thesis statement school desegregation in boston

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Rethinking "busing" in Boston

On September 9, 1974, over 4,000 white demonstrators rallied at Boston Common to protest the start of court-ordered school desegregation in the Cradle of Liberty. Earlier that summer, federal Judge W. Arthur Garrity found the Boston School Committee guilty of unconstitutional school segregation and ordered nearly 17,000 students to be transferred by bus to increase the racial integration of Boston's schools. When Senator Edward Kennedy tried to address the crowd, the protesters booed and pelted him with eggs. As Kennedy retreated to his office, the crowd rushed and began pounding on and then shattering a glass window. Television news crews from ABC, CBS, and NBC were on hand to cover the rally, and they brought images of the confrontation to a national audience of millions of Americans.

School desegregation in Boston continued to be a headline story in print and broadcast news for the next two years, and this extensive media coverage made "busing" synonymous with Boston. Today Boston's "busing crisis" is taught in high schools and colleges across the country as the story of school desegregation in the North and as a convenient end point for the history of civil rights, where it is juxtaposed with Brown v. Board of Education (1954) or the Little Rock school-integration crisis (1957).

Boston's mid-1970s "busing crisis," however, was over two decades in the making. From the 1950s onward, the city's schools were intentionally segregated through official state and local policies regarding zoning, teacher placement, and busing. Boston civil rights advocates fought against these policies and the educational inequities they produced, but faced intense resistance from white parents and politicians. Across Boston's public schools in the 1950s, per-pupil spending averaged $340 for white students compared with only $240 for black students. More than 80% of Boston's black elementary-school students attended majority-black schools, most of which were overcrowded and staffed by less experienced teachers. Over the years, data of this sort failed to persuade the Boston School Committee, which steadfastly denied the charge that school segregation even existed in Boston. As Garrity's decision in Morgan v. Hennigan (1974) made clear, however, the segregation of Boston's schools was neither innocent nor accidental:

"The court concludes that the defendants took many actions in their official capacities with the purpose and intent to segregate the Boston public schools and that such actions caused current conditions of segregation in the Boston public schools. … Plaintiffs have proved that the defendants intentionally segregated schools at all levels, built new schools for a decade with sizes and locations designed to promote segregation, [and] maintained patterns of overcrowding and underutilization which promoted segregation." ( Morgan v. Hennigan , 379 F. Supp. 144, 146).

Court-ordered busing was intended to remedy decades of educational discrimination in Boston, and it was controversial because it challenged a school system that was built around the preferences and demands of white communities.

By showing that Boston's schools discriminated against black students, Garrity's ruling validated the claims that Boston's leading civil rights activists—Ruth Batson, Ellen Jackson, Muriel and Otto Snowden, Mel King, Melnea Cass—had been making for over two decades. "When we would go to white schools, we'd see these lovely classrooms, with a small number of children in each class," Ruth Batson recalled. As a Boston civil rights activist and the mother of three, Batson gained personal knowledge of how the city's public schools shortchanged black youth in the 1950s and 1960s. "The teachers were permanent. We'd see wonderful materials. When we'd go to our schools, we would see overcrowded classrooms, children sitting out in the corridors, and so forth. And so, then we decided that where there were a large number of white students, that's where the care went. That's where the books went. That's where the money went."

Like black parents across the country, Batson cared deeply about education and fought on behalf of her children and her community. "What black parents wanted was to get their children to schools where there were the best resources for educational growth—smaller class sizes, up-to-date-books," Batson recalled. "They wanted their children in a good school building, where there was an allocation of funds which exceeded those in the black schools; where there were sufficient books and equipment for all students." In short, Batson understood that school integration was about more than having black students sit next to white students.

Boston's civil rights activists were organized, creative, and persistent in their protests, but they received much less attention from journalists than white parents and politicians who opposed "busing." This lack of contemporary media coverage has made it difficult to tell stories about civil rights in Boston and other Northern cities. Most of the iconic images of the civil rights era are from Southern cities like Little Rock, Montgomery, and Selma, rather than Boston, Chicago, and New York.

