By Jessica Imbro

Boston garnered national attention for the crisis which took place during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Boston was labeled a racist city because of messy, ugly process of desegregation--and the violence which resulted.

But when we learn this history, whose history are we learning?

Black students were at the heart and front-line of this crisis. This is a brief account of their experiences.

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The Idea

In the early 1960s, research which led to the passing of the Racial Imbalance Act of 1965 had found that 46 schools in Boston enrolled more than 50% black students; in 1972, black students only comprised 34% of the area. One proposed solution was so physically bus students into areas that didn’t match their own race: specifically, in 1974, it began that students from Irish Southie and black Roxbury would begin to share facilities.

This was not a new idea. Cities across the country had racially segregated schools and would attempt to integrate by busing, with varying degrees of success. It was one manifestation of fulfilling the decision made in Brown v. Board of Ed., which required schools to integrate on a national level. Some of these programs still exist today.

When things started to go sour for Boston, the city was placed in the national spotlight. Anti-black sentiment thinly disguised as advocacy for white civil rights—namely, the right to go to a school without black people—garnered attention even from President Ford, who stated that he disagreed with the idea behind busing but encouraged Bostonians to follow the law.

In 1974, the decision of Morgan v. Hennigan by Judge W. Arthur Garrity defined Boston schools as segregated and became the driving force behind busing. One of the main focuses was to bus between Roxbury, the predominantly black community, and Southie, the white, Irish working class community (Balonon-Rosen). Garrity would become the symbolic ringleader for busing and demonized by the white families opposed.

Amplifying black voices

A lot has been said about busing since its beginning and since the initiative ended with Judge Garrity’s departure from the Massachusetts court in 1985. But so little of that dialogue has included black voices, and if it has, it has hardly made them the center, despite the fact that the initiative was intended to improve the black education system, not cause massive violence towards students.

The disparities were major across schools. Before the lawsuit was filed which led to busing, activists appealed the Boston School Committee, the body which was in charge of public schools’ procedures. Activist Ruth Batson was part of a group who presented their case for desegregation in 1963, and the Committee shut them down; it would become known for being ardently against busing, and the reason schools were forced to desegregate. Batson recalls: “We were insulted. We were told … our kids were stupid, and this was why they didn’t learn” (Delmont). This is not only racially insulting to black families but blaming them for the institutional disparities in the city of Boston. No matter how smart the students were, more money would not simply appear in the majority-black schools’ budgets.

Black students who were bused in Boston recounted the racism they experienced as the minority: namely, slurs, especially the N-word, were hurled recklessly. They were also told they were not welcomed; “Go to Hell,” “Get out of our school,“ and threats of violence were commonplace. One student recalls a rhyme: “Two, four, six, eight, assassinate the n----- ape” (Hilson 187; censor added). References were made implying that the black students were slaves to the whites. Students also report that authority figures like teachers did nothing to stop these attacks and did not take any disciplinary action--and that the schools' police presence did not promote safety.

Boston Police and state troopers were called into the city to escort students into schools where there was most potential for violence (e.g., in Southie). Yet, students report that inside the school, the police were not on the students’ side. One describes the following incident:

I was out in the hall near a state trooper. A white student passed me and said: “If there’s one thing I hate, it’s the smell of n-----s,” and spit on the floor. I said to the trooper: “You heard that.” The trooper turned away from me and didn’t do anything about it. (Hilson 189; censor added)

Fights broke out daily. One student describes an ambush while walking towards the office. The student was pushed, punched, knocked to the ground. The troopers took the student away from the scene and into their office—where they called him the N-word and threatened to break his arms. He was suspended, despite the fact that he actively did not fight back, in fear.

For parents, the situation was no better. Rachel Twymon, a black mother from Roxbury, was interviewed extensively about her experience with five children who went different routes in the educational system. Some took advantage of the "open enrollment" program, which allowed students to enroll in any Boston school with room, providing they had their own means to get there. Her children attended school in the Italian enclave of East Boston, and generally faced very little violence (though Eastie was far from free of racial tension). Still, there were cultural and class issues: comments about hair and dress, and threats on the trip to and from school (Lukas 110).

