![Integrated busing in Charlotte, North Carolina](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Integrated_busing_in_Charlotte%2C_North_Carolina.jpg)
Race-integration busing in the United States (also known simply as busing, Integrated busing or by its critics as forced busing) was the practice of assigning and
transporting students to schools within or outside their local school districts in an effort to diversify the racial make-up of schools. While the 1954
U.S. Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
landmark decision in ''
Brown v. Board of Education
''Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka'', 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segrega ...
'' declared racial segregation in
public schools unconstitutional, many American schools continued to remain largely uni-racial due to
housing inequality
Housing inequality is a disparity in the quality of housing in a society which is a form of economic inequality. The right to housing is recognized by many national constitutions, and the lack of adequate housing can have adverse consequences for a ...
.
In an effort to address the ongoing ''
de facto
''De facto'' ( ; , "in fact") describes practices that exist in reality, whether or not they are officially recognized by laws or other formal norms. It is commonly used to refer to what happens in practice, in contrast with ''de jure'' ("by la ...
'' segregation in schools, the 1971 Supreme Court decision, ''
Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education'', ruled that the federal courts could use busing as a further integration tool to achieve racial balance.
Busing met considerable opposition from both white and black people. The policy resulted in the movement of large numbers of white families to suburbs of large cities, a phenomenon known as
white flight
White flight or white exodus is the sudden or gradual large-scale migration of white people from areas becoming more racially or ethnoculturally diverse. Starting in the 1950s and 1960s, the terms became popular in the United States. They refer ...
, which further reduced the effectiveness of the policy.
Many whites who stayed moved their children into
private
Private or privates may refer to:
Music
* " In Private", by Dusty Springfield from the 1990 album ''Reputation''
* Private (band), a Denmark-based band
* "Private" (Ryōko Hirosue song), from the 1999 album ''Private'', written and also recorde ...
or
parochial schools
A parochial school is a private primary or secondary school affiliated with a religious organization, and whose curriculum includes general religious education in addition to secular subjects, such as science, mathematics and language arts. The wo ...
; these effects combined to make many urban school districts predominantly nonwhite, reducing any effectiveness mandatory busing may have had.
History
Before World War II
Prior to
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, most public schools in the country were ''de jure'' or ''de facto'' segregated. All
Southern states had
Jim Crow Laws
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the Sout ...
mandating racial segregation of schools. Northern states and some border states were primarily white (in 1940, the populations of Detroit and Chicago were more than 90% white) and existing black populations were concentrated in urban ghettos partly as the result of
restrictive covenant
A covenant, in its most general sense and historical sense, is a solemn promise to engage in or refrain from a specified action. Under historical English common law, a covenant was distinguished from an ordinary contract by the presence of a se ...
s.
After World War II
The origins of desegregation busing can be traced back to two major developments that occurred in the United States during the 1940s and 1950s.
Black population shift
Starting in 1940, the
Second Great Migration
In the context of the 20th-century history of the United States, the Second Great Migration was the migration of more than 5 million African Americans from the South to the Northeast, Midwest and West. It began in 1940, through World War II, and ...
brought five million blacks from the agrarian South to the urban and manufacturing centers in Northern and Western cities to fill in the labor shortages during the industrial buildup of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
and for better opportunities during the post-war economic boom. ''
Shelley v. Kraemer
''Shelley v. Kraemer'', 334 U.S. 1 (1948), is a List of landmark court decisions in the United States, landmark United States Supreme Court case that held that racially restrictive housing Covenant (law), covenants cannot legally be enforced.
The ...
'' (1948) allowed them to settle in formerly white neighborhoods, contributing to racial tension. Meanwhile, the post-war housing boom and the rise of
suburbia
A suburb (more broadly suburban area) is an area within a metropolitan area, which may include commercial and mixed-use, that is primarily a residential area. A suburb can exist either as part of a larger city/urban area or as a separate ...
allowed whites to migrate into the suburbs. By 1960, all major Northern and Western cities had sizable black populations (e.g., 23% in Chicago, 29% in Detroit, and 32% in Los Angeles). Blacks tended to be concentrated in
inner cities
The term ''inner city'' has been used, especially in the United States, as a euphemism for majority-minority lower-income residential districts that often refer to rundown neighborhoods, in a downtown or city centre area. Sociologists somet ...
, whereas newer suburbs of most cities were almost exclusively white.
Legal rulings
At the same time, the
U.S. Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
ruling in ''
Brown v. Board of Education
''Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka'', 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segrega ...
'' (1954) overturned
racial segregation
Racial segregation is the systematic separation of people into race (human classification), racial or other Ethnicity, ethnic groups in daily life. Racial segregation can amount to the international crime of apartheid and a crimes against hum ...
laws for public schools that had been in place in a number of states since the late 19th century, and ruled that
separate but equal
Separate but equal was a legal doctrine in United States constitutional law, according to which racial segregation did not necessarily violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which nominally guaranteed "equal protecti ...
schools were "inherently unequal". Although the ''Brown'' decision affirmed principles of equality and justice, it did not specify how its ruling would promote equality in education.
Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an American civil rights lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1967 until 1991. He was the Supreme Court's first African-A ...
and the
NAACP
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E.&nb ...
wanted a speedy process for desegregating the school districts, but the Court waited until the following year to make its recommendations. Reasons for delaying had to do with the changes in the Court and with Chief Justice
Earl Warren
Earl Warren (March 19, 1891 – July 9, 1974) was an American attorney, politician, and jurist who served as the 14th Chief Justice of the United States from 1953 to 1969. The Warren Court presided over a major shift in American constitution ...
steering a careful course given the expected opposition from Southern states. In May 1955, the Court ruled in ''
Brown II
''Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka'', 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segrega ...
'' that the school districts desegregate "with all deliberate speed". Public school administrators had to begin the process of desegregating the schools through the development of policies that would promote racial mixing. A backlash of resistance and violence ensued. Even members of Congress refused to abide by the decision. In 1956 over a hundred congressmen signed the
Southern Manifesto
The Declaration of Constitutional Principles (known informally as the Southern Manifesto) was a document written in February and March 1956, during the 84th United States Congress, in opposition to racial integration of public places. The manife ...
, promising to use all legal means to undermine and reverse the Court's ruling.
The momentum continued with two additional Supreme Court decisions aimed at implementation. In 1968, the Warren Court in ''
Green v. County School Board of New Kent County
''Green v. County School Board of New Kent County'', 391 U.S. 430 (1968), was an important Supreme Court of the United States, United States Supreme Court case involving school desegregation. Specifically, the Court dealt with the Freedom of Choic ...
'', rejected a freedom of choice plan. The Court ordered the county to desegregate immediately and eliminate racial discrimination "root and branch".
