He and Joan had moved with their two sons to the South End because they believed in the ideal of a city where people from different races and classes lived and strived together. Of course he also saw the rightness, the legal necessity, of Garrity’s ruling.
He had worked in Mayor Kevin White’s City Hall, had seen the tribalism of Boston’s neighborhoods, and the racism of some residents close up. “But a lot of us underestimated the degree of hostility.” When Garrity ruled that black students should be bused to schools in overwhelmingly white South Boston and Charlestown, and white students to schools in black neighborhoods, “I realized there would be trouble,” Colin said.
Last week, they sat on a blue velvet couch facing Commonwealth Avenue, talking about it yet once more. They’ve spent the better part of their lives living and reliving the agony of the 1970s, contemplating the indelible stain it left on the city they love.
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