Common Ground

by J. Anthony Lukas

  This wasn’t quite what Pat Russell had in mind. Waving the march to a halt, she huddled with Powder Keg’s leaders. Since silent prayer wouldn’t work, it would have to be a vocal prayer march. Pat, Alice, and their friends began reciting the rosary, intoning their “Hail Marys” in the singsong murmur familiar to generations of Charlestown mothers:

  Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.

  Others picked up the chant, savoring the old rhythms.

  Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

  Slowly, all up and down the line, the prayer caught on.

  Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners.

  Soon, all four hundred women had joined in, flinging the prayer in defiance against the shabby brick walls of the housing project.

  Now and at the hour of our death, Amen.

  At School Street, Pat Russell executed a sharp left turn and led her mothers toward the Warren Prescott School. This violated a new order by Judge Garrity prohibiting the gathering of three or more persons within a hundred yards of a Boston school (an order drafted for the judge by the Justice Department, despite private doubts there about its constitutionality). “Get some equipment across the street,” an apprehensive police officer muttered into his walkie-talkie. As the women passed the school, a mother near Alice shouted up at the open windows, “Ain’t none of our children in there. Just niggers!” But the marchers moved past the school with no further incident and turned left onto High Street, heading toward Monument Square, where, around the corner, Charlestown High School reared opposite the Bunker Hill Monument.

  As soon as Captain MacDonald saw the women turn onto High Street, he left the line of march and headed up the hill to take charge of his men surrounding the high school. “I figure they’re headed up this way,” he told his sergeant. “Tell the men they’re to maintain the integrity of the hundred yards around the school.”

  As they advanced on Monument Square, the women encountered a phalanx of police drawn up across High Street at the corner of Cordis Street, still a block and a half from the high school. A formidable force confronted them there. First a double line of a hundred MDC police, each holding his baton horizontally before him to form an unbroken wall. A few feet behind them stood another hundred Boston police. Next came two Black Marias, their doors open, ready to receive prisoners. And behind them, held in ominous reserve, were about sixty members of the Tactical Patrol Force. Up a side street roared half a dozen motorcycle police of the Mobile Operations Patrol, and at the foot of the Monument stood five mounted police in helmets and flak jackets. On the sidewalk nearby were six deputy U.S. marshals, part of the riot-trained Special Operations Group, which had recently returned from Guam, where it had policed Vietnamese refugee camps. Dozens of reporters, local and national, crowded the stoops on either side, ready to record the battle for posterity. Television crews maneuvered for position.

  In the second row of marchers, Alice gaped in astonishment at the small army drawn up in their path. Ten feet short of the first policemen, the women stopped. Pat Russell stepped forward and told Superintendent Lawrence Carpenter of the MDC police that she had Captain MacDonald’s permission to continue, but Carpenter told her that if she went past that point she and her followers would be arrested. Then he ordered them to disperse.

  Indignantly, Pat refused. “We have permission to march and offer our prayers to God. That’s what we’re going to do.”

  “Beyond this point, you’ll be within a hundred yards of the high school. We’ll have to arrest you.”

  “What are you talking about?” Pat cried. “We just marched right by the Prescott School, so close we could reach out and touch it. Why don’t you people get your stories straight?”

  “I don’t care what you just did,” Carpenter said. “I’m telling you now, you can’t go any further.”

  At this, most of the women sank to their knees and began praying again, the “Our Father” this time: “Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name …”

  Meanwhile, the two police wagons and the detachment of motorcycle police circled behind the marchers and stationed themselves in the middle of High Street at the rear of the procession. The marchers were surrounded.

  Negotiations began. Pat Russell spoke for the mothers. Representing the authorities were Police Commissioner Robert DiGrazia, Police Superintendent Joseph Jordan, Public Safety Coordinator Peter Meade, MDC Superintendent Carpenter, Captain MacDonald, and Marty Walsh. In the center of the discussions was an animated figure in a business suit who, the astonished Townies soon learned, was J. Stanley Pottinger, U.S. Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Civil Rights Division. Pottinger had been designated as the Senior Civilian Representative of the Attorney General for Boston’s school desegregation—the personification of federal power in the crisis—a role he had previously played during the Indian uprising at Wounded Knee and the confrontation at Kent State. His presence on Breed’s Hill that day symbolized the Justice Department’s growing concern over the Boston situation, just as, a decade earlier, Burke Marshall and John Doar had signaled Washington’s determination to enforce the law in Mississippi and Alabama.