Then in 1971, the
Burger Court
The Burger Court was the period in the history of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1969 to 1986, when Warren Burger served as Chief Justice of the United States. Burger succeeded Earl Warren as Chief Justice after the latter's retir ...
in ''
Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education'' ruled that the school district must achieve racial balance even if it meant redrawing school boundaries and the use of busing as a legal tool. The impact of ''Green'' and ''Swann'' served to end all remnants of ''de jure'' segregation in the South. However, the consequence of the ''Swann'' decision ushered in new forms of resistance in subsequent decades. The decision failed to address ''de facto'' segregation.
Consequently, despite being found "inherently unequal" in ''Brown v. Board of Education'', by the late 1960s public schools remained ''de facto'' segregated in many cities because of demographic patterns, school district lines being intentionally drawn to segregate the schools racially, and, in some cases, due to conscious efforts to send black children to inferior schools. Thus, for example, by 1969, more than nine of every ten black students in
Nashville
Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the seat of Davidson County. With a population of 689,447 at the 2020 U.S. census, Nashville is the most populous city in the state, 21st most-populous city in the U.S., and the ...
still attended all-black schools. Evidence of such de facto segregation motivated early proponents of plans to engage in conscious "integration" of public schools, by busing schoolchildren to schools other than their neighborhood schools, with an objective to equalize racial imbalances. Proponents of such plans argued that with the schools integrated, minority students would have equal access to equipment, facilities, and resources that the cities' white students had, thus giving all students in the city equal educational opportunities.
A federal court found that in
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
, schools were constructed and school district lines drawn intentionally to segregate the schools racially. In the early 1970s, a series of court decisions found that the racially imbalanced schools trampled the rights of minority students. As a remedy, courts ordered the
racial integration
Racial integration, or simply integration, includes desegregation (the process of ending systematic racial segregation). In addition to desegregation, integration includes goals such as leveling barriers to association, creating equal opportunity ...
of school districts within individual cities, sometimes requiring the racial composition of each individual school in the district to reflect the composition of the district as a whole. This was generally achieved by transporting children by
school bus
A school bus is any type of bus owned, leased, contracted to, or operated by a school or school district. It is regularly used to transport students to and from school or school-related activities, but not including a charter bus or transit bus ...
to a school in a different area of the district.
The judge who instituted the Detroit busing plan said that busing "is a considerably safer, more reliable, healthful and efficient means of getting children to school than either carpools or walking, and this is especially true for younger children".
He, therefore, included
kindergarten
Kindergarten is a preschool educational approach based on playing, singing, practical activities such as drawing, and social interaction as part of the transition from home to school. Such institutions were originally made in the late 18th cent ...
children in the busing scheme: "Transportation of kindergarten children for upwards of forty-five minutes, one-way, does not appear unreasonable, harmful, or unsafe in any way."
(Some research has shown however the deleterious effects of long bus rides on student health and academic achievement ). The resultant Supreme Court case, ''
Milliken v. Bradley'', imposed limits on busing. The key issue was whether a district court could order a metropolitan-wide desegregation plan between urban Detroit and suburban school districts. Busing would play a key role in the implementation phase. The Court essentially declared that federal courts did not have the authority to order inter-district desegregation unless it could be proven that suburban school districts intentionally mandated segregation policies. The implication of the decision was that suburban school districts in the North were not affected by the principles established by ''Brown''. ''De facto'' segregation was allowed to persist in the North. The courts could order desegregation where segregation patterns existed, but only within municipalities, not suburban areas. The lasting consequence of the ''Milliken'' decision is that it opened the door for whites to flee to the suburbs and not be concerned about compliance with mandatory integration policies.
With waning public support, the courts began relaxing judicial supervision of school districts during the 1990s and 2000s, calling for voluntary efforts to achieve racial balance.
In the early 1990s, the
Rehnquist Court
The Rehnquist Court was the period in the history of the Supreme Court of the United States during which William Rehnquist served as Chief Justice. Rehnquist succeeded Warren Burger as Chief Justice after the latter's retirement, and Rehnquist ...
ruled in three cases coming from
Oklahoma City
Oklahoma City (), officially the City of Oklahoma City, and often shortened to OKC, is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The county seat of Oklahoma County, it ranks 20th among United States cities in population, a ...
(
in 1991),
DeKalb County DeKalb County may refer to one of several counties in the United States, all of which were named for Baron Johan DeKalb:
* DeKalb County, Alabama
* DeKalb County, Georgia
* DeKalb County, Illinois
* DeKalb County, Indiana
* DeKalb County, Missouri
...
in Georgia (
in 1992), and
Kansas City
The Kansas City metropolitan area is a bi-state metropolitan area anchored by Kansas City, Missouri. Its 14 counties straddle the border between the U.S. states of Missouri (9 counties) and Kansas (5 counties). With and a population of more ...
(
in 1995) that federal judges could ease their supervision of school districts "once legally enforced segregation had been eliminated to the extent practicable".
With these decisions, the Rehnquist Court opened the door for school districts throughout the country to get away from under judicial supervision once they had achieved unitary status.
Unitary Status meant that a school district had successfully eliminated segregation in dual school systems and thus was no longer bound to court-ordered desegregation policies.
Then in 2002, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision in ''
Belk v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education'' which declared that the school system had achieved desegregation status and that the method to achieve integration, like busing, was unnecessary. The refusal of the Court to hear the challenges to the lower court decision effectively overturned the earlier 1971 ''Swann'' ruling.
Finally, in 2007, the
Roberts Court
The Roberts Court is the time since 2005 during which the Supreme Court of the United States has been led by John Roberts as Chief Justice. It is generally considered to be more conservative than the preceding Rehnquist Court and the most cons ...
produced a contentious 5–4 ruling in ''
Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1'' (PICS). The decision prohibited the use of racial classifications in student assignment plans to maintain racial balance. Whereas the Brown case ruled that racial segregation violated the Constitution, now the use of racial classifications violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. Writing for the minority, Justice Breyer said the "ruling contradicted previous decisions upholding race-conscious pupil assignments and would hamper local school boards' efforts to prevent 'resegregation' in individual schools".
Civil rights movement
The struggle to desegregate the schools received impetus from the
Civil Rights Movement
The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, Racial discrimination ...
, whose goal was to dismantle legal segregation in all public places. The movement's efforts culminated in Congress passing the
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 () is a landmark civil rights and United States labor law, labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on Race (human categorization), race, Person of color, color, religion, sex, and nationa ...
and the
Voting Rights Act of 1965
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson during the height of the civil rights movement ...
. Signed by President
Lyndon Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson (; August 27, 1908January 22, 1973), often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. He had previously served as the 37th vice ...
, the two laws were intended to end
discriminatory voting practices and segregation of public accommodations. The importance of these two laws was the injection of both the
legislative
A legislature is an assembly with the authority to make laws for a political entity such as a country or city. They are often contrasted with the executive and judicial powers of government.
