White Flight Continued

In Boston's white, working-class Charlestown neighborhood, hundreds of mothers, many with small children, chanted: "Over there, over there, the kids aren't going over there." Just outside Louisville, 1,500 people attended a Ku Klux Klan cross burning one night, and 6,000 shouted "Boycott! Boycott! Boycott!" at a protest rally.

The outward signs of opposition to busing in both cities, where black and white pupils are bused out of their neighborhoods under court-ordered desegregation plans, are still as strong as ever (TIME, Sept. 22). So many stayed out of Boston schools last week that for the first time the public school system contained more minority students than whites.

Missing Students. The racial tip came as no surprise. Boston's white enrollment has been dropping steadily since 1965 while minority enrollment has been climbing. Last year, in the opening phase of forced busing, the enrollment was 52% white and 48% black and other minorities. Now the proportion of the pupils actually attending school has shifted to 54% minority and 46% white. Although a few more students trickle into school each day, fully 27% of the city's 76,127 students in the public schools have not yet attended a class this year. More than half of the missing 21,616 students are white.

Where are they? A few have registered at Boston's four Southern-style white academies. None of them have opened yet, but parents predict they will be full when they do. The South Boston Heights Academy expects more than 400 students and is even conducting preadmission testing. Hyde Park Academy cut off its enrollment at 350 students and has 100 more on the waiting list. Other whites have fled to parochial schools, despite the archdiocese's official hard line refusing admission to white pupils trying to avoid desegregation.

Still other Boston youngsters, however, will spend the year just hanging around. In the past few weeks there has been an alarming increase in minor crime--robberies, car break-ins--all over South Boston as teen-agers roam the streets with little to do. Says one South Boston social worker: "When kids see their parents chucking rocks at school buses, that begins the breakdown of all kinds of societal rules."

For some South Boston youngsters who are now starting their second year without school, the boycott is taking a tragic toll. The 16-year-old daughter of a militant antibusing leader has given up hope of becoming a speech therapist after staying home last year. "She just can't make it now," says her mother, who still refuses to send the girl back to school.

Some blacks are worried that the increasing white flight could result in less effective teaching of pupils who do attend school. Harvard Professor Kenneth Haskins predicts, "The school committee is white, the teachers are white, and when they see that their constituency is different from them, then we could have a problem."

By contrast the Louisville boycott seems to be losing steam. In fact, 81% of the 124,000 pupils in the newly merged Louisville and Jefferson County school systems were in classes last week. Antibusing violence is ebbing. The night that the remainder of the 1,000 National Guard troops pulled out, some demonstrators took to the streets near Southern and Valley high schools, but their protest was almost orderly; a few ended up shaking hands with the police.

Smashed Windshield. Some violence has gone unreported. The only incident involving police gunfire during Louisville's first tense week of busing was ignored by the Louisville press. Indeed, before school started the Louisville media had adopted a set of voluntary guidelines which were designed to prevent an exacerbation of tension. The violence occurred when Frank Prell, 34, a modestly prosperous white contractor, was stopped by state troopers in riot gear as he headed across town in his 1969 pickup to visit his mother. Without explanation, they began beating on his fenders with their nightsticks and smashed his windshield. After Prell spun away in panic, he ran through a roadblock of Jefferson County policemen. Two county cops pursued him, and when Prell refused to pull over, one fired three .38-cal. bullets into the truck. Prell eluded his pursuer and made it home unhurt. Although Prell himself called the Louisville Courier-Journal and three radio and television stations to complain, not a word of his ordeal was broadcast or printed. (The Courier-Journal finally printed the story last week only after TIME started checking on it.)

As in Boston, many Louisville parents are sending their children to private schools--which registered a 22% jump in enrollment (four new private schools have opened). Kentucky Governor Julian Carroll aided antibusing forces last week when he filed suit in federal court asking the Federal Government to pay the costs of court-ordered busing.

Nevertheless, efforts to maintain the boycott are difficult for even the most intransigent white holdouts. Working parents, such as Janet and Steve Pickerell, are typical. Janet, a secretary, is away from home all day. Steve, a pipefitter, works nights, so he is baby-sitter and teacher for their son Mark, 7, during the day. Mrs. Pickerell is worried, however, because young Mark has little to do while his friends are in school. Says she: "I don't know how long we can hold out. He's bored to death. It's getting harder every day."

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