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At first, demonstrators defied Gordon's order. For four hours on Sunday night, several thousand unruly whites, blaring their cars' horns and shouting bitter epithets ("In God we trust, in Gordon we don't!" and "Keep the niggers out!"), clogged four-lane Preston Highway. Gradually, however, some 400 disciplined state troopers cleared the highway, sometimes smashing windshields or subduing demonstrators with 3-ft. riot sticks.
Next morning, under the watchful eyes of 2,500 police and National Guardsmen, the 470 school buses began rolling long before dawn, each carrying an armed guard. In obedience to Gordon's order, however, there were only occasional white demonstrators along the routes or at the schools. Indeed, by week's end, a boycott of the schools by whites had become largely ineffective; on Friday, 77.3% of the merged city-county district's enrollment of 120,000 students (20% black) attended schools, up from 50% a week earlier.
Behind locked doors, teachers and students went about the business of education, uneasy yet remarkably undisturbed by the tensions in the community. Said Bart Coonce, 15, a white senior at Fairdale High School: "We're all against busing, but now we should try to make it work." Argued Joe Barnett, 17, a white senior at Shawnee High School: "The problem is parents." Added Dawn Babbage, 16, a white sophomore at Shawnee: "Mom was afraid at first and I was too, but I think that it is going to be okay." Said Reggie Foster, 16, a black sophomore at Valley High: "If people don't bother me, I know that I can get a better education here."
This mood elated city and county officials. But they realized that opposition to busing had been broken only by the weekend show of force; such security will be difficult to maintain for more than another week or two. Tensions in the blue-collar neighborhoods seemed likely to remain high for some time to come, and were fanned by antibusing leaders like Bill Kellerman, automobile assembly plant foreman and president of Citizens Against Busing, which claims to have 400 followers. He vowed: "Kentucky will sit still no longer. We will make Boston look like nothing."
Meanwhile, on the day before schools opened in Boston, some 8,000 whites rallied outside city hall to protest the federal court's desegregation order, waving placards (sample slogan: "If Boston is lucky, it'll be twice as bad as Kentucky") and cheering defiant speeches. Last year 18,200 of the city's 94,000 pupils were assigned to be bused to desegregate 80 public schools; last week 26,000 students were supposed to be bused to 162 schools. City Councilwoman Louise Day Hicks, an inflammatory foe, urged the crowd to continue last year's boycott of the schools and vowed, "Whatever is going to happen in Boston is going to set the tone for the forced-busing issue elsewhere."
Despite the rhetoric, and in contrast to last year's disruptions, almost all the school openings were uneventful. But there were two trouble spots: the high schools in the blue-collar neighborhoods of Charlestown and South Boston. At both, police and federal marshals cordoned off