White parents and politicians framed their resistance to school desegregation in terms of "busing," "neighborhood schools," and "homeowners rights." These slogans were designed not only to oppose Boston's civil rights activists, but to make it appear as though white Bostonians were the victims of an unjust court order. This rhetorical shift allowed them to support white schools and neighborhoods without using explicitly racist language. As early as 1957, white parents in New York rallied against "busing," and Boston School Committee chairwoman Louise Day Hicks made opposition to "busing" a centerpiece of her political campaigns in the mid-1960s.

Speaking in 1972, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) co-founder and Georgia State Legislator Julian Bond described the underlying motivations for opposing "busing" for school desegregation in clear terms. "What people who oppose busing object to," Bond told the audience, "is not the little yellow school buses, but rather to the little black bodies that are on the bus." Indeed, the crisis in Boston and in other cities that faced court-ordered school desegregation was about unconstitutional racial discrimination in the public schools, not about "busing." Describing opposition to "busing" as something other than resistance to school desegregation is a choice that obscures the histories of racial discrimination and legal contexts for desegregation orders.

School desegregation was about the constitutional rights of black students, but in Boston and other Northern cities, the story has been told and retold as a story about the feelings and opinions of white parents. Over four decades later, the Boston busing artifacts in the Smithsonian collection can be used to tell a more nuanced and complicated story about civil rights and the ongoing struggle for educational equality.

Matthew Delmont is a professor of history at Arizona State University. He is the author of three books, Why Busing Failed: Race, Media, and the National Resistance to School Desegregation; Making Roots: A Nation Captivated ; and The Nicest Kids in Town: American Bandstand, Rock 'n' Roll, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in 1950s Philadelphia . He is currently working on a book tentatively titled, To Live Half American: African Americans at Home and Abroad during World War II .

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Beyond Busing

The Boston Public Schools Desegregation Collection is a digital library of scanned archival materials documenting the desegregation of Boston’s public schools. The collection brings together materials from numerous Boston-area institutions and covers the time period beginning with the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and focusing on the Morgan v. Hennigan case (1974) and the court-ordered plan to desegregate the Boston Public Schools (BPS). The collections document the implementation of busing students to different neighborhoods to rebalance the racial makeup of schools, the resulting citywide unrest, and developments in Boston school desegregation efforts in the following decades. 

This website is an entry-point to the Boston Public School Desegregation Collection and a place for educators, students, activists, researchers, and anyone with a general interest in the history of Boston school desegregation and “busing” to begin investigating primary sources and to find supplemental  resources and curricular materials .  Use the search below to view the Northeastern University Archives and Special Collection's records and visit "About the Collections" to learn about all project contributors' collections.  Discover tother ways of exploring and accessing these materials through our Using the Collection page.

This project was created using the CERES: Exhibit Toolkit with help from the Digital Scholarship Group at the Northeastern University Library .

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Justice Requires the Full Story

The lasting legacy of Boston’s busing crisis

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Kim Janey credits the first school she ever attended with putting her on a path that would eventually lead to her becoming Boston’s mayor in 2021—the first Black woman to hold that office.

For kindergarten, Janey attended a community school established by Black community leaders, activists, and parents, including her own. Similar schools were commonplace throughout the city, Janey said, especially during the 1970s when parents were looking for alternatives to the underfunded and crumbling Boston Public Schools children of color were regularly assigned to. 

“This community school was laser focused on educating Black children,” Janey said. The school “didn’t just pour into me the importance of reading, writing, and arithmetic. They made sure I understood who I was as a little Black girl. That [was] a different foundation for me as I went into Boston Public Schools.” 

For Janey, this introduction to school and early education was instrumental in the work she pursued in her adult life. That’s why, according to Janey, she can’t help but notice that for Boston’s students and parents of color, not much has fundamentally changed in the last 50 years.

“So many parents of color choose charter schools because they think that’s where those opportunities are, or they’re choosing something different if they can afford it, like Catholic schools and private schools.”

The decision

The decision to look for alternatives to Boston Public Schools is one that Janey understands firsthand. In 1974, U.S. District Judge W. Arthur Garrity, Jr. ruled in Morgan v. Hennigan to desegregate Boston schools through a court-ordered busing plan that would shuttle students away from their neighborhoods to desegregate schools all over Boston, bringing Black students to previously all-white schools and white students to previously all-Black schools. After attending her local public school through fifth grade, Janey became part of the second wave of the busing program when she started middle school. 

