News Report About First Day of Busing (1974)

of trouble is becoming more and more remote. Thank you, Judy. Most of us were talking to grownups today, the mayor, the school superintendent, other school officials, policemen, and so forth, getting our story from them. But two of our reporters spent their day with children, children who went to school and didn't go to school. Greg Pilkington and Diane Dumanoski spent pretty nearly all day from early in the morning until this afternoon, both on the bus and around schools and so forth. Greg, you spent your day with black kids who were bussed in the south Boston. Tell me a story. What was it like as they rode into south Boston? Well, this morning I'd say the kids were pretty nervous, but the nervousness was mixed with sort of kind of outward bravery and then one would say to the other, but I'm really scared I'm going to be doing a lot of running today and that kind of thing. And when the bus got to the school and there was all the jeering and the big crowd out in front of the high school, the kids were really frightened because they didn't know how well they were going to be protected.

They were hustled into the school quite quickly and my impression is that they then became quite angry, talking about in south. Yeah, later, as the day went on, I talked to some of the kids later and the kids were quite angry. They were outraged. Kids were saying things like we're just going to school, there's no reason for this. They were at the same time wondering how white kids being bus to Roxbury were going to be received at Dorchester High. When the bus is left and we're stoned and I was on a bus at the end of the school day, I was on a bus that was stoned. The bus I was on, no windows were smashed, but the kids got pretty upset, needless to say. The bus was packed. There's nothing to do really. You look out the window as far as I could see there were no cops between the bus and large groups of kids who were throwing whatever at the window. Was it material hitting the bus? Yeah, you could hear it ricocheting off the bus and after a while I didn't look out the window anymore. I thought better of that. But then later, as the buses began to come in with the windows, many, many windows smashed

in. I think at least for windshields had been smashed, came into the assembly area. Yeah, where they were changing out of the buses that would take them home. It was really an atmosphere almost of hysteria. These were crying, some people had been cut, and it was just utter confusion in hysteria, which was managed, I think, pretty well by the monitors and the teachers who were there. They got the kids on the buses and home pretty quickly. But the kids then were just really semi-historical and very, very angry. They were all saying we're never going back to South Boston. And it was interesting because in the morning, there had been this feeling, well, I wonder how the white kids are being received in Dorchester. At that point, the kids were all saying that they were absolutely certain, and as it turns out, they were right, that nothing like that would have happened to the white kids going to Dorchester High. Diane?