  For nearly an hour, as the mothers prayed and the police twirled their batons, the negotiators huddled in the street beneath the Bunker Hill Monument trying to resolve their impasse, but they were caught in a stalemate which offered neither side an attractive option.

  The mothers, and their male supporters who were quickly gathering on the adjacent sidewalks, sensed that this might well prove to be the crucial confrontation with Judge Garrity and his enforcement mechanism. If they gave in now, they might never again be able to muster this much moral indignation against his orders, yet the manpower massed against them was so overwhelming that physical resistance seemed out of the question. Nor could the police afford to give in. Believing that their “low profile” policy in South Boston the year before had only encouraged violence, police officials—vigorously seconded by the Justice Department—were determined to show the people of Charlestown that a repetition of last year’s disorders would not be tolerated. Yet a melee in which heavily armed police attacked defenseless women and children was unthinkable, if only because it would provide a cause célèbre which could fuel the anti-busing movement for months to come.

  The negotiators met first together, then in separate caucuses on either side of the street. In the police caucus, fears of a major debacle were rising. “If we let them go through,” Joe Jordan warned, “we’re going to face this every day.”

  “But, Joe,” said another official, “look at all those TV cameras. Can’t you just see The NBC Nightly News tonight showing us beating on a bunch of women in shorts and sandals.”

  “This is starting to look like Porkchop Hill, with everybody digging in to make their stand,” warned Stan Pottinger. “We’ve got to find some graceful way out for these people.”

  Ultimately, the police decided to offer the women a “face-saving” compromise. They would be permitted to walk single-file down the south sidewalk of High Street—the side furthest from the high school—to the Training Field, a shady park where eighteenth-century Townies had drilled their militia and where the anti-busing movement often rallied.

  Pat Russell took the proposal back to her caucus, where Powder Keg’s leadership promptly rejected it. “We’re not a bunch of cattle who can be led down a chute,” said Alice McGoff.

  “We’re going through,” Pat told the police. But Commissioner DiGrazia insisted that the offer be communicated directly to the rank and file of mothers. For that, he turned to young Dennis Kearney, who, as state representative for the district, had faithfully supported the anti-busing movement, yet who, as a Harvard-educated pragmatist with high political ambitions, wanted to be viewed as a responsible moderate. He promptly agreed to make the appeal. Borrowing a bullhorn from the police, he stood at the head of the march and addressed the mothers: “Nobody’s going to win anything by
violence here. Our intent has been to show how strongly we feel about busing. We’ve done that. Now let’s do it by walking quietly, single-file, along the sidewalk to the Training Field, where we’ll have our rally. We’ve come this far with respect and dignity. Let’s not spoil that.”

  The mothers wavered, unsure what to do. From the sidewalk, bystanders urged them not to give in. “That’s a sellout.” … “Go back to Harvard, Kearney!” … “Bust on through those goddamned police.” Others, among them several priests from St. Mary’s, implored the mothers to accept the compromise.

  Danny McGoff was anxious about his mother. “Ma!” he yelled from the sidewalk. “Ma! You got a bum neck. For Christ’s sake, get out of there.” But Alice didn’t budge.

  Slowly, about one hundred mothers—the elderly, the sick, and those with infants and small children—rose to their feet and straggled up the sidewalk to the Training Field. Nearly three hundred remained.

  Now Superintendent Jordan took the bullhorn. “Ladies,” he warned, “you will not be permitted to march past this point. You have fifteen minutes to walk to th6 Training Field or you will be subject to arrest.”

  The remaining mothers seemed determined. Grimly, those still accompanied by children shunted them to husbands, relatives, or friends on the sidewalk.

  Danny resumed his pleading. “Ma, for crying out loud, you’re sick! Get out of there!” Alice’s neck was killing her now; the excitement of the march had only intensified the pain, but having come this far, she was going to see it through. Removing the Thomas Collar, she flipped it across the street to Danny. “Here, take this,” she said, “and shut up.”