Janey’s parents, like many at that time, did not embrace the idea: When it was time for her to be bused to middle school, her parents refused and kept her from school for two weeks before eventually sending her.

“I was 11 years old, and my parents did not want to send me to Charlestown, so they kept me out of school,” Janey said. “It’s important to highlight that these white schools were not all good schools; white working-class families were not experiencing some sort of educational panacea.”

The school, Janey remembers, was nothing like the Black-led community school from her early childhood, which had opened in reaction to the Boston School Committee’s refusal to comply with the Racial Imbalance Act of 1965 , which aimed to end racial segregation in public schools in the state. The state required the Boston School Committee to submit plans to integrate 45 segregated schools or risk losing funding for the schools. Four years later, a racial census of Boston schools showed that the racial imbalance had increased . And prior to the Garrity decision, majority-Black Boston schools suffered from a notable lack of resources.

The “deep North” 

In 1971, when Peggy Kemp moved from the U.S. South to Massachusetts to attend Harvard Law School and began teaching in Boston public schools to earn extra money, she was shocked to find herself at a segregated middle school. 

“There were no white students at this school. The bathrooms had no doors on the stalls; there was no toilet tissue or paper towels for students to dry their hands,” Kemp said. “I didn’t have textbooks and was expected to use these mimeograph papers for worksheets.”

While northern states like Massachusetts didn’t legally mandate racial segregation, experts point to redlining and blockbusting tactics used in Black neighborhoods like Roxbury and Dorchester to account for school segregation in Boston during the 1970s. Like today, Black residents faced an increasing racial wealth gap and differences in employment opportunities compared to white residents.

As a result, the situation at Kemp’s Boston teaching job felt unexpectedly familiar: The first school she ever attended was a two-room schoolhouse in segregated Kentucky. The all-Black school, Kemp recalls, did not have running water, a heating system, or indoor plumbing.

“It was very sparse,” Kemp said, “but there was still an expectation of excellence.”

Kemp remembers the high standards her teachers held for her and her classmates. She also remembers her unrelenting efforts to meet them. But by the time she was in the fifth grade, Kemp’s school integrated with a neighboring all-white school as part of the nation’s desegregation efforts after the landmark ruling in the Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education . And while her new school looked brand new and well resourced compared to her first, Kemp said she didn’t feel intimidated by the school or her white classmates.

“I was not behind; I didn’t need any extra support. I was just as well prepared as any of my classmates,” Kemp said.

Kemp remembers starting middle school with her Black classmates, but she was the only Black student in her graduating class by the time she finished high school. Three years after Kemp started teaching, she was once again caught up in a court-ordered desegregation plan, only this time, in the Northeast.

Garrity’s ruling had an immediate impact. Kemp remembers the middle school where she taught partnered with Hyde Park, a middle-class white neighborhood. The city remodeled the deteriorating school over the summer and hired three Black teachers, and the school received funding for new books.

“These Black children had been attending this school that had not been maintained for years, and all of a sudden, everything changed—now teachers could get the materials they needed, period,” Kemp said.

The reaction, mostly from white parents who opposed the ruling, said Lewis Finfer, was also immediate. Violent protests erupted throughout Boston in the summer of 1974 and made national news for the next several years. 

“This part of the country was described as the ‘deep North’ after the reaction to the Garrity ruling because it was as bad as what people had seen coming out of the South,” said Finfer, a community organizer and former director of the Massachusetts Communities Action Network .

Janey recalls dealing white Boston residents’ violent protests against the desegregation plan firsthand. 

“We experienced rocks, bottles, sticks, cans thrown at us two full years after the first buses rolled down those hills in South Boston in 1974,” Janey said. 

“Black flight happened as well”

Finfer says the legacy of the ruling is still visible today, nearly 50 years later. 

“Some schools were nearly 60% white in 1974. Today, they’re 15% white in the Boston Public Schools,” Finfer said. “So, yeah, the issues are still going on today.”

