Common Ground (112 page)

An avid reader of novels and poetry, sixteen-year-old Janeth kept a diary which recorded her bemusement at both whites and blacks.

She examined the Townies: “Since I haven’t made many friends, I have a lot of time to analyze them and sure feel sorry for them. They might have a great deal going, you know, but they don’t seem to take advantage of this…. They don’t push, they don’t get out of their own town. They are born, raised and die without knowing that there are thousands of people that would give them a helping hand.”

Black behavior: “In the area designated for lockers, this morning there was a group of black girls yelling at each other so loud that the building seemed to disintegrate…. ‘Individualized behavior,’ perhaps!”

Dropouts: “A guy in my homeroom who is eighteen or nineteen and wasted a year already because he ‘hates niggers way down to his guts,’ decided to leave school again.”

The final bell: “It’s incredible how in tenths of a second the school is empty. But it’s a sad feeling, though, to see a lot of empty heads and pea-sized brains walking out, with an even smaller future ahead.”

Lisa McGoff wouldn’t have put it quite that way, but she too was dismayed
by the sluggishness that seemed to beset the school that year. As autumn descended into winter, Lisa sought some means of rallying her classmates. A teacher suggested that the class of ’77 sponsor a Christmas tree in the school’s front lobby. Lisa loved the idea—Christmas was her favorite time of year, standing as it did for warmth, closeness, and good cheer, all the traditional Townie virtues which she hoped to restore at Charlestown High. But Bob Murphy was dubious: it seemed extraneous to his central task of keeping blacks and whites from each other’s throats. When Lisa persisted, he relented, but with one condition: she must try to involve black students, so nobody could claim the Townies had expropriated Christmas.

Lisa readily agreed, but when she approached several blacks on the Senior Activities Committee—Cassandra Twymon among them—they weren’t interested. To decorate and light the tree meant staying several hours after school, then returning home after dark through hostile Charlestown. It seemed more trouble—perhaps more danger—than it was worth.

Even so, Lisa pressed ahead. Her next problem was finding a tree. Pat Greatorex was reluctant to take money allocated for the senior prom or banquet, so several security aides took matters into their own hands. Downtown in the Haymarket shopping district, where Italian merchants had a huge selection of trees, they picked out a towering fir with graceful boughs. While one of them distracted the vendor with football talk, two others hustled the tree into their pickup and made for Charlestown. Creaking up Breed’s Hill, they were dismayed to see a police car nudging them to the curb. But it was only a friend who exclaimed, “That’s the biggest damn tree I ever saw! I been looking for one like that.” He seemed disappointed when they told him they’d chopped it in the New Hampshire woods.

They installed the tree in the marble lobby, embraced by the curving stairways where the winter before Charlestown whites had staged so many bitter demonstrations. One evening, a half dozen senior girls joined Lisa for the tree-dressing ceremony. For hours they draped the boughs with red, blue, and yellow bulbs, golden balls, shimmering spangles, peppermint canes, artificial snow, and, at the very pinnacle, a dazzling silver star. When their work was done and the tree lit up with dozens of winking lights, the girls sang a chorus of “Silent Night.”

The response to the tree was electric. As students filed through the metal detectors the next morning, they exclaimed over the first touch of gaiety the school had permitted itself in more than sixteen months. Soon there was a clamor for more—anything—to break the dismal routine. With the basketball team about to play its traditional rival, South Boston High, and the hockey squad entering a critical tournament, someone suggested a pep rally.

Like many of the school’s extracurricular activities, pep rallies had been allowed to lapse. Once busing began they had fallen under Bob Murphy’s strict prohibition on any gathering that might provoke violence. Now Lisa implored the headmaster to show some confidence in the class of ’77. Murphy was
reluctant—pep rallies were notoriously raucous affairs, designed to stir not only school pride but a territorial chauvinism which could easily slip into racial hostility. Nevertheless, he consented.

