News Report About First Day of Busing (1974)

becoming more and more remote. Thank you Judy. Most of us we're 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 who went to school and didn't go to school. Greg Pilkington and Diane Dumanoski spent 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 bused into South Boston. Tell me a story. What was it like as they rode into South Boston? Well this morning I would say the kids were pretty nervous, but the nervousness was mixed with sort of a kind of outward of 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. When they, 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

once they got inside. 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 is no reason for this. They were they were at the same time wondering how white kids being bused to Roxbury were going to be received, as well at Dorchester High. When the buses left and were stoned and I was on a bus this afternoon. At the end of the school day I was on a bus that was stoned. The kids, 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 that the windows. Was material hitting the bus? Yeah, we 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, and I think at least four windshields had been smashed -- Into this assembly area? Yeah, where they were changing onto the buses that would take

them home. It was really an atmosphere almost of hysteria. Kids were crying. Some people had been cut, and it was just utter confusion and 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-hysterical 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?