According to a poll by the National Opinion Research Center, black opposition to busing reaches its high point with 53% of blacks opposed.
June
Judge Arthur Garrity issues an elaborate plan to desegregate Boston’s public schools, ordering the busing of 21,000 students. In response, race riots erupt in high schools in Hyde Park, Roxbury, and South Boston. Governor Francis Sargent calls in the National Guard and appeals to President Ford to send federal troops to quell the disturbances.
The violence in Boston represents the height of national tension over busing. Also in the early 1970s, dynamite explosions in Denver destroy over one-third of the city’s buses; a mob in Lamar, South Carolina attacks school buses carrying children; protesters in Pontiac, Michigan boycott the schools and firebomb buses; and in Trenton, New Jersey, race riots by students and others force the schools to close for two days.
In the same month that Boston erupts in race riots, the public swimming pools in Jackson, Mississippi are finally integrated.