Valerie Banks was the only student to show up for her geography class at South Boston High School on the first day of court-ordered busing, Sept. 12, 1974. (AP)

First of two parts. Here’s Part 2. Note: Report contains some offensive language.

BOSTON — With Boston public school students back in class, we recall a very different start to school 40 years ago. Then, classes began a week late to give students, schools and the police extra time to prepare for the first day of court-ordered desegregation.

Earlier that summer of 1974, federal District Court Judge W. Arthur Garrity ruled that the Boston School Committee had deliberately segregated the city’s schools, creating one system for blacks and another for whites — separate, unequal and unconstitutional.

The remedy to achieve racial balance and desegregate schools was busing. Some 18,000 black and white students were ordered to take buses to schools outside of their neighborhoods.

‘The Words. The Spit.’

Here’s how The Boston Globe headlined that first day of court-ordered busing: “Boston Schools Desegregated, Opening Day Generally Peaceful”. The headline was reassuring, if not exactly accurate. It was only Phase 1 of the federal desegregation plan. Just 59 of 201 schools were desegregated that day, and it was far from peaceful at South Boston High School.

Southie was ground zero for anti-busing rage. Hundreds of white demonstrators — children and their parents — pelted a caravan of 20 school buses carrying students from nearly all-black Roxbury to all-white South Boston. The police wore riot gear.

“I remember riding the buses to protect the kids going up to South Boston High School,” Jean McGuire, who was a bus safety monitor, recalled recently. “And the bricks through the window. Signs hanging out those buildings, ‘Nigger Go Home.’ Pictures of monkeys. The words. The spit. People just felt it was all right to attack children.”

One of those children was Regina Williams.

“I had no idea what to expect [with] this busing thing,” Williams said. “I didn’t know anything about South Boston. I didn’t know anything about, you know, they didn’t like us. I didn’t know anything that was in store for us. But when we got there, it was like a war zone.

“I came back and I told my mom, and I’ll never forget, I said, ‘Ma, I am not going back to that school unless I have a gun.’ At 14 years old. I am not going back to that school.”

To read more … wbur.org/news

• Part 2: Busing Left Deep Scars On Boston, Its Students
• Timeline Of Events: Boston School Desegregation And Busing

2001 – In the U.S., four airliners were hijacked and were intentionally crashed.

Two airliners hit the World Trade Center, which collapsed shortly after, in New York City, NY.

One airliner hit the Pentagon in Arlington, VA.

Another airliner crashed into a field in Pennsylvania.

About 3,000 people were killed. 

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also known as Mormons), stoked by religious zeal and a deep resentment of decades of public abuse and federal interference, murder 120 emigrants at Mountain Meadows, Utah on September 11, 1857.

Although historical accounts differ, the conflict with the wagon train of emigrants from Missouri and Arkansas apparently began when the Latter-day Saints refused to sell the train any supplies. Some of the emigrants then began to commit minor depredations against fields, abuse the local Paiute tribes, and taunt the Mormons with reminders of how the Missourians had attacked and chased them out of that state during the 1830s.  

Angered by the emigrants’ abuse and fired by a zealous passion against the growing tide of invading gentiles, a group of LDS guerillas from around Cedar City decided to take revenge. Cooperating with a group of Paiutes who had already attacked the train on their own initiative, the guerillas initially pretended to be protectors. The guerillas persuaded the emigrants that they had convinced the Paitues to let them go if they would surrender their arms and allow the Latter-day Saints to escort the wagon train through the territory. But as the train again moved forward under the LDS escort, a guerilla leader gave a pre-arranged signal. The Latter-day Saints opened fire on the unarmed male emigrants, while the Paiutes reportedly murdered the women. 

Source: history.com for the complete article on the 1857 Massacre

In Christiana, Pennsylvania, a group of African Americans and white abolitionists skirmish with a Maryland posse intent on capturing four fugitive enslaved people hidden in the town. The violence came one year after the second fugitive slave law was passed by Congress, requiring …read more

1939 – The First Food Stamp Program

The idea for the first Food Stamp Program (FSP) is credited to various people, most notably Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace and the program’s first Administrator Milo Perkins. The program operated by permitting people on relief to buy orange stamps equal to their normal food expenditures. For every $1 worth of orange stamps purchased, 50 cents worth of blue stamps were received. Orange stamps could be used to buy any food.  Blue stamps could only be used to buy food determined by the Department to be surplus.

The first recipient was Mabel McFiggin of Rochester, New York on May 16, 1939.  The first retailer to redeem the stamps was Joseph Mutolo, and the first retailer caught violating the program was Nick Salzano in October 1939. Over the course of nearly 4 years, the first FSP reached approximately 20 million people at one time or another in nearly half of the counties in the United States, peak participation was 4 million, at a total cost of $262 million. The program ended in the spring of 1943 “since the conditions that brought the program into being–unmarketable food surpluses and widespread unemployment–no longer existed.”

( Milo Perkins )

1961 through 1964 – Pilot Food Stamp Program

The 18 years between the end of the first FSP and the inception of the next were filled with studies, reports, and legislative proposals.

Prominent Senators actively associated with attempts to enact an FSP during this period were: Aiken, La Follette, Humphrey, Kefauver, and Symington. From 1954 on, Congresswoman Leonor K. Sullivan strove unceasingly to pass food stamp program legislation. On September 21, 1959, P.L. 86-341 authorized the Secretary of Agriculture to operate a food stamp system through January 31, 1962.

The Eisenhower Administration never used the authority. However, in fulfillment of a campaign promise made in West Virginia, President Kennedy’s first Executive Order called for expanded food distribution and, on February 2, 1961, he announced the initiation of Food Stamp pilot programs. The pilot programs would retain the requirement that the food stamps be purchased, but eliminated the concept of special stamps for surplus foods. A Department spokesman indicated the emphasis would be on increasing the consumption of perishables. Isabelle Kelley, who was part of the four-person team that designed the new program, became its first director and the first woman in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to head an action program.

Mr. and Mrs. Alderson Muncy of Paynesville, West Virginia, were the first food stamp recipients on May 29, 1961. They purchased $95 in food stamps for their 15-person household. In the first food stamp transaction, they bought a can of pork and beans at Henderson’s Supermarket. By January 1964, the pilot programs had expanded from eight areas to 43 (40 counties, Detroit, St. Louis, and Pittsburgh) in 22 states with 380,000 participants.