Small Mercies

Elsewhere, too, it was a season for being grateful for small mercies. The news from Boston was mostly dreary as the lines were drawn even more sharply in the dispute over busing. The all-white school committee refused to comply with a federal court order to approve a plan to extend integration to all of the schools next year. The Department of Health, Education and Welfare then suspended payment of a $1.9 million grant, which is badly needed to help ease the pains of desegregation.

Yet there was also a perceptible lifting of spirits, as violence subsided -- at least for the moment. "We are pessimistic, of course," said Social Worker Percy Wilson, one of the city's black leaders, "but we are a little happier."

A plan was being worked out to move pupils from South Boston High School, the Irish-Catholic center of the dispute, to a building on a more neutral site. A group of white parents agreed to try to organize black and white students, as well as parents, to discuss the conflict. The biracial council would be the first of its kind in South Boston since the troubles began.

A federal court may still order full-scale integration for next fall. Built into that plan are innovative measures that promise to upgrade instruction. It might be too much to hope that Bostonians could focus on that incentive. Still, the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, the black civil rights leader from Atlanta, told a racially mixed audience: "We didn't come over on the same ship together, but I'll be doggoned if we're not sinking on the same boat. Blacks and whites are fighting for the same thing."

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