Laws enacted by legislatures are usually known as p ...
and
executive
Executive ( exe., exec., execu.) may refer to:
Role or title
* Executive, a senior management role in an organization
** Chief executive officer (CEO), one of the highest-ranking corporate officers (executives) or administrators
** Executive dire ...
branches joining the judiciary to promote racial integration. In addition, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 authorized the federal government to cut off funding if Southern school districts did not comply and also to bring lawsuits against school officials who resisted.
One argument against the
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 () is a landmark civil rights and United States labor law, labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on Race (human categorization), race, Person of color, color, religion, sex, and nationa ...
that opponents of the proposed legislation found particularly compelling was that the bill would require forced busing to achieve certain
racial quotas
Racial quotas in employment and education are numerical requirements for hiring, promoting, admitting and/or graduating members of a particular racial group. Racial quotas are often established as means of diminishing racial discrimination, addr ...
in schools.
Proponents of the bill, such as
Emanuel Celler
Emanuel Celler (May 6, 1888 – January 15, 1981) was an American politician from New York who served in the United States House of Representatives for almost 50 years, from March 1923 to January 1973. He served as the dean of the United States Ho ...
and
Jacob Javits
Jacob Koppel Javits ( ; May 18, 1904 – March 7, 1986) was an American lawyer and politician. During his time in politics, he represented the state of New York in both houses of the United States Congress. A member of the Republican Party, he a ...
, said that the bill would not authorize such measures. Leading sponsor Sen.
Hubert Humphrey
Hubert Horatio Humphrey Jr. (May 27, 1911 – January 13, 1978) was an American pharmacist and politician who served as the 38th vice president of the United States from 1965 to 1969. He twice served in the United States Senate, representing Mi ...
wrote two amendments specifically designed to outlaw busing.
Humphrey said "if the bill were to compel it, it would be a violation
f the Constitution
F, or f, is the sixth Letter (alphabet), letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the English alphabet, modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is English alphabet#Let ...
because it would be handling the matter on the basis of race and we would be transporting children because of race".
While Javits said any government official who sought to use the bill for busing purposes "would be making a fool of himself", two years later the
Department of Health, Education and Welfare
The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is a cabinet-level executive branch department of the U.S. federal government created to protect the health of all Americans and providing essential human services. Its motto is ...
said that Southern school districts would be required to meet mathematical ratios of students by busing.
Sociological study
Another catalyst for the development of busing was an influential
sociological
Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of empirical investigation and ...
report on educational equality commissioned by the U.S. government in the 1960s. It was one of the largest studies in history, with more than 150,000 students in the sample. The result was a massive report of over 700 pages. That 1966 report—titled "Equality of Educational Opportunity" (or often simply called the "Coleman Report" after its author
James Coleman)—contained many controversial findings.
[Kiviat, Barbara J. (2000)]
The Social Side of Schooling
, ''Johns Hopkins Magazine'', April 2000. Retrieved 30 December 2008.[Hanushek, Eric A. (1998),]
Conclusions and Controversies about the Effectiveness of School Resources
, ''Economic Policy Review'', Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 4(1): pp. 11–27. Retrieved 30 December 2008 One conclusion from the study was that, while black schools in the South were not significantly underfunded as compared to white schools, and while per-pupil funding did not contribute significantly to differences in educational outcomes, socially disadvantaged black children still benefited significantly from learning in mixed-race classrooms. Thus, it was argued that busing (as opposed to simply increasing funding to segregated schools) was necessary for achieving racial equality.
Reaction
Before 2007
The impact of the ''Brown v. Board of Education'' ruling was limited because whites and blacks tended to live in all-white or all-black communities. Initial integration in the South tended to be symbolic: for example, the integration of
Clinton High School, the first public school in Tennessee to be integrated, amounted to the admission of twelve black students to a formerly all-white school.
"Forced busing" was a term used by many to describe the mandates that generally came from the courts. Court-ordered busing to achieve school desegregation was used mainly in large, ethnically segregated school systems, including
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
, Massachusetts;
Cleveland
Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...
and
Columbus, Ohio
Columbus () is the state capital and the most populous city in the U.S. state of Ohio. With a 2020 census population of 905,748, it is the 14th-most populous city in the U.S., the second-most populous city in the Midwest, after Chicago, and t ...
;
Kansas City, Missouri
Kansas City (abbreviated KC or KCMO) is the largest city in Missouri by population and area. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 508,090 in 2020, making it the 36th most-populous city in the United States. It is the central ...
;
Pasadena
Pasadena ( ) is a city in Los Angeles County, California, northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is the most populous city and the primary cultural center of the San Gabriel Valley. Old Pasadena is the city's original commercial district.
Its ...
and
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
, California;
Richmond
Richmond most often refers to:
* Richmond, Virginia, the capital of Virginia, United States
* Richmond, London, a part of London
* Richmond, North Yorkshire, a town in England
* Richmond, British Columbia, a city in Canada
* Richmond, California, ...
, Virginia;
Detroit
Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at th ...
, Michigan; and
Wilmington, Delaware
Wilmington ( Lenape: ''Paxahakink /'' ''Pakehakink)'' is the largest city in the U.S. state of Delaware. The city was built on the site of Fort Christina, the first Swedish settlement in North America. It lies at the confluence of the Christina ...
. From 1972 to 1980, despite busing, the percentage of blacks attending mostly-minority schools barely changed, moving from 63.6 percent to 63.3 percent.
Forced busing was implemented starting in the 1971 school year, and from 1970 to 1980 the percentage of blacks attending mostly-minority schools decreased from 66.9 percent to 62.9 percent. The South saw the largest percentage change from 1968 to 1980 with a 23.8 percent decrease in blacks attending mostly-minority schools and a 54.8 percent decrease in blacks attending 90%-100% minority schools.
In some southern states in the 1960s and 1970s, parents opposed to busing created new private schools. The schools, called
segregation academies
Segregation academies are private schools in the Southern United States that were founded in the mid-20th century by white parents to avoid having their children attend desegregated public schools. They were founded between 1954, when the U.S. ...
, were sometimes organized with the support of the local
White Citizen's Council
The Citizens' Councils (commonly referred to as the White Citizens' Councils) were an associated network of white supremacist, segregationist organizations in the United States, concentrated in the South and created as part of a white backlash ...
.
For the 1975–76 school year, the
Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville ( , , ) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 28th most-populous city in the United States. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, on the Indiana border ...
school district, which was not integrated due to whites largely moving to the suburbs, was forced to start a busing program.
The first day, 1,000 protestors rallied against the busing, and a few days into the process, 8,000 to 10,000 whites from
Jefferson County,
Kentucky
Kentucky ( , ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States and one of the states of the Upper South. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north; West Virginia and Virginia to ...
, many teenagers, rallied at the district's high schools and fought with police trying to break up the crowds.
Police cars were vandalized, 200 were arrested, and people were hurt in the melee, but despite further rallies being banned the next day by Louisville's mayor, demonstrators showed up to the schools the following day.
