What happened during Desegregation and Court-Ordered Busing?
In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown vs. Board of Education that racially segregated schools were illegal. This court case overturned Plessy vs. Ferguson which allowed schools to be racially segregated, as long as the facilities and supplies were deemed “equal” for the students. In 1955, the Supreme Court made desegregation top priority ordering that states needed to proceed with “deliberate speed.” In Massachusetts, the State Legislature passed the Racial Imbalance Act of 1965 prohibiting “racially imbalanced” schools. The Act discouraged schools from allowing a student body with more than a 50% minority.[1] Keeping the minority percentage below 50% was not an easy task for schools within the city of Boston, and this Act was met with challenges within the city.
School systems in multiple states faced problems, including anger from parents and neighbors, and instances in which people outright refrained from carrying out desegregation in their local schools. In Boston, finding the best solution to carry out desegregation proved difficult. In March of 1972, the NAACP filed the lawsuit Morgan vs. Hennigan alleging that the Boston School Committee had intentionally participated in discriminatory practices. The lawsuit claimed “black school children faced deliberate discrimination through the open enrollment policy, controlling access to transfers, being forced to attend inferior schools, restricting faculty transfers and virtually exclusive hiring of white administrators and faculty.”[2] In February 1973, the Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the Boston School Committee violated the Racial Imbalance Act, and that the state Department of Education needed to come up with a plan to integrate the schools starting in the 1974 school year.
On June 21, 1974, the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts concluded that the School Committee of the City of Boston intentionally, and purposefully, maintained a system of racial segregation in the Boston Public Schools. This was the first time a United States District Court had issued this type of ruling. Judge Arthur Garrity, who ruled on this case, considered several factors to make his decision. He looked into other lawsuits which involved the school committee, considered the extent of segregation within the Boston Public Schools, as well as the attempts the School Committee had made to fight segregation within the schools.[3] He found that the School Committee did not intentionally draw lines to create black and white districts, but on multiple occasions the Committee refused to change existing lines so that predominantly black or predominantly white districts would not exist.[4]
Boston went about integration by adapting and implementing Phase 1, a plan that was adapted from the Board of Education desegregation plan. The plan began with 80 schools, in districts where black and white students lived closest to each other. The plan began with the staff, ordering that the schools in the districts needed to hire one black teacher for every one white teacher hired. Looking to find a balance in the schools in relation to teachers and resources was easier in the overall plan than to integrate students. Court-ordered busing, which became the final plan for moving students and integrating schools, was faced with much backlash. Parents were hesitant to have their children bused far distances, to be further away from their neighborhoods in the case of an emergency, and in many cases, out of fear that their children would be receiving an inadequate education by relocating to a school deemed inferior. Some citizens did not support busing because they were concerned about the effects of busing on the environment, fearful for the students, but in most cases, it was racism that lived at the bottom line for the citizens of Boston. The first day of school in September of 1974, violence ensued in South Boston and Hyde Park. Students were fighting in schools, and a lot of students were fearful for their lives.
Judge Garrity ordered the School Committee to prepare a Phase 2, to continue carrying out desegregation in all Boston Public Schools. Phase 2 affected all the neighborhoods except East Boston. It divided the city into eight zones and a citywide zone, in which each district needed to be racially balanced. To achieve this plan over half of the students would need to be bused. Students would be able to request a district, although nothing was guaranteed.[5] With Phase 2 in effect, and alongside efforts to keep districts safer, in 1987, the US Appeals Court released Boston Public Schools from its court supervision.
[1] “Boston School Desegregation,” accessed August 10, 2016, http://nexus.umn.edu/Courses/Cases/PA8202/S2004/CS2/CS2.html.
[2] “Timeline: The chain of events that brought chaos to Boston’s Schools,” Spare Change News, accessed August 10, 2016, http://sparechangenews.net/2016/03/boston-busing-timeline/.
[3] John F. Adkins, James R. McHugh, and Katherine Seay, Desegregation: The Boston Orders and Their Origin, 18.
[4] John F. Adkins, James R. McHugh, and Katherine Seay, Desegregation: The Boston Orders and Their Origin, 19.
[5] “Timeline: The chain of events that brought chaos to Boston’s Schools,” Spare Change News, accessed August 10, 2016, http://sparechangenews.net/2016/03/boston-busing-timeline/.
