Phase II: Standoff on Bunker Hill

For the first two weeks of court-ordered busing, at the beginning and end of each school day, Charlestown High School has looked like a besieged citadel. It is almost at the top of a hill, on a block facing the Bunker Hill Monument, which one boycotting student sarcastically predicted would be renamed "Martin Luther King Monument." Scores of policemen--the Tactical Patrol Force, U.S. Marshals, National Guard Helicopter pilots, MDC and city police, state troopers, and even an MDC sharpshooter--have all been on duty, guarding the area around the school to ensure the peaceful loading and unloading of school buses.

It is impossible to tell if Judge Garrity's desegregation plan has resulted in improved education inside the schools. But outside in the community, the massive police presence has been responsible for the successive days of nearly peaceful court-ordered busing. How long these police will be retained and how long the city and state can afford to keep them posted around the school remains uncertain. It seems probable--in the face of milling crowds of boycotting students and angry parents--that if the police hadn't been present in such numbers on the opening days of school, large scale outbreaks of violence would have occurred. What is not so clear, however, is whether the violence that has erupted sporadically at night--with street marauders throwing molotov cocktails and darts at the police--will cease in time. The people who are responsible for the violence could become more politically aware of the consequences of their acts. If they continue long enough, requiring massive police patrols of city streets, the costs to the state and city could be prohibitive, and thus mught help bring an end to busing.

The people of Charlestown, who are intensely proud of and loyal to their community and resentful of the police presence, will be the deciding factor. Jimmy Breslin hints that those Irish-Americans will stick to the anti-busing fight for a long time, characteristic of their nature to doggedly support a "doomed" cause.

For the present, Charlestown protests do not seem to have much political awareness about them. In fact the most visible protests have been a series of Mother's Marches, in which women and girls often with babies in strollers, walk two by two chanting repeatedly the Lord's Prayer and Hail Marys. They march to neighborhood churches to pray and sing hymns, sometimes kneeling down to statues of patron saints to pray for intercession to stop forced busing. The unvoiced desire to keep blacks out of their schools and community is obviously there, producing prayers that are suspect in their motivation and intent.

Aside from a white students' boycott last Thursday, with attendance back up on Friday because of the weekend football game, these mothers' marches have been the only formal protests in Charlestown. And the cries of Pat Russell, president of Powder Keg, an anti-busing group, "Remember, a mother's power is the greatest power on earth!" did not sound very stirring on the first day they marched, when the crowd of women met police several lines deep with riot helmets and nightsticks in their hands, waiting to prevent them from parading down past Bunker Hill Monument in front of the high school. These police are funded by the Commonwealth, ironically a source of authority Charlestown patriots fought and died for two hundred years ago. And the power of these police holds sway over Charlestown, creating an artificial calm around the buses at the high school.