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June 1999 marked the 25th anniversary of federal judge W. Arthur Garrity's 1974 order to
integrate Boston's schools through forced busing. He became known as the most hated
man in Boston. 25 years later what has been the result? This special Adversity.Net section was inspired by the Boston Globe's series of excellent retrospectives on this historic, and some would say tragic, event. See Also: Judge Garrity is dead, but are his divisive busing rulings dead? 25 Years of Forced Busing End
busing, seek quality education (08/12/99
- dead link) "In 1971, Charlotte became ground zero for a noble but failed social experiment forced upon the country by the U.S. Supreme Court. In its historic Swann vs. Charlotte-Mecklenburg school decision, the court permitted racially segregated school districts to begin busing in order to achieve integration. "What began as an effort to remedy the grave wrongs of state-sanctioned racial segregation has turned American society -- black and white -- on its head. The neighborhood school concept, with the pride and solidarity it engenders in a community, has been badly damaged for the last three decades. "Most observers of the recently concluded trial over busing and admissions to magnet schools believe Charlotte-Mecklenburg stands on the verge of a ruling that will declare its school system ``unitary'' and free it from court ordered desegregation plans. "While some are predicting dire consequences if Federal District Judge Robert Potter abolishes busing, the evidence throughout the country suggests that busing has not accomplished its goals and, in fact, has had many negative consequences. "Years after a Kansas City court implemented busing, black students in integrated magnet schools performed no better than blacks in neighborhood schools. San Francisco spent more than $200 million [on busing] following a 1982 court order to end school segregation, but a 1992 study led by Harvard Professor Gary Orfield, who supports busing, found black and Hispanic students lacked ``even modest overall improvement'' [as a result of intrusive court-ordered busing.] A National Institute of Education report could not even find a single study showing black kids fared appreciably better following a switch to integrated schools. "...In fact, it is patronizing to think that minority students need to sit next to a white student in order to learn. Many black leaders, from Wisconsin State Rep. Annette Polly Williams, a Milwaukee Democrat, to Cleveland Mayor Michael White have come to that conclusion and led efforts to end busing.
"...Busing teaches our children a terrible lesson. Rather than eliminating racial
discrimination, busing promotes it by teaching children that the government should treat
them differently on the basis of their race." (Charlotte Observer 08/12/99 by
Marc Levin and Ed Blum) Boston Board Votes To End Era Of
Race-Based Assignment (08/04/99) "Facing pressure from a lawsuit by white parents and advocates of neighborhood schools, the city's school board voted 5-2 last month to adopt a race-blind admissions policy starting in September 2000. "The city has been using a "controlled choice" system of assigning students for the past decade, since shortly after a federal judge ended his supervision of a desegregation plan that had led to violent clashes over busing in the mid-1970s. "It was pretty clear that using race in student assignment was not going to withstand court scrutiny," Elizabeth Reilinger, the chairwoman of the school board, said last week. "We didn't think we had a viable case."
"Board members and Superintendent Thomas W. Payzant concluded that it was better to
switch than fight in part because of the generally dim view federal judges have taken of
race-based policies in recent years. And last fall, the district's long-running legal
battle to defend race-conscious admissions at the prestigious Boston Latin School ended in
failure when a federal appeals court struck down the policy." (Education Week,
08/04/99 edition, by Caroline Hendrie) (Also See Related: Boston Latin School, Adversity.Net special) Closing a chapter on
school desegregation (07/16/99)
"From colleges in Texas and California to school districts in North Carolina and
Kentucky, racial criteria in school admissions are being disallowed by or challenged in
the courts - including in a case earlier this year involving a public exam-school in
Boston. The court cases, coupled with a growing public sentiment that remedies such as
busing and affirmative action are no longer needed in America, are leading some cities to
deemphasize race in favor of other options, such as charter schools, voucher plans, and a
return to emphasizing neighborhood schools." (Christain Science Monitor
07/16/99 by Stacy Teicher) Busing's Day Ends: Boston Drops
Race in Pupil Placement (07/15/99 -
dead link) "The committee's vote of 5 to 2 completed a neat historical circle: In 1974, it was a Federal judge who found that Boston's de facto school segregation discriminated against black children and ordered the busing. Wednesday night, the committee voted under pressure from a pending Federal lawsuit that argues that the current system discriminates against white children.