For sports was the one arena in which whites and blacks had managed to collaborate at Charlestown High. The few blacks who gained anything but grudging toleration were invariably those who displayed prowess on court or field. One was Sandra Payne, a high-scoring forward on the girls’ basketball team. At first she encountered only distrust from her white teammates, but soon her one-handed jump shot claimed their applause, her kooky merriment their affection, and she became known to one and all as “Spacey.” Another was Joe Strickland, an acknowledged star at both football and basketball, now rewarded with a co-captaincy of the basketball team. His uncanny grace, the sheer ebullience with which he played, reminded several white teachers of a young Willie Mays. Those coltish good spirits proved irresistible to his teammates and captivating to many of the senior girls (among them a blond cheerleader named Diane Nadeau, with whom Joe joked—
but only joked
—about going to the prom). Lisa and her friends loved to kid around with Joe because he never took offense at their gibes, invariably responding in kind. “A real good nigger,” his classmates called him, or “the only good nigger I ever met.”

As they organized the pep rally, Lisa and her friends cast about for an appropriate theme. When seven of them gathered after school one day, Carolyn Wrenn said, “How about the Seven Dwarfs?”

“Who’d be Snow White?”

“Joe Strickland,” someone suggested.

They all laughed. But Lisa sensed an opportunity. This time Mr. Murphy would surely insist that blacks be included in the show, yet some whites were bound to take offense. It’d be better if they could make a joke of the whole thing, and who could pull that off better than loose and breezy Joe? When they approached him, he readily agreed.

On Friday, December 17, some three hundred students crowded into the third-floor auditorium. Blacks and whites automatically found their way to separate sections of the hall, from which they regarded each other with glum apprehension. Husky security aides and male teachers ringed the walls, watching for the first sign of trouble. Outside in the corridors, a dozen policemen stood at the ready.

Chippa Godding as MC welcomed the audience to “the first pep rally we’ve had in more than five years.” Thanking Mr. Murphy for “his faith in us,” he admonished the students to be “worthy of that trust.”

Three cheerleaders, in blue Charlestown High sweaters, pranced onstage to lead the crowd in a desultory cheer: “Right on, Townies, right on.”

Then came the Seven Dwarfs, clad in sloppy denim overalls, T-shirts, striped socks, and white sneakers, trudging across the stage as they chanted:

Every few feet one of them would fall, the others tumbling over her, landing in a heap, then untangling themselves and marching off in another direction.

Eventually, they assembled at center stage to introduce themselves: Carolyn Wrenn as Sneezy, waving a big white handkerchief; Maureen McDougall as Happy, with oversize teeth; Kelly Gamby as Doc, with black spectacles and knit cap; Rebecca Miller as Bashful, hiding behind her fluttery hands; Jean Smith as Sleepy, with drooping eyelids; Joan Smith as Dopey, with a pointed dunce cap; and Lisa as Grumpy, her face crumpled in a doleful grimace.

Then, turning toward the wings, they called, “Whitey!” “Hey, Snowy!” “Come here, Snow White!”

Out leapt Joe Strickland in a Charlestown High T-shirt, a long green skirt, a Hawaiian lei around his neck, a yellow flower in his hair, dashes of white paint on his ebony cheeks.

The auditorium rocked with laughter as Joe, striking a girlish pose, yelled, “Give me a T.”

“You got your T,” the crowd responded.

“Give me an O.”

“You got your O.”

“Give me a W.”

“You got your W.”

And so on until Joe demanded, “What have you got?” and the crowd thundered, “TOWNIES!”

Then the Dwarfs advanced toward the apron, spread their hands wide, and launched into a ragged rendition of “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas.” Every time they reached the word “white” they paused to let Joe deliver it in his off-key baritone. The kids seemed to love it, and when the rally ended several minutes later, they rewarded the performers with a standing ovation.

The long-run reaction was mixed. Bob Murphy was so pleased with the rally’s decorum that he took to the public address system to congratulate his charges on their good behavior. Several teachers found the Seven Dwarfs skit “charming.” But others weren’t so sure. One young liberal said he had “cringed in embarrassment” all the way through. And several black students berated Joe Strickland for playing “Stepin Fetchit for the white folks.”