A New York Times article from December 1975 reported that Boston Public Schools lost nearly 18,000 students in the 18 months following the court-ordered busing plan. Finfer said “white flight” accelerated in Boston’s schools in the late 1970s, as white families relocated to the suburbs or enrolled their children in parochial schools. In the last 50 years, not much has changed.

A 2020 report by the Boston Foundation found that while the city of Boston’s population has increased in the past decade, public schools followed the opposite trend. During the same period, predominately white schools severely decreased while schools made up of 90-100% students of color had increased from 25 in 1967 to 84 in 2019.

While “white flight” created segregated schools that were overwhelmingly Black and Latinx, Black student enrollment also steadily declined as parents sought alternatives to the public school system. Janey argues that the Garrity ruling caused many Black residents to move out of Boston. 

“That’s one of the outcomes of forced busing,” Janey said. “We saw the white flight happen immediately, but the Black flight happened as well. And people don’t talk about Black flight.”

Finfer, who worked as tenant rights advocate during that time, said he noticed immediate disinvestment in Boston neighborhoods during the city’s busing crisis.

“In some areas, there were large numbers of abandoned buildings in Boston; when someone moved out, it became an abandoned building, which led to the deterioration of neighborhoods,” he said. Finfer added that these conditions pushed Black residents out of their Boston communities.

After the 1974-75 school year, nearly 30,000 students left Boston Public Schools altogether. The shift still holds true nearly half a century later. Today, as Black residents continue to move out of Boston, the resegregation of city schools also coincides with the steady decline of Black enrollment over the last 20 years. The Boston Globe recently found that nearly 15,000 Black students have left Boston Public Schools since 2002.

Today, multiple factors have contributed to the continuing decline in enrollment in Boston Public Schools. Student enrollment declined during the past eight years and has been recently accelerated due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, even before the pandemic, Boston has consistently lost its Black residents .

Seeking alternatives

While Black student enrollment has decreased in public schools, it has surged in Boston charter schools. Nearly half of the city’s charter school students are Black , while Black students make up just under a third of overall Boston Public School enrollment. Charter schools, much like the community schools from Janey’s childhood, are independent schools that operate with government funds. 

For Janey, the widespread shift away from public schools can be traced back to the same concerns her own parents had in the 1970s.

“The decline of Black students was clear years ago, and the trajectory is that it will keep getting worse,” Janey said, adding that the decline is a result of parents, particularly of color, seeking better educational opportunities for their children. 

Some of the enrollment decreases have been partially offset as Latinx and multiracial populations rise in Boston, but Black families have consistently continued to leave the city’s public schools. For the Black families that have decided to leave throughout the last decade, they have consistently opted for charter schools.

There’s historical precedent for Black parents in Boston looking outside the public school system to ensure their children’s education needs are met. Before the Garrity decision, in 1966, the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity program launched a voluntary busing program after recruiting 220 students of color to attend suburban students outside of Boston. Like many Black and Latinx parents today, the parents who founded METCO were looking for alternatives to public schools. In the late 1970s, Janey became part of the program and enrolled in Reading Memorial High School outside of Boston.

Janey enrolled in the predominately white suburban school with about 20 Black classmates. But similar to Kemp’s experience in the 1950s, by the time Janey graduated high school, she was the only Black student to complete the program.

“I was the only one who got through because I had a strong foundation early on,” Janey said. “Yes, this was a voluntary program; supposedly, this suburban community wanted us there. But racism doesn’t disappear because you go an extra 5 or 10 miles on a school bus.”

Boston’s METCO program is still a much sought-after alternative to Boston Public Schools. It currently enrolls over 3,100 students of color but still presents a challenge to the expanding racial gap in Boston’s public schools.

“These students are going to schools with better resources, but the downside is that the parents who are not in the Boston Public Schools are not trying to better those schools because their kids have better school opportunities,” Finfer said.

50 years later

Court-ordered forced busing ended in 1988 , and history might remember Boston’s forced busing program as a failure in closing the racial divide within the city’s public schools. But Janey argues looking solely at the outcome neglects the sacrifices that Black parents, and especially Black women, made to ensure marginalized children got an adequate education.