"City authorities who encouraged the vote to return to neighborhood schools said they
acted out of awareness that here and nationwide, affirmative action programs and other
school admissions systems that take race into account have lost again and again in recent
court challenges." (New York Times 07/15/99 by Carey Goldberg) Busing Still Divisive 25 Years
Later; Parents Sue for Race-Neutral Policies (06/22/99 - dead link) "Saying four white students were unconstitutionally denied entrance to schools because of their race, the lawsuit asks the US District Court to throw out a decade-old policy that assigns students to schools based on choice and race. The plaintiffs want a race-neutral admissions policy in place by September. "Around the country, similar suits are asking federal courts to throw out any public student assignment policy that uses race. The courts have largely been sympathetic to such cases - and in some cases have ordered entire desegregation orders lifted in school districts. 'It is unfair for my son to be denied anything because of his race,' said Rose O'Toole, one of the five plaintiffs and a mother of a 4-year-old who she says was denied entrance to his choice of kindergarten because he was white. Boston's Children First, a pro-neighborhood school group, spearheaded the lawsuit and also is a plaintiff. "[This] lawsuit is filed after a three-year losing effort by Boston public schools to defend race-based admission policies at the system's top exam school [the infamous Boston Latin School]. School officials argued that the educational value to a diverse student body is so great, a race-based policy is needed to ensure it.
"A federal appeals court, however, ruled in December that the city could not use race
in assigning students to Boston Latin School. Soon after, the School Committee abandoned a
pledge to take the case to the US Supreme Court, fearing it would lose the
precedent-setting case and jeopardize desegregation efforts around the
country." (Boston Globe, 06/22/99 by Beth Daley)
Garrity's folly - 25
years after busing began, by Jeff Jacoby, 01-04-99
(dead link) "He would win, hands down, any contest for the Most Hated Bostonian of the last 30 years. And deservedly so. For Judge Garrity did more than inflict on Boston's schools and families a nightmare of riots, fear, racial hatred, and civic trauma. He did it with such blithe indifference to the pain of those he was hurting, such cool disdain for anyone who doubted the wisdom of accomplishing integration through massive crosstown busing, that to this day he still insists, ''Damn, it was working quite well, really.' "This June will mark the 25th anniversary of Garrity's order to forcibly achieve racial balance in Boston's public schools, an order that convulsed the city and triggered the most violent and notorious antibusing backlash in the nation. Images from the riots of 1974 still sear. Stanley Forman won the Pulitzer Prize with his unforgettable photograph of a black man being rammed with an American flag outside Boston City Hall.
" 'The plan that Garrity imposed upon the city was punitive in the extreme,' write
Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom in ''America in Black and White,'' their essential 1997
book on race relations. 'Indeed, the judge's advisers and the state Board of Education
believed that those against whom it was directed - in their eyes, localist, uneducated,
and bigoted - deserved to be punished. The plan thus paired Roxbury High, in the heart of
the ghetto, with South Boston High, in the toughest, most insular, working-class section
of the city. Blacks bused in from Roxbury would make up half of the sophomore class at
South Boston High, while the whole junior class from `Southie' would be shipped off to
Roxbury High.' " (Boston Globe 01-04-99, page A15)
Boston Mayor's Plan to End
Busing Causes Minority Concern by
Elizabeth Mehren 02/18/99 (dead link) "Many wondered: If the schools are inadequate, how worthwhile is it to spend $30 million a year to bus students from one part of town to another? On the other hand, why walk your child to a low-quality neighborhood school? In a district where only 20% of students are white, what does desegregation mean, anyway? Has busing become a symbolic anachronism? And if neighborhood schools are instituted, does that mean the end of busing?
"Around the country, neighborhood schools are the vogue among educators and civic
leaders who hope nearby classrooms will encourage parental involvement and turn school
buildings into mini-community centers. But neighborhood schooling also was the fashion in
the bad old days before busing, said Washington 'civil rights' lawyer William L.
Taylor." (LA Times, 02/18/99, by Elizabeth Mehren)
School busing: an era in decline by Laurent Belsie 02/02/99 "But what next? Answers are murky.
