PUBLIC SCHOOLS
“When you see that man,” the mother instructed her young son, “spit at him.” The man was Thomas F. Nevins, an assistant superintendent of the New York City board of education. The mother was one of 65 parents who for three days had forced their way into Jackson Heights’ P.S. 149, children in tow, to protest the compulsory exchange of students between the previously all-white school and one predominantly attended by Negroes six blocks away.
Last week, while children bawled and mothers screamed defiance, police hauled the demonstrators off to criminal court after a melee that stunned the nation’s biggest school system. The demonstrators were old hands: members of Parents and Taxpayers (P.A.T.), the white organization that staged a massive citywide school boycott last month in an unsuccessful attempt to pressure the board into canceling calculated plans for ending defacto segregation at a handful of New York City’s 850 public schools.
The battle of the moms began with a signal from P.A.T. Leader Mrs. Joan Addabbo, a 28-year-old mother of two. The parents broke through police lines into P.S. 149. But police inside the entrance locked arms, formed a human chute that funneled the crowd into the auditorium. As each parent entered the hall, Nevins shouted: “You have no legal right to be in this building. You are under arrest.” Outside, 300 P.A.T. pickets turned nasty as dark-green police vans rolled up to a side entrance. When police tried to herd their prisoners into the vans, someone shouted, “Don’t let them!” and the riot was on. The scuffle, brief but bloody, finally ended when a P.A.T. lawyer borrowed a bull horn from the police and calmed down his followers.
P.A.T. partisans were well prepared for their arrest. One mother brought diapers, changed her baby on a court bench. Others came with baby bottles and box lunches. Taken before the judge in relays of five, the parents were charged with loitering on school premises, a form of disorderly conduct punishable by up to 60 days in jail. Then they were released in their own custody to await trial next month.
P.A.T. counted the violence and arrests a gain. “We have made our point,” exulted one P.A.T. official. The board grimly agreed. “Force was brought to our doorstep,” protested Superintendent of Schools Calvin Gross, warning that he would not wait two days next time to arrest parents who threatened yet another sit-in.
More Must-Reads from TIME
- How Donald Trump Won
- The Best Inventions of 2024
- Why Sleep Is the Key to Living Longer
- How to Break 8 Toxic Communication Habits
- Nicola Coughlan Bet on Herself—And Won
- What It’s Like to Have Long COVID As a Kid
- 22 Essential Works of Indigenous Cinema
- Meet TIME's Newest Class of Next Generation Leaders
Contact us at letters@time.com