Race relations continue to be a "third rail" issue in politics. A full generation after the forced busing/ school desegregation battles of the 1970s, there remain some strong feelings over the actions that took place in that sad era, and there is new evidence that the psychic wounds from those times have yet to heal.

Last week, this newspaper published a letter from a resident aimed at Senator Jack Hart. This "open letter" took the able young senator to task for his attendance at the funeral of Mrs. Louise Day Hicks, a former school committee member and member of Congress who passed last month. Senator Hart attended the woman's South Boston funeral, and made the mistake of making comments to a Boston Globe reporter that seemed to the letter writer to be racially insensitive.

The full history of Boston's racial battles of the last generation have yet to be written. For those of us who lived through those unhappy events, it is difficult to separate the emotion of the battles from the validity of the problem.

There is no doubt there was separateness in Boston schools, and that black children were treated unjustly and illegally by the school board. The fundamental problem with the court remedy imposed by the late Judge W. Arthur Garrity was that the court remedy had the effect of punishing the children, rather than the wrong-doers. It would have been so much better if Garrity had punished the school committee members, and sought a more equitable solution to achieving a quality education for the school children. Instead, the court order had the effect of setting neighborhoods against each other, and the school children in the public schools became the pawns in those battles.

The role Mrs. Hicks had in the battles during the 1970s is largely one that took place in the background. Mrs. Hicks had run and lost for Mayor to Kevin White in 1967; in 1970, while still on the school committee, she was elected to a term in the Congress, and left her role in city politics behind. In 1972, she was defeated by J. Joseph Moakley, and by the time the busing order came about, Mrs. Hicks no longer held public office.

But by then, in the racial debates, she had become a negative symbol in the media and, as a result, in the public's mind. When the busing order came down, she was portrayed, along with other busing foes, as an unreconstructed racist.

In her later years, Mrs. Hicks returned to the private practice of law, and she spent many hours working for a Dorchester-based bank. We saw her several times in the neighborhood, and when we asked if she would be willing to sit for an interview, she declined.

Persons with a long view of those struggles lament that there was so little leadership shown in ameliorating the negative effects of the busing court order. It was not a good time, for anyone. And the long term effect of the the Garrity order are still subject to debate.

As for the actions of Senator Hart, it needs to be said he is a good and decent man, and a caring politician. To paint him with the brush of insensitivity as a result of his attendance at the funeral is unfair. Christians believe that to bury the dead is a corporal act of mercy.

As for the political era which became symbolized by Mrs. Hicks and her campaign utterance, "You know where I stand," let us agree that those days are behind us. What was needed then, as now is not just tolerance, but more Christian compassion and mercy.

-Ed Forry