"Although backers and critics of desegregation disagree on almost everything, they
share common ground on this: The racial mixing of schoolchildren has so far failed to
alleviate America's long-standing challenges with race relations, urban poverty, and
minority underachievement. Integration has been overwhelmed by stronger forces, such as
family circumstances and the changing racial composition of inner cities. (Christain
Science Monitor, 02/02/99, by Laurent Belsie)
Busing's legacy: racial
isolation by Jeff Jacoby 01-07-99 (dead link) "Police were quick to deny that race played a role in the stabbing - even though Billy, a South Boston native, is white and his attackers, who come from other neighborhoods, are black. Maybe the police are right, but no one would be surprised to learn otherwise. South Boston High has simmered with violence and racial uneasiness ever since 1974, when Judge W. Arthur Garrity ordered the School Department to forcibly intermingle black kids from Roxbury and white kids from South Boston. Busing put public schools like Southie High under a sort of martial law, with hundreds of state troopers patrolling the corridors, snipers posted on the roof, and metal detectors at the doors.
"In the quarter-century since busing began, South Boston High School has erupted
several times in racial brawls. In 1993, hundreds of students, black and white, hurled
rocks, punches, and racist slurs at one another. Five people ended up in the hospital,
including two police officers and the mayor. To this day, police still patrol the grounds
of South Boston High. There are still metal detectors at the entrance. Judge Garrity's
legacy endures." (Boston Globe, 01-07-99, page A13) Records from busing give glimpse
into history, by Alison Fitzgerald 12-07-98 (dead link) " 'If you pass your laws, we will before long have a black Boston not an integrated one,' wrote one Boston resident. The letter was just one of thousands written to Garrity that now fill eight file boxes. "Today, Garrity is scheduled to donate those files and 52 other boxes jammed with documents related to the marathon desegregation case, to the University of Massachusetts at Boston. The papers offer a glimpse into the complexity of the legal issues and the raw emotion of the students and parents affected by the ruling. " 'You just sold the people down the river for your own convenience ... You think your decision won't reach the suburbs or your own children, you're wrong.' said one letter, written four days after Garrity ordered the schools integrated on June 21, 1974. Its postscript read, 'I hope you die a very miserable death, preferably by cancer.'
" 'White flight' became a stark reality in Boston, where the percentage of white
students dropped from 49 percent to 19 percent in 20 years as families fled to the
suburbs. The 1980 census showed that 12 percent of the city's population - about 80,000
people - had left since 1970. One third of the families with children under 18 were
gone." (Associated Press, via Boston Globe, 12-07-98)
School Busing Fading as Key Issue, by Beth Daley, 01/19/99 (dead link) "A court case that could mean the dismantling of the entire student assignment system, which uses race as one of the factors in assigning students to city schools, was met with only tepid protests by a handful of minority leaders last month. "When a series of public hearings was held last year on possible changes in the student assignment policy, fewer than 10 parents attended each session.
"Busing is rapidly unraveling in Boston, but recent developments have failed to spark
the angry debates, the stormy protests, or unbridled passions that accompanied the
historic 1974 court ruling ordering Boston's schools to be integrated." (Boston
Globe, 01/19/99, by Beth Daley)
Voluntary Busing Running Out of Gas, by Brian Weber, 01/21/99 (dead link)
"For the past three years minority students in northwest and northeast Denver could
ride a bus to predominantly white schools in southern parts of the city. However, the
number of riders has dropped from 402 in 1996 to 196 this year at a cost per student of
$1,600 -- three times the district average for busing. 'I don't know how we can
justify that,' Milliner said." (InsideDenver.Com, 01/21/99)
"Blacks, Hispanics and Asians now constitute about 85 percent of the city's 64,000 public school students, up from about 48 percent when busing began. As a result, most areas of the city - including the once lily-white South Boston, where the worst trouble took place in the early 1970s - are now racially and ethnically diverse.
"The change has prompted Mayor Thomas M. Menino to propose building five new schools
in the city and returning to 'walk-to schools.' " (Associated Press, via
Cleveland Live, 01/23/99, by Robin Estrin) As Boston changes, it may end busing (01/23/99) "Twenty-five years after racial violence erupted in Boston over court-ordered desegregation, the city is considering abandoning widespread busing and sending students to their neighborhood schools again. "The reason: White flight and a burgeoning immigrant population have dramatically changed the racial makeup in many parts of Boston. "Blacks, Hispanics and Asians now constitute about 85 percent of the city's 64,000 public school students, up from about 48 percent when busing began.
