What are you reading?

J. Anthony Lukas’s book, Common Ground;  A Turbulent Decade in the Life of Three American Families, which is based on true events and facts, is my alltime favorite book, which, I admit, have not only read a number of times, but just got finished re-reading it.  It’s about Boston’s school crisis back in the mid to late 1970’s, and how three Boston families viewed events, and coped with everything that happened.  The families included were the Twymons,  an African-American family from Boston’s  Lower Roxbury-South End area,  the McGoffs, a white workingclass Irish Catholic family who lived in the projects in Boston’s Charlestown section, and the Divers, who were a white Yankee gentry  family originally from Lexington, MA, who, after much investigating the various neighborhoods in Boston, bought and moved into, and renovated a townhouse in Boston’s South End, in order to be nearer to their work, and to help non-white poor people in Boston.

The Twymons ended up joining in a protest in Roxbury against  the firing of a liberal white teacher who’d taught fourth grade in Roxbury for many years by the all white, conservative Boston School committee, who’d pointed out the shortchanging that Boston’s black children were getting in the Boston public schools, but who also pointed out that Boston’s white working class students also fared little or no better than the black students under the current Boston school system, under the current Boston School Committee.  The mother, Rachel Twymon,  who was separated from her husband, did not want her kids to stay in the all black schools in Roxbury, and tried to get a better education for her kids elsewhere.

Eventually, when mandatory school busing came to Boston, the Twymons were first bused into Brighton, where, except for some minor incidents, largely had a good experience.  The next year, however, her daughters, Rachel Jr. and Cassandra, were bused into poor white Charlestown, where, along with the other nonwhite students bused into Charlestown,  they faced constant taunts, assaults, and general abuse by many of their white Townie classmates, as well as vicious rock throwing mobs outside the schools,  while the boys managed to avoid Charlestown by somehow gaining admissions into other high schools in the city, or to college prep programs.

The Twymon kids found all kinds of ways to rebel, against their mother’s strict disciplinary measures around the house, and, eventually against being bused into Charlestown.   Much to  Rachel’s Twymon’s distress,  the girls would often stay out late, getting into sex and dope, and began skipping school.   A number of the boys, on the other hand, turned to crime and ended up being in constant trouble with the law.  

The Twymon family also had many divisions in their families, and, due to extreme poverty, where Rachel was dependent on public assistance due to chronic illness, and unable to work, while her sister, Alva, with considerable striving, entered the computer world, where she got a job with Gillette, in South Boston.  After Alva’s first marriage stalled, she moved back to Boston, and determined to buy a house, she and her new husband, decided to buy a house in the  mostly white  and Irish Catholic  section of Dorchester.  Alva Debnam, her husband and two children were constantly subjected to a long campaign of intimidation and vandalism of their house by many white youths in the neighborhood. The efforts of a  white liberal group from Cambridge,  to organized  white working class people from Dorchester and form an alliance to control racial tensions, which resulted in the formation of a group called RUN (Racial Unity Now), which had helped protect and defend a number of nonwhite families who’d been under attack by white neighborhood youths, also worked to defend the Debnams, who were under attack, but became overzealous.  

Only after Tommy,  a member of the Twymon family who came up from out of state despite not being wanted around by the rest of the family due to an extremely volatile temper,  became angry enough to retaliate, and seriously injure several white youngsters in the neighborhood,  however, despite did the police appoint two of their strongest cops as a racial squad to bring the increasingly tense, violent situation under control and arrest the troublemaking white youths, and

The McGoffs, along with many, if not most of the white Charlestown townies,

actively resisted the mandatory school busing order as hard as they could.  Alice McGoff, the mother, joined a group called Powder Keg, the Charlestown Chapter of the citywide antibusing organization ROAR (Restore our Alienated Rights), her daughter, Lisa, and a couple of friends, were often the student leaders of the White Caucus at Charlestown High School, who, with the support of white adults from Powder Keg, often led the resistance to busing inside the high school, with many demonstrations, both in and around the school, as well as marching to Boston City Hall to protest to Mayor Kevin White, and even to Judge Garrity.   Some of the boys joined a known fighting gang in Charlestown, which was the toughest gang in the Town, and, like many of their friends, frequently engaged in skirmishes with the police who were assigned to busing duty in Charlestown at that time.  One of the boys, Billy, whose primary interest was sports,  although not openly in favor of busing, was more laid back about it, preferring to concentrate on sports, rather than be involved in walkouts, boycotts and demonstrations, or even skirmishes with the police. much to the distress and anger of his sister, Lisa.  

The Divers, who had moved into Boston’s South End, due to its being one of the few racially diverse neighborhoods in Boston at that time, had a real committment to work with the poor and disadvantaged, and they found a real opportunity to do so in the South End.  For awhile, things worked out quite well, as the Divers made many friends in the neighborhood, both white and nonwhite alike, and they helped establish the Bancroft School, which was not only integrated racially and ethnically, but had Open Education and classrooms.  At length, however, as tensions increased in the neighborhood between the white gentry and the  life time and longtime nonwhite residents in the area, due at least in part to the busing crisis, the Bancroft which was founded by a number of idealistic white liberal South End parents, including the Divers, was ultimately broken up by Judge W. Arthur Garrity’s order, lost its specialness, and, in addition to that, the increase in violent  street crime and property crime became too much for the Divers to bear, and they ultimately moved out to suburban Newton, MA, so their kids could get a better education.  

The book Common Ground;  A Turbulent Decade in the Life of Three American Families, in addition to beginning with the backgrounds of the three families portrayed in this particular book,  also depicts the role that prominent politicians such as then-Mayor Kevin H. White, the late Boston School Committeewomen Louise Day Hicks and Elvira (Pixie) Palladino played in Boston’s school crisis, as well as the role of the Church, the police, and the Federal District, under Judge W. Arthur Garrity Jr, who, along with a number of experts working under him, had blueprinted what turned out to be an extremely divisive largescale, crosscity mandated school busing plan.

I believe that the title of the book speaks for itself.  The Twymons, the McGoffs, and the Divers, although separated and pitted against each other, were all caught up in Boston’s busing crisis together, with many of the kids getting into crime and trouble with the law, the kids both being totally dependent on and locked into a poor school system that shepherded very, very few kids into college, and yet, in many instances, coming up to be reasonably decent people despite all the strife and trouble that occurred at that time.