Federal officials call busing plan extreme
WASHINGTON (UPI) — The Justice Department suggested Wednesday a federal judge may have gone too far in ordering massive busing to achieve a racial balance in schools at Charlotte, N.C.
In proposing that an alternative plan be considered, the department said the question was whether the judge "invoked a remedy so extreme as to constitute an abuse of discretion."
The department laid down its position in a friend-of-the-court brief filed with the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals at Richmond, Va., which opens a hearing Thursday on an appeal by Charlotte school officials.
Assistant Attorney General Jerris Leonard, in line with President Nixon's recent sequestration statement, cited 31 higher court rulings which he said suggest "that courts might carefully consider whether, for the purpose of achieving a precise, system-wide racial balance, a plan would require a school board involuntarily to make unreasonable increments in transportation expenditures, the number of students bused, distances travelled."
U. S. District Judge James B. McMillan's desegregation order involved the busing of 3,000 pupils, in addition to the 24,000 now being bused, to achieve a balance among the 70 per cent white and 30 per cent Negro pupils in the 84,000-pupil Charlotte-Mecklenburg County school district. The school board said it would require 526 more buses.
Back to work move builds among striking teamsters
by United Press International
BY UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL A back-to-work move spread through the ranks of striking truck drivers in several key transportation hubs across the nation Wednesday.
Teamster Union members headed back to their runs in Milwaukee, Wis., Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn., and San Francisco's East Bay area.
There was a limited back-to-the cab movement in hard-hit Los Angeles, where a spokesman for Teamsters Joint Council 42 estimated 15 to 20 per cent of the strikers ended their walkout. Trucking companies sent telegrams to 10,000 other Los Angeles drivers telling them they were fired.
There were no signs of a break, however, in wildcat strikes that paralyzed truck freight operations in St. Louis, Mo., and crippled operations in several Ohio cities. Strikes spread to York, Pa., and involved 400 drivers in San Diego, Calif.
A selective strike by Chicago Teamsters spread to a huge suburban food distribution center of the Jewel Companies, halting deliveries to 270 food stores in Northern Illinois and Southwest Michigan, and to the key distributing center of Goldblatt Bros. department stores.
Zenith Radio Corp. suspended work at four plants in the Chicago area and laid off more than 6,000 workers because of the truckers' strike. Ford Motor Co. plants at Louisville, Ky., and St. Louis shortened work shifts.
WORK SHIRTS. The wildcat strikes were an expression of dissatisfaction with a national agreement between industry and Teamster officials, worked out in Washington last
Apr. 9
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week, which would provide an average hourly increase of $1.10 over three years.
Chicago Teamsters, who bargain separately, turned thumbs down on the $1.10 settlement and are conducting selective strikes in an effort to raise the ante sharply.
Union officials in Chicago say more than 400 companies there have agreed to grant increases totaling $1.70 over three years.
Teamster Union officials said "roving bands of goon squads" were keeping at least 17,000 truck drivers off the job in the Cleveland, Columbus, Akron and Toledo areas.
Governor defies judge
BRADENTON, Fla. (UPI) Gov. Claude Kirk Wednesday defied a federal judge who has threatened to cite him for contempt. Kirk ousted, for the second time, the Manatee County school board, thus apparently blocking a school integration plan.
Kirk signed an order resuspending the entire board, including one member who had just announced he was resigning rather than implement the plan, which calls for mass busing.
Kirk had previously suspended the board but Federal District Judge Ben Krentzman overruled the governor Tuesday and told the board to have the plan in operation by Thursday.
The judge also ordered Kirk to appear in his court Friday to show cause why he should not be cited for contempt for interfering with the court's orders.