"As a result, most areas of the city -- including the once lily-white South Boston,
where the worst trouble took place in the early 1970s -- are now racially and ethnically
'diverse.' " (Spokane.Net, 01/23/99, from wire services)
Maryland
(Prince Georges County): Judge Orders End to Forced Busing (09/02/98 - dead
link) " 'When busing started in 1973, what you basically saw was busloads of white and black kids passing each other,' Savoid said. 'Now you see only black kids passing each other. They’re going from one predominantly black neighborhood to a school in another predominantly black neighborhood.'
"The agreement approved by U.S. District Judge Peter J. Messitte phases out mandatory
busing over the next six years and calls for the construction of 13 neighborhood schools
and the refurbishing of existing ones. Beginning next year, students will begin returning
to neighborhood schools, though they will have the option of staying in their current
schools." (School Bus News, 09/02/98)
Schools Panic Over End of Racial
Quotas and Busing (11/08/99 - dead
link) Washington Post headline: Charlotte Schools Are Scrambling -- Story: "A recent federal court ruling has thrown the old way of doing things here into disarray, challenging school officials and the community to come up with some smart, fast solutions. In September, U.S. District Judge Robert Potter ruled that the Charlotte-Mecklenburg system, which is 40 percent black, had achieved desegregation "quite some time ago" and had eliminated "the vestiges of past discrimination." "In effect, Potter freed the schools from nearly 30 years of court supervision brought by the famed 1969 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education that led to the busing of thousands of local schoolchildren from their neighborhoods. He also decreed that any measure based on race, including the city's pioneering busing program, could no longer be a factor in school assignments. "A divided school board and a group of black leaders have appealed Potter's ruling, but without a stay from the judge, new school assignments for as many as 60,000 of the system's 100,000 students will have to be devised fast--for the next fall term.
"The lawsuit propelling this monumental shift was filed in 1997, when a white parent
sued the school board after his daughter was denied entry into an elementary-school magnet
program because she was classified as "nonblack." After the family moved from
the area, six other white parents continued the suit, reasoning that if school officials
would not ask the court to release the system, they would. (Washington Post 11/08/99, page
A03, by Sue Anne Pressley) Busing
debate comes full circle (04/18/99 - 04/26/99) "Now, at a trial starting on April 19 in Charlotte, a federal judge will begin hearing arguments from three sides about whether three decades of integration through busing, quotas and magnet schools have created a desegregated, or unitary, school system, or whether the 99,000-student system still has a ways to go. "It is not the first such challenge, either in Charlotte or elsewhere. But the trial, expected to last at least a month, is fraught with symbolism that is not lost on the lawyers involved. "It will be over for those school systems still clinging to busing as a means of desegregation," predicted Atlanta attorney A. Lee Parks, lead lawyer for a group of white parents challenging integration policies that kept their children out of certain magnet schools. White plaintiffs: "The suit began in 1997 when Charlotte resident William Capacchione filed a civil rights suit alleging that his Daughter, Cristina, had been denied admission to a magnet school because she is white. In response, Charlotte lawyer James E. Ferguson II, who represents the black students who were the original plaintiffs in the 1971 case, Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U.S. 1, sought reactivation of the landmark case. Capacchione, he argued, was a direct attack on its precedent.
"It was in Swann that a unanimous Supreme Court affirmed a U.S. district court's
power to fashion a remedy that would create a "unitary school system" in
Charlotte as a way of combatting de facto school segregation. Six other parents
joined Capacchione in April 1998. They allege that the Charlotte system achieved unitary
status 10 years ago but that the school board has avoided ending busing, magnet schools
and other race-based programs. The parents seek an injunction, damages and a race-neutral
system." (National Law Journal 04/19/99 - 04/26/99 by David E. Rovella) Race-Based School Plan is
Challenged (04/19/99)
"Ultimately, it comes down to whether race can be used to decide which schools
students can attend," Charlotte schools spokesman John Deem said. In 1969,
Charlotte was at ground zero in the explosive desegregation debate after a federal judge
ruled in a landmark case--Swann vs. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education--that schools
could bus students far from home to eliminate segregated neighborhood schools."