  The minutes ticked by. A few mothers, mindful of the analogy which Pat Russell had drawn with Martin Luther King’s marches, struck up “We Shall Overcome,” but the song trailed off after a few seconds. Nobody seemed to know the words. Just then Pat Russell shouted, “Okay, girls, this is it. We’re going through. Heads down. Hard and heavy. But keep your hands at your sides. If they touch a woman, they won’t be able to hold this town—and they know it.”

  Alice struggled to her feet. From her position in the second row of marchers, she could look across the ten feet of pavement directly into the gray eyes of an MDC sergeant who glared grimly back at her. Pain stabbed down her neck and along her spine, but she squared her shoulders, trying to look as fearless as she could. She was so close she could hear Commissioner DiGrazia as he moved rapidly along the police lines, whispering urgently, “Don’t push anybody. Just stand in line, shoulder to shoulder. But don’t let them through. If they charge brutality, we’ll have the film.”

  With that, the women moved forward in a tight platoon, many still chanting “Hail Marys” and “Our Fathers” under their breath. Some were already weeping. Others had their eyes closed, with purses, shopping bags, or pillows over their faces to ward off the expected blows.

  Alice couldn’t bend her neck, so she walked with her head erect, arms slightly raised in front of her.

  The front line of police obeyed orders, legs braced to meet the column with an unmoving picket of batons, arms, and shoulders. But here and there the women threatened to break through. Struggling to repel them, some policemen pushed back too vigorously. Scuffles broke out.

  Abruptly, the Tactical Patrol Force waded into the bobbing sea of women. Quickly, the mothers were herded into two groups, one shoved down the steep hill of Cordis Street, the other pushed back along High Street. Alice had advanced barely four yards when the force of the TPF charge sent her reeling down Cordis Street.

  Here and there, the TPF—whose job was to intimidate—used more force than was necessary. Women screamed and stumbled. Some fell against cars or sprawled on the street. A few husbands and sons tried to help their women, but the TPF would brook no male interference. One youth was heaved against an automobile. Several men were arrested.

  In five minutes the skirmish was over. For some, good humor returned quickly. Ann Considine, a husky mother of five, had wrested a baton from an MDC policeman. “Yoo-hoo!” she crowed triumphantly. “Anybody lose this?” No policeman would claim it. Finally Superintendent Carpenter stepped forward, while police and women shared a laugh.

  On Cordis Street, Alice leaned against a tree, tired but exhilarated. She felt as if she’d just fought the American Revolution. They’d gone up against the toughest cops in the city and survived. For the first time in four days, her neck didn’t hurt at all.

  16

  Twymon

  Born nine months before John F. Kennedy was elected President, Cassandra Twymon had only the haziest notion of the Southern civil rights movement. Montgomery, Little Rock, Nashville, Greensboro, Birmingham, and Selma were simply names to her, as exotic as Kinshasa and Katmandu. And except for Martin Luther King, most of the blacks who had struggled and prevailed in those places—Rosa Parks, Medgar Evers, James Meredith, Fannie Lou Hamer, Hosea Williams—were equally indistinct, so obscured by time that she could never be sure whether the tales she heard about them were fact or fiction.

  Once, when she was thirteen, a black teacher assigned her a book about the integration of the University of Georgia. The events which it described took place in January 1961, when Cassandra was not yet a year old. But passages had stayed with her, perhaps because the author, Calvin Trillin, wrote so vividly; perhaps because her mother recalled that the University of Georgia was barely a hundred miles from the family’s early home in Waynesboro; probably because the principal figure was a young black girl with whom she could identify. Years later, Cassandra still remembered Trillin’s evocation of that terrible night on which Georgia students forced Charlayne Hunter and her black classmate Hamilton Holmes out of the university:

  “Just after ten a small crowd of students gathered on the lawn in front of Center Myers and unfurled a bed sheet bearing the legend, ‘Nigger Go Home.’ Then three or four of them peeled off from the group, ran toward the dormitory, and flung bricks and Coke bottles through the windows of Charlayne’s room…. As more people came up the hill from the basketball game—a close loss to Georgia Tech—and a few outsiders showed up, the mob grew to about a thousand people, many of them throwing bricks, rocks and firecrackers…. Dean Williams suspended Charlayne and Hamilton, informing them that it was ‘for your own safety and the safety of almost seven thousand other students.’ … The area around Center Myers looked like a deserted battlefield, with bricks and broken glass on the lawn, small fires in the woods below the dormitory, and the bite of tear gas still in the air [as] Charlayne, who was crying by this time and clutching a statue of the Madonna, walked right out the front door into the state police car, watched only by a few straggling reporters.”