Kentucky Governor
Julian Carroll
Julian Morton Carroll (born April 16, 1931) is an American lawyer and politician from the state of Kentucky. A Democrat, he served as the 54th Governor of Kentucky from 1974 to 1979, succeeding Wendell H. Ford, who resigned to accept a seat ...
sent 1,800 members of the
Kentucky National Guard
The Kentucky National Guard comprises the:
*Kentucky Army National Guard
*Kentucky Air National Guard
See also
* Kentucky Active Militia, the state defense force of Kentucky which replaced the Kentucky National Guard during World War I and World ...
and stationed them on every bus.
On September 26, 1975, 400 protestors held a rally at
Southern High School, which was broken up by police
tear gas
Tear gas, also known as a lachrymator agent or lachrymator (), sometimes colloquially known as "mace" after the early commercial aerosol, is a chemical weapon that stimulates the nerves of the lacrimal gland in the eye to produce tears. In ad ...
, followed by a rally of 8,000 the next day, who marched led by a woman in a
wheelchair
A wheelchair is a chair with wheels, used when walking is difficult or impossible due to illness, injury, problems related to old age, or disability. These can include spinal cord injuries ( paraplegia, hemiplegia, and quadriplegia), cerebr ...
to prevent police reprisals while cameras were running.
Despite the protests, Louisville's busing program continued.
Congressional opposition to busing continued. Delaware senator (and future 46th US President)
Joe Biden said "I don't feel responsible for the sins of my father and grandfather," and that busing was "a liberal train wreck." In 1977, senators William Roth and Biden proposed the "Biden-Roth" amendment. This amendment "prevented judges from ordering wider busing to achieve actually-integrated districts." Despite Biden's lobbying of other senators
and getting the support of Judiciary Committee Chairman
James Eastland
James Oliver Eastland (November 28, 1904 February 19, 1986) was an American attorney, plantation owner, and politician from Mississippi. A Democrat, he served in the United States Senate in 1941 and again from 1943 until his resignation on Decem ...
, "Biden-Roth" narrowly lost.
After 2007
Civil rights advocates see the 2007 joint ruling on ''
Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1'' and ''Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education'' of the Roberts court as the inevitable consequence of gradual court decisions dating back to the early 1970s to ease judicial supervision and limit important tools to achieve integrated schools. Even those school districts that voluntarily created race-conscious programs are under pressure to abandon these efforts as the white parents are refusing to participate in any pupil assignment programs. In some cases, white parents filed
reverse discrimination
Reverse discrimination is a term for discrimination against members of a dominant or majority group, in favor of members of a minority or historically disadvantaged group. Groups may be defined in terms of ethnicity, gender identity, nationality, ...
lawsuits in court. Wherever the courts have backed away from mandating school districts to implement desegregation plans, resegregation of Blacks and Latinos has increased dramatically. In 1988, 44 percent of southern black students were attending majority-white schools. In 2005, 27 percent of black students were attending majority white schools. By restricting the tools by which schools can address school segregation, many fear that the PICS decision will continue to accelerate this trend. The ruling reflects the culmination of the conservatives' central message on education, as alleged by the liberal Civil Rights Project,
that "race should be ignored, inequalities should be blamed on individuals and schools, and existing civil rights remedies should be dismantled".
In 2001 Congress passed the
No Child Left Behind Act
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) was a U.S. Act of Congress that reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act; it included Title I provisions applying to disadvantaged students. It supported standards-based education ...
(NCLB) which was promptly signed by President
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...
. The law put a premium on student testing, not integration, to measure academic progress. Financial penalties were incurred on schools if students did not demonstrate adequate academic performance. While initially supported by Democrats, critics say the law has failed to adequately address the achievement gap between whites and minorities and that there are problems with implementation and inflexible provisions.
Criticism
Popular opinion
Support for the practice is influenced by the methodology of the study conducted. In a
Gallup poll
Gallup, Inc. is an American analytics and advisory company based in Washington, D.C. Founded by George Gallup in 1935, the company became known for its public opinion polls conducted worldwide. Starting in the 1980s, Gallup transitioned its bu ...
taken in the early 1970s, very low percentages of whites (4 percent) and blacks (9 percent) supported busing outside of local neighborhoods.
However, a longitudinal study has shown that support for desegregation busing among black respondents has only dropped below 50% once from 1972 to 1976 while support among white respondents has steadily increased. This increased support may be due to the diminished impact of desegregation policies over time. A 1978 study by the
RAND Corporation
The RAND Corporation (from the phrase "research and development") is an American nonprofit global policy think tank created in 1948 by Douglas Aircraft Company to offer research and analysis to the United States Armed Forces. It is financed ...
set out to find why whites were opposed to busing and concluded that it was because they believed it destroyed neighborhood schools and camaraderie and increased discipline problems.
It is said that busing eroded the community pride and support that neighborhoods had for their local schools.
After busing, 60 percent of Boston parents, both black and white, reported more discipline problems in schools.
In the
1968
The year was highlighted by protests and other unrests that occurred worldwide.
Events January–February
* January 5 – "Prague Spring": Alexander Dubček is chosen as leader of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.
* Januar ...
,
1972
Within the context of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) it was the longest year ever, as two leap seconds were added during this 366-day year, an event which has not since been repeated. (If its start and end are defined using Solar time, me ...
, and
1976
Events January
* January 3 – The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights enters into force.
* January 5 – The Pol Pot regime proclaims a new constitution for Democratic Kampuchea.
* January 11 – The 1976 Phila ...
presidential elections, candidates opposed to busing were elected each time, and Congress voted repeatedly to end court-mandated busing.
Ultimately, many black leaders, from
Wisconsin
Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...
State Rep.
Annette Polly Williams
Annette Polly Williams (January 10, 1937 – November 9, 2014) was an American counselor, clerical worker and politician from Milwaukee who served 10 terms as a Democratic Party member of the Wisconsin State Assembly, representing her assembly ...
, a Milwaukee Democrat, to
Cleveland
Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...
Mayor
Michael R. White led efforts to end busing.
, '' Adversity.net.'' Retrieved on August 5, 2020.
White flight and private schools
Busing is claimed to have accelerated a trend of middle-class relocation to the suburbs of metropolitan areas.
Many opponents of busing claimed the existence of "
white flight
White flight or white exodus is the sudden or gradual large-scale migration of white people from areas becoming more racially or ethnoculturally diverse. Starting in the 1950s and 1960s, the terms became popular in the United States. They refer ...
" based on the court decisions to integrate schools.
Such stresses led white middle-class families in many communities to desert the public schools and create a network of private schools.
During the 1970s, ''
60 Minutes
''60 Minutes'' is an American television news magazine broadcast on the CBS television network. Debuting in 1968, the program was created by Don Hewitt and Bill Leonard, who chose to set it apart from other news programs by using a unique styl ...
'' reported that some members of Congress, government, and the press who supported busing most vociferously sent their own children to private schools, including Senator
Ted Kennedy
Edward Moore Kennedy (February 22, 1932 – August 25, 2009) was an American lawyer and politician who served as a United States senator from Massachusetts for almost 47 years, from 1962 until his death in 2009. A member of the Democratic ...
