comparisons not only buttressed the students’ case by linking it to the first American cause but gave them a powerful weapon, one they never hesitated to employ. At sit-ins and demonstrations, they invariably sang “The Star-Spangled Banner,” “God Bless America,” and other patriotic anthems. At school, they pressed for more patriotic observances and demanded flags in every classroom.

But their most insistent demand was for daily recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. In earlier years, Charlestown High had said the pledge every morning, teachers and students alike rising and placing their hands over their hearts. During the sixties, some liberal teachers refused to say the pledge, prompting a burst of protests from patriotic Townies. So Frank Power simply bypassed the dissenters by intoning the pledge over the public address system, with students following in their classrooms. But when busing began that fall, beleaguered administrators rarely reached the office in time to say the pledge, and the practice fell into disuse.

It was a perfect issue for the white activists. Since the sixties, the pledge had assumed a powerful symbolism. Ironically, Powder Keg had devised a parody which was frequently recited at anti-busing demonstrations: “We will not pledge allegiance to the order of the United States District Court, nor the dictatorship for which it stands; one order, under Garrity, with liberty and justice for none.” But that only intensified their devotion to the true pledge, which they now insisted be restored as a regular feature of the school day. Bob Murphy refused—he simply had too much else to do at the start of every day. A compromise was reached: individual teachers could say the pledge one day a week.

That only shifted the battle to the classroom. Most blacks simply didn’t believe there was “liberty and justice for all” in America, much less at Charlestown High; they couldn’t say those words with a straight face. So while whites would rise to say the pledge, blacks often remained seated. And as the words “one nation, indivisible” echoed in the classroom, the two groups stared at each other in mutual incomprehension.

•    •    •

By year’s end, Powder Keg and the school’s white activists, concluding that most of the demands they had pressed that fall were bearing no fruit, decided to concentrate on a single issue: education. The new campaign got underway on December 2, when Moe Gillen, chairman of the Charlestown Education Committee, charged that most of Boston’s schoolchildren were being short-changed educationally. Teachers, he said, were tailoring their instruction to the lowest common denominator in their classroom, ignoring the needs of students who could move faster. “The majority of students—both black and white—are being held back until the minority catches up,” Gillen declared. He didn’t identify what “minority” he was talking about, but the implication was clear: the blacks bused into Charlestown were dragging down academic standards and hampering the education of white students.

There was a kernel of truth in this. Teachers at Charlestown High discovered that most of their black students scored lower than whites in basic skills such as reading, writing, and mathematics. About 70 percent of the black ninth-graders, for example, read at or below a sixth-grade level, and all of the slowest readers in the remedial reading classes were black. But the white scores were nothing to cheer about either. Eighty-five percent of all ninth-grade students—white
and
black—read below their grade level. Long before busing, the school’s staff had recognized that Charlestown High drew the Town’s least proficient students, and busing had only aggravated that situation. Over the summer, many parents who could afford it or had high aspirations for their children had enrolled them in parochial or private schools. The gap between white and black achievement, therefore, was never so wide as to hamper a white student who really wanted to learn.

Bob Murphy knew he had to confront the education issue. Three days after Moe Gillen spoke out, Murphy sent a letter home with each student. “Dear Parent,” it began. “I am writing to you on a topic that is of great concern to both of us: a quality education for your child. I would like to report to you what we at the school are attempting to implement in this regard. In addition to standard programs that are designed to provide your child with adequate tools for either college entrance or gainful employment, we have made special efforts this year to reaffirm the basic skills and individualize instruction.” The headmaster went on to describe several new features of the school’s curriculum: a remedial reading teacher, a new “learning center” equipped with the latest audiovisual equipment, and advanced instruction. “We believe that we have a lot to offer for the total education of your child. Please take advantage of it.”

But nothing could have deflected the campaign by then. Over the holiday season, the anti-busing movement had resolved to bring Charlestown’s educational problems before a wider audience, including officials downtown. The adults framing the campaign recognized that the students had frequently failed to make their best case; to confront the policy makers would require the most articulate voice they could muster and that was Lisa McGoff. Though only a
junior, Lisa had already proved herself to be the movement’s most effective spokesperson at the high school. Some kids said she simply had a “big mouth,” others called her a “show-off.” But Lisa didn’t see it that way. If they were ever going to accomplish anything, somebody had to speak up, and the other kids were afraid to say what they thought. She never hesitated to tell anybody what was on her mind, and if they wanted her to represent the school downtown, what the heck, she didn’t mind.

The campaign got underway on January 7, when eighty-five white students walked out of school and marched across the low bridge to School Committee headquarters, where a delegation of fifteen was admitted for a meeting with Superintendent Fahey. As the students crowded the small lobby of the Superintendent’s office, Lisa stepped forward and delivered her carefully prepared remarks: “We’re not trying to get out of school, Miss Fahey. We want to get an education and go to college. But the way things are going, we’re never going to get a decent education. Ever since busing started, we’ve been doing work we completed one, two, even three years ago. What we need is accelerated classes so students can work as fast as they want without worrying about the blacks who can’t keep up.”

