Busing and Strikes: Schools in Turmoil

"Back to school," once a pleasant, end-of-summer phrase, has virtually come to mean "Back to the barricades." In much of the U.S. last week, schoolchildren and their parents were concerned not with education but with busing, racial hostility and strikes. As buses began to roll, carrying black and white students across town to achieve integration, there was smouldering resentment in many communities and, in Louisville, outright violence. Boston, preparing to open its schools, feared the same. Millions of children could not even attend classes. Their schools were shut down in a growing wave of strikes by teachers angered by recession-caused layoffs, pay freezes and deteriorating working conditions. Following are accounts of the major conflicts:

Louisville: The Hatred Surfaces

Barely 24 hours earlier, Louisville Mayor Harvey I. Sloane had proudly praised the people of Jefferson County for showing "restraint" and a "spirit of cooperation." As the first two days of court-ordered busing of 22,600 students between the city and the suburbs came to an end, Sloane had good reason to be pleased. Although more than half of the 130,000 students in the newly merged Louisville and surrounding Jefferson County public schools had stayed at home, there had been few incidents of violence. Louisville's carefully rehearsed school-busing program (TIME, Sept. 8) seemed to be working.

Then on Friday night, after relieved city and county officials had left their offices, what everyone had feared finally happened. Driving to local high school football games scheduled that evening, thousands of teen-agers and adults were clogging the highways of southwestern Jefferson County, a largely blue-collar section. Honking their horns to signal their opposition to busing, many of them headed toward Valley High School. One youth parked in the middle of the highway -halting traffic completely -and to the cheers of onlookers ripped the hood from his car. Suddenly the mood changed, and the crowd began pelting the police with stones and bottles, calling them "pigs" and "Communists." Bonfires were lit on the highway, and the rioting crowd swelled to more than 10,000.

As word of the fighting spread, antibusing forces, most of them teenagers, began gathering at other nearby schools. At Southern High, they smashed the windows and slashed the tires of 40 school buses and set fire to two more, built bonfires and chanted: "We don't want niggers in our schools" and "Send Gordon [James Gordon, the U.S. district judge who had ordered the busing] back to Moscow." Elsewhere in the suburban area, street signs were torn down, stores looted, and gas-station pumps ripped out. Only after 350 state troopers were called in to aid the beleaguered 400-man county police force did the rioting begin to die down. All told, some 50 people were injured and 192 (including a state representative) were arrested.

Fearing further violence, Kentucky Governor Julian Carroll at 4 a.m. ordered 800 armed National Guardsmen into the Louisville area. Later on Saturday morning police in Louisville arrested 75 sign-carrying people (including the Grand Dragon of Kentucky's Ku Klux Klan) who were assembling in the downtown area despite a ban ordered by Mayor Sloane on parades and demonstrations. Soon after ward, several truckloads of armed Guardsmen were moved into the business district. Declared the National Guard commander: "They will be used when and where needed until order is restored."

Even before the weekend disorders, there had been signs that Louisville's whites were not going to accept busing without resistance. At Fairdale High, in a suburban working-class neighborhood, 70% of the white pupils stayed home, although most of the 300 blacks assigned to the school made the long ride from the city. Many of the black students were nervous as they approached their new schools. As one busload of blacks from Shawnee Junior High School in Louisville drew up to Valley Station High in the suburbs, Leslie Lacy, 17, commented anxiously, "I think I'll paint myself white and go back to Shawnee."

A rally in the Kentucky fairgrounds the night before school opened drew 10,000 orderly, but angry protesters. The crowd bought hundreds of T shirts with slogans like OPPOSE TYRANNY printed across the front.

Next morning, when buses began their first runs, a few whites tried to block them with their cars. But police quickly cleared the way. Later in the day there were other disruptions, including a march by 1,000 antibusing demonstrators in downtown Louisville and some bomb threats at newly integrated schools. The ugliest incident occurred in the afternoon, when 150 whites gathered outside Fairdale High School; many demonstrators parked their cars on the narrow two-way street leading to the school, preventing the eight buses filled with black students from leaving. The screaming crowd threw cups and empty soft-drink cans at the buses before police came to the rescue. A Ford Motor Co. truck plant shut down after 38% of the 1,500-man work force stayed out to show their opposition to busing.

At week's end many of Louisville's whites remained adamant in their opposition to busing. But officials seemed even more determined that the law would be carried out. Jefferson County School Superintendent Ernest Grayson announced that on Monday buses would roll as scheduled, and Judge Gordon backed him up. Declaring that the rioters had "violated the tolerant attitude of the court and insulted the dignity of the community," he banned demonstrations in or near public schools and barred gatherings of more than three persons along school bus routes while the buses were operating.

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