,
George McGovern
George Stanley McGovern (July 19, 1922 – October 21, 2012) was an American historian and South Dakota politician who was a U.S. representative and three-term U.S. senator, and the Democratic Party presidential nominee in the 1972 pres ...
,
Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an American civil rights lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1967 until 1991. He was the Supreme Court's first African-A ...
,
Phil Hart
Philip Aloysius Hart (December 10, 1912December 26, 1976) was an American lawyer and politician. A Democrat, he served as a United States Senator from Michigan from 1959 until his death from cancer in Washington, D.C. in 1976. He was known as ...
,
Ben Bradlee
Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee (, 1921 – , 2014) was an American journalist who served as managing editor, then as executive editor of ''The Washington Post'', from 1965 to 1991. He became a public figure when the ''Post'' joined ''The New Y ...
, Senator
Birch Bayh
Birch Evans Bayh Jr. (; January 22, 1928 – March 14, 2019) was an American Democratic Party politician who served as U.S. Senator from Indiana from 1963 to 1981. He was first elected to office in 1954, when he won election to the Indiana ...
,
Tom Wicker
Thomas Grey Wicker (June 18, 1926 – November 25, 2011) was an American journalist. He was a political reporter and columnist for ''The New York Times''.
Background and education
Wicker was born in Hamlet, North Carolina. He was a graduate ...
,
Philip Geyelin, and
Donald Fraser.
Many of the judges who ordered busing also sent their children to private schools.
Distance
Some critics of busing cited increases in distance to schools. However, segregation of schools often entailed far more distant busing. For example, in Tampa, Florida, the longest bus ride was nine miles under desegregation whereas it was 25 miles during segregation.
Effect on already-integrated schools
Critics point out that children in the Northeast were often bused from integrated schools to less integrated schools.
The percentage of Northeastern black children who attended a predominantly black school increased from 67 percent in 1968 to 80 percent in 1980 (a higher percentage than in 1954).
Effect on academic performance
In 1978, a proponent of busing, Nancy St. John, studied 100 cases of urban busing from the North and did not find what she had been looking for;
she found no cases in which significant black academic improvement occurred, but many cases where race relations suffered due to busing, as those in forced-integrated schools had worse relations with those of the opposite race than those in non-integrated schools.
Researcher David Armour, also looking for hopeful signs, found that busing "heightens racial identity" and "reduces opportunities for actual contact between the races".
A 1992 study led by
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
Professor
Gary Orfield, who supports busing, found black and Hispanic students lacked "even modest overall improvement" as a result of court-ordered busing.
Asian-American students, who were segregated in some school systems, often thrived academically.
[Michael R. Olneck and Marvin Lazerson, "Education" pp. 313, 317, in ''Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups'', ed. Stephan Thernstrom, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1980]
Economist
Thomas Sowell
Thomas Sowell (; born June 30, 1930) is an American author, economist, political commentator and academic who is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. With widely published commentary and books—and as a guest on TV and radio—he becam ...
wrote that the stated premise for school busing was flawed, as ''de facto'' racial segregation in schools did not necessarily lead to poor education for black students.
Effects
Busing integrated school age ethnic minorities with the larger community. The ''
Milliken v. Bradley'' Supreme Court decision that busing children across districts is unconstitutional limited the extent of busing to within metropolitan areas. This decision made suburbs attractive to those who wished to evade busing.
Some metropolitan areas in which land values and property-tax structures were less favorable to relocation saw significant declines in enrollment of whites in public schools as white parents chose to enroll their children in private schools. Currently, most segregation occurs across school districts as large cities have moved significantly toward racial balance among their schools.
Recent research by
Eric Hanushek
Eric Alan Hanushek (; born May 22, 1943) is an economist who has written prolifically on public policy with a special emphasis on the economics of education. Since 2000, he has been a Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, a ...
, John Kain, and Steven Rivkin has shown that the level of achievement by black students is adversely affected by higher concentrations of black students in their schools. Additionally, the impact of racial concentration appears to be greatest for high-achieving black students.
Historical examples
Boston, Massachusetts
In 1965 Massachusetts passed into law the Racial Imbalance Act, which ordered school districts to desegregate or risk losing state educational funding. The first law of its kind in the nation, it was opposed by many in Boston, especially less-well-off white ethnic areas, such as the Irish-American neighborhoods of
South Boston
South Boston is a densely populated neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, located south and east of the Fort Point Channel and abutting Dorchester Bay. South Boston, colloquially known as Southie, has undergone several demographic transformati ...
and
Charlestown, Boston
Charlestown is the oldest Neighborhoods in Boston, neighborhood in Boston, Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States. Originally called Mishawum by the Massachusett tribe, it is located on a peninsula north of the Charles River, across from dow ...
.
Springfield, Massachusetts
Unlike Boston, which experienced a large degree of racial violence following Judge
Arthur Garrity's decision to desegregate the city's public schools in 1974, Springfield quietly enacted its own desegregation busing plans. Although not as well-documented as Boston's crisis, Springfield's situation centered on the city's elementary schools. Much of the primary evidence for Springfield's busing plans stemmed from a March 1976 report by a committee for the Massachusetts Commission on Civil Rights (MCCR). According to the report, 30 of the city's 36 elementary schools were grouped into six separate districts during the 1974–75 school year, and each district contained at least one racially imbalanced school. The basic idea behind the "six-district" plan was to preserve a neighborhood feeling for school children while busing them locally to improve not only racial imbalances, but also educational opportunities in the school system.
[Massachusetts Commission on Civil Rights,]
The Six-District Plan: Integration of the Springfield, Mass., Elementary Schools
, ''University of Maryland Law School Library'', pp. 1–50.
Charlotte, North Carolina
Charlotte operated under "freedom of choice" plans until the Supreme Court upheld Judge McMillan's decision in
Swann v. Mecklenburg 1971. The NAACP won the Swann case by producing evidence that Charlotte schools placed over 10,000 white and black students in schools that were not the closest to their homes. Importantly, the Swann v. Mecklenburg case illustrated that segregation was the product of local policies and legislation rather than a natural outcome. In response, an anti-busing organization titled Concerned Parents Association (CPA) was formed in Charlotte. Ultimately, the CPA failed to prevent busing. In 1974, West Charlotte High school even hosted students from Boston to demonstrate the benefits of peaceful integration. Since Capacchione v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in 1999, however, Charlotte has once again become segregated. A report in 2019 shows that Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools are as segregated as they were before the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954.
Kansas City, Missouri
In 1985, a federal court took partial control of the
Kansas City, Missouri School District
Kansas City 33 School District, operating as Kansas City Public Schools or KCPS (formerly Kansas City, Missouri School District, or KCMSD), is a school district headquartered at 2901 Troost Avenue in Kansas City, Missouri, United States.
The di ...
