Rehearsal for Busing

The makings of a clash were all too familiar. As hundreds of blacks from inner-city Louisville climbed off buses in front of suburban, previously white Fairdale High School last week, they were met by a crowd of nervous whites waiting at the schoolhouse door. Instead of protests, however, the blacks were greeted with handshakes, sandwiches and soft drinks. "We couldn't have written a script and followed it any better," said Don Matlock, Fairdale's assistant principal. "They're pleased with us and we're pleased with them."

AU this was only a dry run to prepare students and parents for the opening day of school this week, when 22,600 pupils--half of them black, the other half white--will be bused between Louisville and the suburbs. In last week's rehearsal, about 5,000 black parents and students rode buses or drove to their new schools in the suburbs on the first day of the rehearsal; 10,000 whites made the reverse trek to inner-city classrooms on the second.

City-suburb school busing for the Louisville area was ordered by a district court of appeals in July; a few days later another court ordered the immediate merger of the 73 Louisville public schools with the 107 schools in surrounding Jefferson County to facilitate the busing. (The newly merged school district has a total enrollment of 130,000 students, including 26,000 blacks.) Milburn T. Maupin, a black former acting superintendent of Louisville schools, then organized and directed a human-relations campaign designed to minimize racial tensions. He set up a speakers' bureau of school officials, principals and teachers who delivered hundreds of talks to community and parents' groups urging compliance with the court order.

On the surface, at least, the careful preparations seem to have paid off. Some white parents have been making the hot 40-minute drive daily from the suburbs to inner-city schools during the past few weeks to watch their sons practice on new integrated football teams; 18 black players from inner-city Shawnee High School have made the same daily trip to Fairdale. Those examples of cooperation and the successful busing dry runs have delighted black Associate School Superintendent James Coleman. "We didn't really know what to expect," he says, "but after this we have every reason to be more positive about what's going to happen."

Klan Protests. Nonetheless, there are ominous signs that the worst may still be ahead for Louisville. Last week's rehearsal was marred by a false bomb threat and an orderly protest by 40 white parents. Furthermore, union members at a 17,000-employee General Electric plant in the county have threatened a walkout on the opening day of school to protest busing. Several Ku Klux Klan meetings have been held to denounce desegregation, and a cross was burned in a field near Fairdale. The Klan also plans a demonstration in downtown Louisville on the first day of school.

Several parents' organizations have been formed to protest busing. Says Shirley Warren, a leader of the group called Save Our Community Schools (membership: 5,000): "Parents attending our meetings are at loose ends. They don't know which way to turn. Things just aren't as calm as the newspapers say they are." Sue Conners, president of Concerned Parents (membership: 16,000), is more vehement. She insists that the antibusing parents are "never" going to give in. "We have a war going," she says. "I think Boston will be small compared to Louisville."

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