This book concentrates on the experiences, personal insights, and big events that made up the battle to desegregate the public schools in Boston, Massachusetts. It also gives the historical background of the struggle. In 1965, Massachusetts passed the first state law against de facto segregation, the Racial Imbalance Act. It was not enforced. On June 21, 1974, nearly two years after a suit to desegregate Boston schools was filed in federal district court, Boston schools were ordered to desegregate. That year was marked by antibusing rallies, attacks on black and white students, and racist and antiracist demonstrations. The first year of desegregation was marked by confrontations between racists and anti-racists. The racists began an organization called Restore Our Alienated Rights (ROAR), whose purpose was to oppose desegregation. Also, 1975 was marked by the founding conference of the National Student Coalition Against Racism, a two week teacher strike, a white student walk-out of South Boston and Charlestown high schools, and the beginning of Phase II of the desegregation plan. The second year of desegregation witnessed further rounds of terror between racist and anti-racist factions. Yet, despite the monumental obstructions put up by the antibusing movement, desegregation took hold in most of the city's schools. In two years Boston's dual school system was virtually uprooted: the systematic exclusion of black students from the city's better schools was gone, the segregationist feeded patterns had been broken, and the open enrollment scheme was abolished. Today in 1977, Boston exists in a contradictory condition. On the one hand, key elements in one of the most rigidly segregated school systems in America have been dismantled. On the other hand, a mood of violence is tangible in racist communities. Blacks are not safe in a majority of the city's neighborhoods and tension prevails. (Author/AM)