(KCMSD). Since the district and the state had been found
severally liable for the lack of integration, the state was responsible for making sure that money was available for the program. It was one of the most expensive desegregation efforts attempted and included busing, a
magnet school
In the U.S. education system, magnet schools are public schools with specialized courses or curricula. "Magnet" refers to how the schools draw students from across the normal boundaries defined by authorities (usually school boards) as school ...
program, and an extensive plan to improve the quality of
inner city
The term ''inner city'' has been used, especially in the United States, as a euphemism for majority-minority lower-income residential districts that often refer to rundown neighborhoods, in a downtown or city centre area. Sociologists some ...
schools. The entire program was built on the premise that extremely good schools in the inner-city area combined with paid busing would be enough to achieve integration.
Las Vegas, Nevada
In May 1968, the
Southern Nevada
Southern Nevada (SNV) is a region and the southern portion of the U.S. state of Nevada which includes the Las Vegas Valley. It also includes the areas in and around Pahrump and Pioche. Tonopah and Hawthorne are sometimes also referred to as part ...
chapter of the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E. ...
(NAACP) filed a lawsuit against the
Clark County School District
The Clark County School District (CCSD) is a school district that serves all of Clark County, Nevada, including the cities of Las Vegas, Henderson, North Las Vegas, and Boulder City; as well as the census-designated places of Laughlin, Blue D ...
(CCSD). The NAACP wanted the CCSD to acknowledge publicly, and likewise, act against the ''de facto'' segregation that existed in six elementary schools located on the city's Westside.
[Matthew, Ronan, ''A History of the Las Vegas School Desegregation Case: Kelly et al. v. Clark County School District'' (Las Vegas: UNLV, 1998), pp. 28, 33, 94.] This area of Las Vegas had traditionally been a
black neighborhood. Therefore, the CCSD did not see the need to desegregate the schools, as the cause of segregation appeared to result from factors outside of its immediate control.
The case initially entered the Eighth Judicial District Court of Nevada, but quickly found its way to the
Nevada Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of Nevada is the highest state court of the U.S. state of Nevada, and the head of the Nevada Judiciary. The main constitutional function of the Supreme Court is to review appeals made directly from the decisions of the distric ...
. According to
Brown II, all school desegregation cases had to be heard at the federal level if they reached a state's highest court. As a result, the Las Vegas case, which became known as ''Kelly v. Clark County School District'', was eventually heard by the U.S.
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (in case citations, 9th Cir.) is the U.S. federal court of appeals that has appellate jurisdiction over the U.S. district courts in the following federal judicial districts:
* District o ...
. On May 10, 1972, the Ninth Circuit handed down its decision in favor of the NAACP, which therefore required the CCSD to implement a plan for integration. The CCSD then instituted its ''Sixth Grade Center Plan'', which converted the Westside's six elementary schools into sixth-grade classrooms where nearly all of the school district's sixth graders (black and white alike) would be bused for the 1972–73 school year.
Los Angeles, California
In 1963, a lawsuit, ''Crawford v. Board of Education of the City of Los Angeles'', was filed to end segregation in the
Los Angeles Unified School District
Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is a public school district in Los Angeles, California, United States. It is the largest public school system in California in terms of number of students and the 2nd largest public school district in ...
. The
California Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of California is the highest and final court of appeals in the courts of the U.S. state of California. It is headquartered in San Francisco at the Earl Warren Building, but it regularly holds sessions in Los Angeles and Sacra ...
required the district to come up with a plan in 1977. The board returned to court with what the court of appeal years later would describe as "one of if not the most drastic plan of mandatory student reassignment in the nation". A desegregation busing plan was developed, to be implemented in the 1978 school year. Two suits to stop the enforced busing plan, both titled ''Bustop, Inc. v. Los Angeles Board of Education'', were filed by the group Bustop Inc., and were petitioned to the
United States Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
. The petitions to stop the busing plan were subsequently denied by
Justice Rehnquist
William Hubbs Rehnquist ( ; October 1, 1924 – September 3, 2005) was an American attorney and jurist who served on the U.S. Supreme Court for 33 years, first as an associate justice from 1972 to 1986 and then as the 16th chief justice from 1 ...
and
Justice Powell
Lewis Franklin Powell Jr. (September 19, 1907 – August 25, 1998) was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1972 to 1987.
Born in Suffolk, Virginia, he gradua ...
. California Constitutional Proposition 1, which mandated that busing follow the Equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution, passed in 1979 with 70 percent of the vote. The ''Crawford v. Board of Education of the City of Los Angeles'' lawsuit was heard in the Supreme Court in 1982. The Supreme Court upheld the decision that Proposition 1 was constitutional, and that, therefore, mandatory busing was not permissible.
Nashville, Tennessee
In comparison with many other cities in the nation,
Nashville
Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the seat of Davidson County. With a population of 689,447 at the 2020 U.S. census, Nashville is the most populous city in the state, 21st most-populous city in the U.S., and the ...
was not a hotbed of racial violence or massive protest during the civil rights era. In fact, the city was a leader of school desegregation in the South, even housing a few small schools that were minimally integrated before the ''Brown v. Board of Education'' decision in 1954. Despite this initial breakthrough, however, full desegregation of the schools was a far cry from reality in Nashville in the mid-1950s, and thus 22 plaintiffs, including black student Robert Kelley, filed suit against the Nashville Board of Education in 1955.
The result of that lawsuit was what came to be known as the "Nashville Plan", an attempt to integrate the public schools of Nashville (and later all of Davidson County, Tennessee, Davidson County when the district was consolidated in 1963). The plan, beginning in 1957, involved the gradual integration of schools by working up through the grades each year starting in the fall of 1957 with first graders. Very few black children who had been zoned for white schools showed up at their assigned campus on the first day of school, and those who did met with angry mobs outside several city elementary schools. No white children assigned to black schools showed up to their assigned campuses.
After a decade of this gradual integration strategy, it became evident that the schools still lacked full integration. Many argued that Housing Segregation was the true culprit in the matter. In 1970 the ''Kelley'' case was reintroduced to the courts. Ruling on the case was Judge Leland Clure Morton, who, after seeking advice from consultants from the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, decided the following year that to correct the problem, forced busing of the children was to be mandated, among the many parts to a new plan that was finally decided on. This was a similar plan to that enacted in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in Charlotte, North Carolina, Charlotte, North Carolina, the same year.
What followed were mixed emotions from both the black and white communities. Many whites did not want their children to share schools with black children, arguing that it would decrease the quality of their education. While a triumph for some, many blacks believed that the new plan would enforce the closure of neighborhood schools such as Pearl High School, which brought the community together. Parents from both sides did not like the plan because they had no control over where their children were going to be sent to school, a problem that many other cities had during the 1970s when busing was mandated across the country. Despite the judge's decision and the subsequent implementation of the new busing plan, the city stood divided.
