Before Busing News Today

Leaders and stakeholders in the early movement to desegregate Boston school reflected on buried experiences and lessons of the period at the first forum Tuesday marking the upcoming 50th anniversary of the momentous busing order -- and pushed for continued action.

Dennis Lehane’s “Small Mercies” begins with a hint of dread: an electrical outage in the tenacious predawn heat of September 1974. The setting is South Boston, and the whole neighborhood is bracing for a collision. With a daughter on the cusp of her senior year in high school, Mary Pat Fennessy expects to show up at a rally of white parents against the beginning of school