The Alternative

METCO (founded 1966) is a voluntary program that has endured the test of the 70s and early 80s, and unlike the busing project, took students by their own choice from poor black neighborhoods within Boston to suburban schools outside of the city. The difference was immutable – there were no protests, and very few stories of physical violence, though the process wasn’t perfect. Outside of municipal lines, the drama was lesser, and the violence quieter.

Students who were bused out to the suburbs generally have mixed feelings about their experiences. Many report being treated like foreigner and experiences that reflect that—experiences which were not outwardly racist and violent, characteristic of practices in Southie, but which still made the black student feel unwelcomed and uncomfortable. Some examples, from personal student testimony, include: over-the-top interest in a black girl’s hair; students being asked in biology class if people tried to sell drugs in their home neighborhoods. The student who reported the drug story continues:

That was when I felt like we were really seen as the “other,” something from another world to them, like something to peer in and then pull away from. And when we answered those questions, it didn’t matter because they just fired more and more at us (Eaton 51).

Most students don’t regret being a part of the program, because they were met with certain social and professional benefits, but at the same time had some negative experiences physically and psychologically. The benefits mentioned come from connections with people with opportunities who, in Boston and throughout the U.S., are often white due to historical privilege—but, according to interviews with METCO students, the white social network created did not benefit black students as much as the connection that existed between METCO students and other black individuals (staff members and METCO directors). So even if the program made it easier for students to, say, get a job after high school, it was much more likely that that job came from a black connection than a white one. The same goes for information about college prospects, which was passed along between black families because white cohorts may not have had the information that met black families’ needs, including which campuses had racially diverse and sensitive staffs, and scholarship and carpool information (Eaton 149).

What now?

Narratives today about the busing crisis frame it as a crisis for South Boston. The most prominent images and storylines describe white residents of Southie, protesting, boycotting school, with a passing mention of the rocks thrown at school buses—which, of course, were only a minimal component to the violence that actually included shootings (Balonon-Rosen), brawls, and emotional abuse (Hilson). Additionally, this violence was almost unilaterally anti-Black. It was not an equal push and pull of racial tension.

Often, Americans frame racism as something inherent to the South, and something white Northerners tried to stop. Examining the anti-busing rhetoric in Boston exemplifies the hypocrisy of Northern liberals who were supposedly saviors for African Americans after slavery, which they supposedly helped end. Because it wasn’t explicitly about black rights, white Bostonians could use coded language like “busing” and “neighborhood schools” to share that they did not want white and black students together in schools (Delmont).
Holding South Boston High School side-by-side with a Roxbury school, one difference is clear: the racial demographics of the students and faculty. But what busing ignored was the tangential issue that these schools are also segregated in resources. Black activists weren’t calling for desegregation because they wanted their kids sitting next to white kids in class—perhaps they even anticipated the tension and violence which resulted. They were advocating for desegregation because their kids did not have the same resources in their schools. Black schools were overcrowded and underfunded. They might not have had enough books or seats in the classrooms, resulting in the use of mobile classrooms (Delmont).

During the 1950s, Boston Public Schools spent an average of $340 on every white student, and $240 for every black one. About 20-30% of Boston’s all-Black schools were staffed by substitute teachers because white teachers left as soon as they could (two years of work earned a teacher the power to transfer), and the vast majority of teachers hired by BPS were white—94% in 1971. Black students were treated like an inconvenience to these teachers. Conditions like this with so many substitute teachers and so few resources made it difficult for students to take school seriously, and that was a major detriment on their professional futures. This is how institutionalized oppression works. The lesson to learn is perhaps that institutions need to do more to serve black families in urban areas, and that racism is not limited to regions.

Works Cited

Balonon-Rosen, Peter. “Boston School Desegregation And Busing: A Timeline Of Events.” WBUR: Learning Lab. 5 Sept. 2014. Web. 20 Nov. 2016.

Delmont, Matthew. “The Lasting Legacy of the Boston Busing Crisis.” The Atlantic. 29 Mar. 2016. Web. 10 Dec. 2016.

Eaton, Susan E. The Other Boston Busing Story: What`s Won and Lost Across the Boundary Line. Yale University Press, 2001. Print.

Hillson, Jon. The Battle of Boston. Pathfinder Press, 1977, New York.

Lukas, J. Anthony. Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1985, New York City.