As in many other cities across the country at this time, many white citizens took action against the desegregation laws. Organized protests against the busing plan began before the order was even official, led by future mayoral candidate Casey Jenkins. While some protested, many other white parents began pulling their children out of the public schools and enrolling them in the numerous private schools that began to spring up almost overnight in Nashville in the 1960s and 1970s. Many of these schools continued to be segregated through the 1970s. Other white parents moved outside of the city limits and eventually outside the Davidson County line so as not to be part of the Metropolitan District and thus not part of the busing plan.
In 1979 and 1980, the ''Kelley'' case was again brought back to the courts because of the busing plan's failure to fully integrate the Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools (MNPS). The plan was reexamined and reconfigured to include some concessions made by the school board and the Kelley plaintiffs and in 1983 the new plan, which still included busing, was introduced. However, problems with "
white flight
White flight or white exodus is the sudden or gradual large-scale migration of white people from areas becoming more racially or ethnoculturally diverse. Starting in the 1950s and 1960s, the terms became popular in the United States. They refer ...
" and private schools continued to segregate MNPS to a certain degree, a problem that has never fully been solved.
Pasadena, California
In 1970 a United States district court, federal court ordered the desegregation of the public schools in Pasadena, California. At that time, the proportion of white students in those schools reflected the proportion of whites in the community, 54 percent and 53 percent, respectively. After the desegregation process began, large numbers of whites in the upper and middle classes who could afford it pulled their children from the integrated public school system and placed them into private schools instead. As a result, by 2004 Pasadena became home to 63 private schools, which educated one-third of all school-aged children in the city, and the proportion of white students in the public schools had fallen to 16 percent. In the meantime, the proportion of whites in the community has declined somewhat as well, to 37 percent in 2006. The superintendent of Pasadena's public schools characterized them as being to whites "like the bogey-man", and mounted policy changes, including a curtailment of busing, and a publicity drive to induce affluent whites to put their children back into public schools.
Prince George's County, Maryland
In 1974, Prince George's County, Maryland, Prince George's County, Maryland, became the largest school district in the United States forced to adopt a busing plan. The county, a large suburban school district east of Washington, D.C., was over 80 percent white in population and in the public schools. In some county communities close to Washington, there was a higher concentration of black residents than in more outlying areas. Through a series of desegregation orders after the ''Brown'' decision, the county had a neighborhood-based system of school boundaries. However, the
NAACP
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E.&nb ...
argued that housing patterns in the county still reflected the vestiges of segregation. Against the will of the Board of Education of Prince George's County, the federal court ordered that a school busing plan be set in place. A 1974
Gallup poll
Gallup, Inc. is an American analytics and advisory company based in Washington, D.C. Founded by George Gallup in 1935, the company became known for its public opinion polls conducted worldwide. Starting in the 1980s, Gallup transitioned its bu ...
showed that 75 percent of county residents were against forced busing and that only 32 percent of blacks supported it.
The transition was very traumatic as the court ordered that the plan be administered with "all due haste". This happened during the middle of the school term, and students, except those in their senior year in high school, were transferred to different schools to achieve racial balance. Many high school sports teams' seasons and other typical school activities were disrupted. Life in general for families in the county was disrupted by things such as the changes in daily times to get children ready and receive them after school, transportation logistics for extracurricular activities, and parental participation activities such as volunteer work in the schools and Parent-Teacher Association, PTA meetings.
The federal case and the school busing order was officially ended in 2001, as the "remaining vestiges of segregation" had been erased to the court's satisfaction. Unfortunately, the ultimate result has been resegregation through changes to county demographics, as the percentage of white county residents dropped from over 80% in 1974 to 27% in 2010. Neighborhood-based school boundaries were restored. The Prince George's County Public Schools was ordered to pay the
NAACP
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E.&nb ...
more than $2 million in closing attorney fees and is estimated to have paid the NAACP over $20 million over the course of the case.
Richmond, Virginia
In April 1971, in the case ''Bradley v. Richmond School Board'', Federal District Judge Robert R. Merhige, Jr., ordered an extensive citywide busing program in
Richmond
Richmond most often refers to:
* Richmond, Virginia, the capital of Virginia, United States
* Richmond, London, a part of London
* Richmond, North Yorkshire, a town in England
* Richmond, British Columbia, a city in Canada
* Richmond, California, ...
, Virginia. When the massive busing program began in the fall of 1971, parents of all races complained about the long rides, hardships with transportation for extracurricular activities, and the separation of siblings when elementary schools at opposite sides of the city were "paired", (i.e., splitting lower and upper elementary grades into separate schools). The result was further white flight to private schools and to suburbs in the neighboring counties of Henrico County, Virginia, Henrico and Chesterfield County, Virginia, Chesterfield that were predominantly white. In January 1972, Merhige ruled that students in Henrico and Chesterfield counties would have to be bused into the City of Richmond in order to decrease the high percentage of black students in Richmond's schools. This order was overturned by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals on June 6, 1972, barring forced busing schemes that made students cross county/city boundaries. (Note: Since 1871, Virginia has had independent cities which are not politically located within counties, although some are completely surrounded geographically by a single county. This distinctive and unusual arrangement was pivotal in the Court of Appeals decision overturning Merhige's ruling). The percentage of white students in Richmond city schools declined from 45 to 21 percent between 1960 and 1975 and continued to decline over the next several decades. By 2010 white students accounted for less than 9 percent of student enrollment in Richmond. This so-called "white flight" prevented Richmond schools from ever becoming truly integrated. A number of assignment plans were tried to address the non-racial concerns, and eventually, most elementary schools were "unpaired".
Wilmington, Delaware
In Wilmington, Delaware, Wilmington, Delaware, located in New Castle County, Delaware, New Castle County, segregated schools were required by law until 1954, when, due to ''Belton v. Gebhart'' (which was later rolled into ''
Brown v. Board of Education
''Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka'', 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segrega ...
'' on appeal), the school system was forced to desegregate. As a result, the school districts in the Wilmington metropolitan area were split into eleven districts covering the metropolitan area (Alfred I. duPont, Alexis I. duPont, Claymont, Conrad, De La Warr, Marshallton-McKean, Mount Pleasant, New Castle-Gunning Bedford, Newark, Stanton, and Wilmington school districts). However, this reorganization did little to address the issue of segregation, since the Wilmington schools (Wilmington and De La Warr districts) remained predominantly black, while the suburban schools in the county outside the city limits remained predominantly white.
In 1976, the U.S. District Court, in ''Evans v. Buchanan'', ordered that the school districts of New Castle County all be combined into a single district governed by the New Castle County Board of Education. The District Court ordered the Board to implement a desegregation plan in which the students from the predominantly black Wilmington and De La Warr districts were required to attend school in the predominantly white suburb districts, while students from the predominantly white districts were required to attend school in Wilmington or De La Warr districts for three years (usually 4th through 6th grade). In many cases, this required students to be bused a considerable distance (12–18 miles in the Christina School District) because of the distance between Wilmington and some of the major communities of the suburban area (such as Newark, Delaware, Newark).