After other students added variations on the theme, Ms. Fahey thanked them politely but said she would need more information before she could respond. She promised to appoint a team to visit the school and recommend appropriate action.

Five days later, two officials appeared at the school and spent three hours talking with students, teachers, and administrators. Their report to Ms. Fahey remained confidential, but officials said it gave little credence to the student complaints.

When they received no further response from the Superintendent, the students moved on to the second stage of their campaign. On January 19, a small delegation appeared at a School Committee meeting. Lisa, as usual, led off: “My name’s McGoff, Charlestown High. I want to tell the School Committee personally our complaints that I’ve already stated to Miss Fahey. One is our math program. In math, the standards have been lowered badly. In my opinion, they have fallen a grade since the minority students have come in. It’s not the teachers’ fault, because they try their best, but since the black kids have come in we have to wait until they catch up to our work. I have gone into classes and seen addition, subtraction, and multiplication tables on the blackboards.”

Then it was Bob Murphy’s turn. His students had “some legitimate concerns,” the headmaster said, “but the teachers are more than willing and anxious to help remedy the situation that does exist. We’ve been addressing the situation.” Then, with a little nod to Lisa, he added pointedly, “I am sure most of the students are aware of that.”

Lisa wasn’t going to accept that. Pushing her way to the microphone, she said, “We’ve had all kinds of meetings with Mr. Murphy, but it doesn’t seem that anything gets done. When we talked to him at the beginning, he said, ‘I can’t do it because the judge won’t let me.’ It seemed nothing was done when
we asked for it to be done. Now I can see that Mr. Murphy has been doing something. But still, what about the seniors this year who have to graduate and take their college boards? How can they take boards when they are doing geometry and algebra that we have done before? It’s just that everything has been lowered. All you have to do is sit in your seat and you can pass.”

When Lisa sat down, Trudy slapped her on the back. “Hey,” she said. “You really handed it to old Murph!” Lisa glowed. She’d done better than she expected to.

Then another student, Bobby Stearns, stepped to the microphone, carrying a pile of tattered textbooks. “These are the books we are learning out of,” he said. “It’s really hard to learn out of something like this.” Stearns displayed one particularly scruffy volume,
The Origin of Mankind
. Its cover was falling off, many of its pages were ripped. The committee examined it with distaste, then handed it to Bob Murphy, who said, “To the best of my knowledge this book has been phased out. This must be a random copy that was around on the bookshelf or something.” When Stearns conceded that he had picked the book off a counter in the English room, Murphy said with a broad smile, “I think you can go to any school and find old books lying around.” Lisa was furious. She’d stood up to Murphy and come away looking like a winner. Then Stearnsie had blown the whole thing.

The humiliation, the sense that their new campaign was foundering, the conviction that nobody took them seriously—all these feelings converged three days later. At 9:40 a.m., some one hundred white students assembled outside the school office. Moving en masse along the second- and third-floor corridors, they flung open classroom doors, calling on the whites inside to join them. Then they began a sit-in on the main staircase. When Captain MacDonald ordered them to move, they broke into a derisive chorus of “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.” But when a detachment of Charlestown police arrived, the demonstrators retreated upstairs. By then, the black students had been consolidated in several classrooms on the upper floors. “Let’s get the niggers!” someone shouted, and the whites surged toward the third floor.

On the landing at the top of the stairs, they encountered a half dozen teachers and aides, arms locked to form a human barrier. Among them was a black history teacher named Bill Thomas, who was something of a celebrity at Charlestown High. Once a star fullback at Boston College, he’d been the Dallas Cowboys’ No. 1 draft pick in 1972, but his promising football career was cut short by disabling injuries. Quitting football in 1974, he returned to Boston to teach school. At six feet three and 210 pounds, Bill Thomas was an imposing obstacle on the landing that morning.

But the demonstrators on the stairway gave no sign of being intimidated. As they tried to force their way through the barrier, something happened. Later, investigators had difficulty sorting out conflicting versions. Lisa’s friend Doris, who was leading the charge, claimed that Thomas hit her in the face. Thomas said Doris hit him in the chest. Several eyewitnesses thought Doris collided inadvertently with Thomas’ elbow and, believing she had been hit,
struck out at him. In any case, several white youths promptly rallied to Doris’ aid, assaulting Thomas and flinging him down the stairway, where he was pulled to safety by police.

Word quickly spread through the school that a black teacher had attacked a white girl. Within minutes, some two hundred whites had gathered in front of the school office, demanding that Thomas be arrested, but this action quickly produced another martyr to the cause. Police waded into the demonstrators and, after a brief scuffle, emerged with Pat Russell’s sixteen-year-old son, Kevin. As Kevin was led to a paddy wagon, bleeding from the nose, he complained that three officers had held him while a fourth beat him around the head.

That brought Pat Russell rushing to the school, where she began issuing orders. “Okay, kids,” she said. “They made their mistake when they attacked my Kevin. Now, everybody, sit down and don’t make a move! Nobody’s going to get out of this goddamned building today.” The two hundred students sat down, blanketing the main stairway, blocking passage in and out.