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Students returned to school in South Boston, Massachusetts, with more than four hundred police officers on guard as racial tension escalates.
1975 (Jan 8)
Students returned to school in South Boston, Massachusetts, for the first time in four weeks as more than four hundred police officers kept watch on the arrival and departure of school buses. Four schools in the South Boston area had been closed since December 11, 1974, when a white student was stabbed at South Boston High School. As the students returned to school, officials announced a first day attendance of 876 out of a total of 3,000 pupils enrolled in the four affected buildings. Meanwhile, the Boston School Committee appeared before U.S. District Court Judge W. Arthur Garrity, Jr., with a new desegregation plan. The new plan, which omitted busing, was the means by which the committee hoped to avoid punishment for contempt of court for three of its five members.
References:
- • Hornsby, Alton. Chronology of African-American History: Significant Events and People from 1619 to the Present. Detroit: Gale Research, 1995.