Gradually Murphy relaxed his rigorous regime. Soon he authorized another schoolwide event, a “Gong Show” to be produced by the Student Council on March 4. Once again the senior girls did most of the organizing, and Mr. Grace and two other teachers agreed to serve as judges. Several blacks—among them Cassandra Twymon—were enlisted to dance or sing. Lisa and Carolyn Wrenn dressed up as “fifties persons” in plaid skirts, fluffy sweaters, pearls, and penny loafers to sing a golden oldie called “Bobby’s Girl.” But the grand prize was taken by Pat Greatorex and another brawny teacher named
Jimmy Kent, decked out as “special ballerinas of the Boston Ballet” in flowing wigs, red leotards, and gauzy tutus. Their improbable pirouettes and arabesques brought down the house.

But though such diversions eased tensions at Charlestown High, they did nothing to defuse the underlying confrontation. In case anyone was inclined to forget it, the race issue had a way of cropping up just when it was least expected.

The school day began with a homeroom period, during which teachers took attendance, made announcements, and presided over the weekly Pledge of Allegiance, long a matter of contention at Charlestown High.

One morning in March 1977, as Assistant Headmaster Bob Jarvis came on the public address system to say, “All please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag,” most of the students in Lisa’s room stumbled to their feet. But Nancy Green, a black senior who had been absent for much of the winter, remained sitting in the front row. As thirteen youthful voices intoned the familiar litany—“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands”—John Humphrey, a hockey star who had recently scored three goals in Charlestown’s victory over South Boston, turned on Nancy Green.

“What’s the matter with you?” he shouted. “You too good to stand up?”

Nancy stared straight ahead, giving no sign that she had heard him.

Humphrey persisted. “Don’t you people respect the flag?” he asked. “Don’t you respect your country?”

Standing nearby, Lisa was surprised by the anger in his voice. She sort of liked Nancy Green, a gentle, dignified girl who never came on strong like Cassandra Twymon or Anita Anderson. And Lisa knew something John Humphrey didn’t know: that Nancy was a Jehovah’s Witness, which prohibited her from taking oaths or pledges of any sort. Whatever other reservations Nancy may have had about such patriotic observations, her religion prevented her from taking part.

When Humphrey went on denouncing the girl, Nina Wright—their homeroom teacher—ordered him into the hallway. There the argument raged on. Nina explained that no student was required to stand against the dictates of his or her conscience, but Humphrey continued to inveigh against busing, blacks, and Nancy Green in particular. When his teacher asked him to apologize, he said he would offer an explanation of his behavior to the class but never to “that girl.” Eventually, the hockey star was suspended for five days. On his way out of school that afternoon he put his fist through a glass door panel, leaving a jagged hole that went unrepaired for weeks, a tangible reminder of Charlestown’s persistent resentments.

It was scarcely surprising that when the class of ’77 issued invitations to the senior banquet on March 24, few blacks chose to attend. Pat Greatorex worked hard to get them there, promising that two of his most formidable friends from the Townie team—defensive tackle “Ditso” Doherty and linebacker
Jerry McCormick—would maintain order. But the banquet was scheduled for 7:00 p.m. at the Cobblestone Restaurant on Medford Street, a section of Charlestown considered perilous for blacks even during the daytime. Ultimately, only four of the class’s eleven blacks showed up: Eddie Dykes, Curt Shepherd, Sandra Payne, and Joe Strickland.

The Townies turned out in force, the boys in formal suits and ties, the girls in bright party dresses or slacks. The Cobblestone’s Charlestown Room was “colonial”—brass chandeliers, yellow bulbs molded to look like candles, the stucco walls bedecked with American eagles, fifes, drums, and musketry. Formica tables formed a square, leaving room for a dance floor, and by 7:15 a student d.j. had a thick stack of disco records spinning on the phonograph. But the party got off to a slow start as boys sat with boys, girls with girls, whites with whites, blacks with blacks.

Suddenly a dark-haired senior named Julie Finn dragged a reluctant shop mug out to dance. Soon they were joined by others, and for nearly an hour the floor was filled with writhing bodies. Only one minor incident marred the festivities. When Eddie Dykes asked a blond girl to dance, a white boy told him to move on. For a moment a scuffle seemed certain to erupt, but Ditso Doherty muscled in between the boys and the party resumed.

When everyone had finished supper, Lisa rapped her spoon on her glass and someone yelled, “Let’s hear it for the class president,” triggering heavy applause.