  That image lodged somewhere deep in Cassandra’s memory—a lone black girl, frail and defenseless, weeping bitter tears of shame while clasping the Virgin Mary to her breast. It became her private symbol of the civil rights movement, just as for others it was Montgomery mothers walking to work, water hoses and police dogs in Birmingham, or the confrontation at Selma’s Pettus Bridge.

  Yet Charlayne’s experience seemed terribly remote, something that had happened very far away and long ago. So as the civil rights movement moved northward and people began talking about a possible battle over school integration in Boston, Cassandra couldn’t imagine that such scenes would actually be repeated there. Her own experience in the Boston schools had been relatively uneventful. She’d always gone to school with whites, and only once—when whites in East Boston sought to retaliate for the killing of René Wagler—had she been the target of racial violence. Although occasionally she still had nightmares about that day, Cassandra wasn’t inclined to worry about such things. By nature cheerful and optimistic—some might say boisterous, even belligerent—she had adopted her mother’s faith in the benefits of integration. Like most of her friends, she was absorbed by rock music, television, clothes, and boys—increasingly boys—but when she paused to think about the schools she supposed things would turn out all right. Inde
ed, when Arthur Garrity adopted the state racial imbalance plan in 1974, Cassandra and her brother Wayne found themselves on the bus to Brighton High, one of the least troubled of Boston’s high schools. Their younger sister, Rachel, was assigned to Brighton’s equally peaceful William Howard Taft Middle School.

  Brighton was the working-class district in northwest Boston where Colin and Joan Diver had lived briefly in 1969–70. Although predominantly white, it was neither as physically isolated nor as ethnically self-conscious as South Boston, Charlestown, and the North End. Irish predominated there, but they were substantially, diluted by Italians, Greeks, Eastern Europeans, even some Hispanics and blacks. Moreover, for years, Brighton High had drawn part of its student body from the black, Hispanic, and Chinese sections of the South End and Lower Roxbury. As early as 1972, 15 percent of its enrollment was black, another 15 percent Chinese. Teachers and students were so accustomed to substantial non-white presence in the school that even when it rose to nearly 50 percent under the state plan, there was remarkably little racial tension.

  The Twymons’ year at Brighton was marred by only two incidents. In a corridor on the way to class, an Italian girl once brushed past Cassandra, then turned and said, “Watch out, nigger.” A shoving match developed, but was quickly broken up by teachers. More serious was a prolonged impasse with one of Wayne’s teachers. First, she refused to accept his transfer into her class; when the office insisted, she told him he’d have to order his own textbook directly from the publisher; and when Wayne complained, she closed the classroom door in his face. Soon the teacher discovered that she had Wayne’s sister in another class and began making derogatory remarks about Cassandra. That was too much for Rachel, who got both children transferred to another teacher.

  On balance, the Twymons enjoyed their year at Brighton, especially when they came home each night to watch television coverage of the violence at South Boston and Hyde Park. The kids who braved the fury of those places were street celebrities, seasoned veterans of the school wars. But the Twymons didn’t crave that kind of celebrity. So Cassandra and young Rachel were dismayed when they opened their Phase II assignments on July 7, 1975, to discover that they would be bused into Charlestown that fall—Cassandra to Charlestown High and Rachel to the Edwards Middle School. (Wayne escaped Charlestown altogether by gaining admission to a special pre-college program on Beacon Hill.) Neither girl had ever set foot in Charlestown—by the time they were teenagers, the Town was already regarded as unreceptive to blacks. But their mother had been there—first on school outings to the Bunker Hill Monument and the USS Constitution; later when she worked for a time as a packer at Schrafft’s Candy Co. And she vividly remembered the day when cousin Moses Baker had been beaten along the Charlestown docks. She wasn’t very comfortable at the thought of her daughters going to school there.