School buses set on fire

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32700, 1 September 1971, Page 17

School buses set on fire

(N.Z. Press Association —Copyright) PONTIAC (Michigan), August 31. Ten school buses were fire-bombed on Monday night in the factory town of Pontiac where schools are due to open next week under a court-ordered integration plan.

The buses were in a Board of Education maintenance building about half a mile from the central area when the bombing occurred about 11 p.m., police said. Police described the area where the buses were parked as a “lot surrounded with a tall, chain-link fence, which is normally locked.” A police spokesman said a guard normally patrolled the lot, but that "we understand he was off tonight for some reason.”

Last Wednesday, lawyers for the school board filed a petition with the United States Supreme Court seeking a stay of the busing order. Under the order, more than one-third of the district’s 24,000 pupils would be bused from their own neighbourhoods to achieve racial balance in the school system.

Nineteen of Pontiac's 36 school system now are either at least 90 per cent white or 90 per cent black. The board said that it was preparing to meet the busing order if the nation’s highest court did not act before

classes began on September 7. Board lawyers contended that the court-ordered plan “will cause a white flight that will convert the city of Pontiac into a black municipality.” Pontiac, with a population of 85,279, includes just over 27 per cent non-whites among its residents.