It's Hard To Be Holy

EP. 76: Chapter V

Coarse, Offensive, Xenophobic, and Racist Language. Reader Discretion Advised.

March 17th, 1954.

Brown V. Board of Education.

The Supreme Court of the United States of American ruled unanimously that segregated schools were unconstitutional. All eyes turned to the South, and bit by bit, the old and entrenched institutions of Jim Crow, of legal, Southern intolerance were stripped of their power and done away with. Hearts and minds may not have been so easily changed, but the laws no longer could support the bigots and their ways.

In the North, the decision was met with resounding approval, but it was a hollow approval, for nothing in the North changed. In Boston, no earnest effort was undertaken to examine and rectify the segregation of education.

April 1st, 1965.

A special committee, established by the Education Commissioner for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, found that the public schools of Boston still, nearly 11 years after Brown were disproportionately segregated. As a result, the Massachusetts General Court, (more commonly known as the state legislature), took it upon themselves to pass the Racial Imbalance Act.
An order then was given: The Boston School Committee, in charge of the public schools, was required to come up with a plan to fully integrate education in the city before September of 1966.

The Boston School Committee promptly refused.

March 15th, 1972.

Morgan v. Hennigan. 18 years after Brown.

The NAACP, (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), the same organization for which Ms. Liza Johnson worked so diligently for, filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging willful and continued refusal on the part of the Boston School Committee to address the racial imbalance in the public schools.

The case came before a federal judge by the name of Wendell (W.) Arthur Garrity Jr, a white, Harvard educated, Irish-Catholic from Worcester. In the analogues of Mother-City, there has never been a more divisive figure than Judge Garrity, but the evidence laid before him was simple, and no judge, being of sound mind and impartiality, could have arrived at a different conclusion than the Honorable Garrity. It was apparent from the start that the Boston School Committee had refused to comply with both state and federal law. Though there was no direct law ordering the segregation of schools, they were, quite openly, segregated by action. He ruled in favor of the NAACP, and he took it upon himself to enforce his ruling. He devised a plan.  Beginning on September 12th, 1974, Boston would be integrated. Half the black students were bussed to white neighborhoods, South Boston being the first test case, while half the whites were supposed to be bussed to the black enclave of Roxbury.

Riots broke out in South Boston that morning, riots that would continue in earnest throughout the city for the next 2 years. It wouldn't be until 1988 that control of the public schools was returned to the Boston School Committee. By that time, the veneer of enlightenment that Boston had tried so hard to cultivate was long dead. What should have been obvious from the start was made apparent for the whole nation—world!—to see...

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Nothing in the fifty-six and a half years of Mrs. Louise Fitzgerald's life could be considered successful. One might even argue that fifty-six and a half years had been thoroughly wasted on the lady. Yet, as Alan Carr described his recollections to the Author, a portrait of two distinct women was painted. There was the Louise of Before, she of the failed marriage, and the two children buried in infancy, culminating in the three decades of deteriorating inebriation. Louise the Lesser. Louse the Forgettable. Louise, with her ass stuck to the bar floor every Saturday night in O'Toole's.