However, the process of handling an entire metropolitan area as a single school district resulted in a revision to the plan in 1981, in which the New Castle County schools were again divided into four separate districts (Brandywine School District, Brandywine, Christina School District, Christina, Colonial School District (Delaware), Colonial, and Red Clay School District, Red Clay). However, unlike the 1954 districts, each of these districts was racially balanced and encompassed inner city and suburban areas. Each of the districts continued a desegregation plan based upon busing.
The requirements for maintaining racial balance in the schools of each of the districts was ended by the District Court in 1994, but the process of busing students to and from the suburbs for schooling continued largely unchanged until 2001, when the Delaware state government passed House Bill 300, mandating that the districts convert to sending students to the schools closest to them, a process that continues . In the 1990s, Delaware schools would utilize the Choice program, which would allow children to apply to schools in other school districts based on space.
Wilmington High, which, many felt, was a victim of the busing order, closed in 1998 due to dropping enrollment. The campus would become home to Cab Calloway School of the Arts, a magnet school focused on the arts that was established in 1992. It would also house Charter School of Wilmington, which focuses on math and science, and opened up in 1996.
Delaware currently has some of the highest rates in the nation of children who attend private schools, magnet schools, and charter schools, due to the perceived weaknesses of the public school system.
Indianapolis, Indiana
Institutional Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation was coming to light in Indianapolis in the late 1960s as a result of Civil rights movements, Civil Rights reformation. U.S. District Judge S. Hugh Dillin issued a ruling in 1971 which found the Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) district guilty of ''de jure'' racial segregation. Beginning in 1973, due to federal court mandates, some 7,000 African-American students began to be bused from the IPS district to neighboring township school corporations within Marion County, Indiana, Marion County. These townships included Metropolitan School District of Decatur Township, Decatur, Franklin Township Community School Corporation, Franklin, Metropolitan School District of Perry Township, Perry, Metropolitan School District of Warren Township, Warren, Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township, Wayne, and Metropolitan School District of Lawrence Township, Lawrence townships. This practice continued on until 1998, when an agreement was reached between IPS and the United States Department of Justice to phase out inter-district, one-way busing. By 2005, the six township school districts no longer received any new IPS students.
Re-segregation
According to the Civil Rights Project at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
, the desegregation of U.S. public schools peaked in 1988; since then, schools have become more segregated because of changes in demographic residential patterns with continuing growth in suburbs and new communities. Jonathan Kozol has found that as of 2005, the proportion of black students at majority-white schools was at "a level lower than in any year since 1968". Changing population patterns, with dramatically increased growth in the South and Southwest, decreases in old industrial cities, and much increased immigration of new ethnic groups, have altered school populations in many areas.
School districts continue to try various programs to improve student and school performance, including magnet schools and special programs related to the economic standing of families. Omaha proposed incorporating some suburban districts within city limits to enlarge its school-system catchment area. It wanted to create a "one tax, one school" system that would also allow it to create magnet programs to increase diversity in now predominantly white schools. Ernie Chambers, Ernest Chambers, a 34-year-serving black state senator from North Omaha, Nebraska, North Omaha, Nebraska, believed a different solution was needed. Some observers said that in practical terms, public schools in Omaha had been re-segregated since the end of busing in 1999.
In 2006, Chambers offered an amendment to the Omaha school reform bill in the Nebraska State Legislature which would provide for creation of three school districts in Omaha according to current racial demographics: black, white, and Hispanic, with local community control of each district. He believed this would give the black community the chance to control a district in which their children were the majority. Chambers' amendment was controversial. Opponents to the measure described it as "state-sponsored segregation".
The authors of a 2003 Harvard study on re-segregation believe current trends in the South of white teachers leaving predominantly black schools is an inevitable result of federal court decisions limiting former methods of civil rights-era protections, such as busing and affirmative action in school admissions. Teachers and principals cite other issues, such as economic and cultural barriers in schools with high rates of poverty, as well as teachers' choices to work closer to home or in higher-performing schools. In some areas black teachers are also leaving the profession, resulting in teacher shortages.
[Jonnson, P. (January 21, 2003)]
White teachers flee black schools
, ''The Christian Science Monitor''. Retrieved 4/12/09.
Education conservatives argue that any apparent separation of races is due to patterns of residential demographics not due to court decisions. They argue that the ''Brown'' decision has been achieved and that there is no segregation in the way that existed before the ruling. They further argue that employing race to impose desegregation policies discriminates and violates ''Brown''s central warning of using racial preferences.
See also
* Civil rights movement in Omaha, Nebraska
* ''Morgan v. Hennigan''
* School segregation in the United States
References
Further reading
* David S. Ettinger
"The Quest to Desegregate Los Angeles Schools,"''Los Angeles Lawyer,'' vol. 26 (March 2003).
* Brian Daugherity and Charles Bolton (eds.), ''With All Deliberate Speed: Implementing Brown v. Board of Education.'' Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas Press, 2008. .
* Jones, Nathaniel R. "Milliken v. Bradley: Brown's Troubled Journey North." ''Fordham Law Review'' 61 (1992): 49
Online
* K'Meyer, Tracy E. ''From Brown to Meredith: The Long Struggle in School Desegregation in Louisville, Kentucky, 1954–2007''. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2013. .
* Lassiter, Matthew. ''The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South''. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005. .
* J. Anthony Lukas, ''Common Ground (Lukas book), Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families''. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985. .
* McAndrews, Lawrence J. "Missing the bus: Gerald Ford and school desegregation." ''Presidential Studies Quarterly'' 27.4 (1997): 791-80
Online
* Lillian B. Rubin, ''Busing and Backlash: White Against White in an Urban School District''. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1972. .
* Wells, Amy Stuart. ''Both Sides Now: The Story of School Desegregation's Graduates''. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2009. .
External links
The Legacy of School BusingNPR
Money And School Performance: Lessons from the Kansas City Desegregation Experimentby Paul Ciotti. Policy Analysis, CATO Institute.
Hoover Institution.
* [http://www.adversity.net/special/busing.htm 25 Years of Forced Busing. Good Riddance to a Bad Idea], at Adversity.net
John Joseph Moakley Oral History Project Garrity Decision Oral History Interviews. Suffolk University Archives; Boston, MA.
* Th
are available at Northeastern University Libraries, Archives and Special Collections Department.
* Th
are available at Northeastern University Libraries, Archives and Special Collections Department.
Digitized primary sources related to busing for school desegregation in Bostonfrom various libraries and archives are available vi
Digital Commonwealth
Busing in Boston: A research guide Moakley Archive & Institute, Suffolk University.
Image of students from South Central Los Angeles riding a school bus to Van Nuys, California, 1977.''Los Angeles Times'' Photographic Archive (Collection 1429). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
{{Segregation by type, state=collapsed
Education issues
Race and education in the United States
School segregation in the United States
Student transport
Bus transportation in the United States