(LA Times 04/19/99 from Reuters) Black and White
Milwaukee Area Residents Oppose Busing (10/17/99) "Of the 800 adults polled this month in the metropolitan Milwaukee area, 73% said they did not support busing for integration - a resounding condemnation of two decades' worth of social policy in the city. "Opposition to busing was slightly less strong among respondents who live in the city (66%) but still represented a solid majority. By race, 78% of white respondents opposed busing; 56% of blacks opposed the policy. "The poll was conducted for the newspaper by the Public Policy Forum and Lein/Speigelhoff Inc. of Brookfield between Sept. 24 and Oct. 11. "It also asked participants about a provision in the new state budget intended to end most busing in Milwaukee and divert the money to pay for bonds to build and enhance neighborhood schools in the city.
"About 70% of the respondents supported the Neighborhood Schools Plan, with similar
support coming from city residents. (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 10/17/99 by Joe
Williams and Alan J. Borsuk) Area residents oppose busing
for integration, poll finds (10/17/99 - dead link) "Opposition to busing was slightly less strong among respondents who live in the city (66%) but still represented a solid majority. By race, 78% of white respondents opposed busing; 56% of blacks opposed the policy. .... Black respondents were somewhat less enthusiastic, with 61% supporting the plan. But 77% of Hispanic respondents said they supported the plan....
"While support for busing was low, respondents in the poll still expressed some
desire to have racially integrated schools for their children. Asked to indicate the
importance of school integration on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being least important and 5
most important, respondents overall averaged 3.41. African-American respondents gave the
matter the most importance, averaging 4.08. In another question, participants were asked
where they thought minority children tended to get the best education; 51% of overall
respondents said in a racially integrated school; 20% said in a non-integrated school; and
18% said it made no difference what kind of school the child attended. When asked where
white students tended to get the best education, slightly fewer respondents (44%) listed a
racially integrated school." (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 10/17/99 by Joe
Williams and Alan J. Borsuk) The Enstrom Foundation's Efforts
to Oppose Busing (undated, reference historical)
In
Memoriam (Fondly or Bitterly) W.A. Garrity; Judge
Desegregated Boston Schools (09/18/99) Judge Garrity became infamous for his judicial order 25 years ago to force racial busing upon Boston's public school children. His questionable impostion of his own liberal, judicial social engineering was directly responsible for mob violence and an unwarranted image of Boston parents as "bigots" simply because Boston parents objected to busing their kids to a distant school to satisfy a liberal judge's notion of "racial parity". Garrity's order, while based upon good intentions (albeit uninformed, misdirected intentions) directly caused an unprecedented flight of middle-class parents of school age kids from Boston's public school districts. Garrity's historic busing order greatly accelerated the decline of Boston's inner city public schools by driving "white" parents with school age children from the city into the distant suburbs. Today, 25 years later, Boston parents -- minority and non-minority alike -- loudly repudiate the notion that their children should be the pawns of experimental and unproven government social engineering programs such as the failed forced racial busing program Garrity held so dear. After a quarter-century of forced busing, Boston parents almost universally want to send their kids to neighborhood schools close to home -- a goal which Judge Garrity's historic and ill-considered order effectively made impossible to achieve. As reported by the Los Angeles Times on 9/18/99: "Garrity's death at 79 came two months after the Boston school board voted to end busing for integration, 25 years after Garrity's order launched a tumultuous period in the city's history. "The Boston desegregation case was considered a watershed because it occurred in a northern city and because it provoked violence. At the time, some experts considered it the most important school desegregation case since federal troops were called to Little Rock's Central High School in 1957." Judge Arthur W. Garrity has passed away. We feel badly for his family and friends. Death by cancer or any other disease is unpleasant. While Judge Garrity had a great mind, he suffered from a misdirected, liberal, anti-white bias in his judicial rulings.
While we mourn with Garrity's family over his untimely death, we hope that Judge Garrity's
bias against race-blind educational principles is also dead. Judge Garrity's rulings
from the Federal Bench clearly indicated that he felt that white kids were to be held
responsible for the racial discimination allegedly practiced by their great-great
grandparents. Like many other great, liberal judges, Artuhur W. Garrity failed to
apply the principle of "equal protection without regard to race or gender" to
white kids. While we might miss Garrity's great mind, we may never be able to
forgive him for his bias against white children. (Based on the Los Angeles Times
09/18/99 by Elaine Woo)
END of Busing Special Section |
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