“I struggled a lot as a kid who was bused trying to reconcile that hero status that we were given,” Janey said. “So to say, ‘this whole thing was a big failure, our schools are not desegregated, and quality is still what they saw 40 years later, 50 years later,’ dismisses what Black parents, aunties, and grandmothers were fighting for.”

Looking back, Finfer can’t help but think that some things could have been done differently when the Garrity ruling was implemented that might have led to more positive outcomes 50 years later.

“If there had been more localized remedies that made physical repairs to the deteriorated school buildings in the Black community, equalized school budgets, or hired more teachers, that could have done more than primarily busing the kids,” he said.

Considering whether busing was a failure is a difficult question for Kemp. She said some good came out of the ruling, including a provision to hire more Black teachers. Boston has never met the threshold , but it did create a pathway for younger Black educators. But Kemp also added that the impact of busing left a psychological toll. 

“I was born poor, I was at a huge disadvantage being born Black, and I was female,” Kemp said, “but I had both teachers and a community that believed in me. So I did succeed, but I don’t feel that that’s the case in Boston.”

Boston Public Schools remain highly segregated, but parents of color remain at the center of the push to equalize education. In February 2022, parents denounced the school system’s admissions process to the city’s elite exam schools that would have given a boost to applicants from high-poverty schools regardless of whether students came from middle- or upper-class families.

Kemp acknowledges that Boston schools still face some of the challenges from the 1970s, including deeply embedded misconceptions that Black students need white students to succeed. She doesn’t believe Garrity’s order succeeded in ending segregation in Boston schools or providing equal educational opportunities for its students. 

“But that wasn’t the order’s fault—that’s our society,” she said.

Kio Herrera

Kio Herrera is a reporter based in New York City. She is a graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, where she was a Toni Stabile Investigative Journalism Fellow. Her previous... More by Kio Herrera

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Home - General histories of the Boston Public School system and individual schools

Busing Crisis - The most controversial era for the Boston Public Schools

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Desegregating Boston Public Schools

Forty years later it has been added to the Boston Public Schools curriculum.  Busing changed not just Boston's public school system, but its politics, demographics and culture.  Possibly nothing in Boston's twentieth century history had a greater affect on the city and its citizens.

W hile not exhaustive,  t he following contains lists of material  that chronicle, discuss and explain this still controversial era and its aftermath. 

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• Desegregation: the Boston orders and their origin by Boston Bar Association Call Number: LB3062.B67x Publication Date: 1975

• Black Sisyphus: Boston schools and the Black community,1790-2000 by Bryn Upton Call Number: LA306 .B7U559 2003ax Publication Date: 2003 Photocopy of thesis. Also available through the Dissertations and Theses database.
• Court desengagement in the Boston public schools toward a theory of restorative law by Murninghan, Marsha Marie Call Number: LC214.23 .B67 1983x Publication Date: 1983 Thesis on microform. Also available through the Dissertations and Theses database.
• The effects of court-ordered school desegregation on the public school system of Boston, Massachusetts by O'Donnell, Mark D. Call Number: LC214.23.B67 O36 1996ax Publication Date: 1996 Photocopy of thesis. Also available through the Dissertations and Theses database.
• Nothing will stop us: the climax of racial segregation in the Boston public schools, 1963-1974 by Howard John Chislett Call Number: LC212.23.B67 C48 1979ax Publication Date: 1979 Thesis on microform
• The organization of anti-busing protest in Boston, 1973-1976 by Begley, Thomas M. Call Number: LC214.523.B67 B43 1981ax Publication Date: 1981 Thesis on microform.
• Social conflict and social movements an exploratory study of the black community of Boston attempting to change the Boston public schools by Mottl, Tahi Lani, 1945- Call Number: LC214.23.B67 M68 1976ax Publication Date: 1976 Thesis on microform. Also available through the Dissertations and Theses database.
• Farah Stockman's Boston Globe commentary This page contains links to Farah Stockman's commentary on the legacy of busing published in the Boston Globe, for which she won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for commentary.

Find a wealth of material--including film, audio files, photographs, letters, archival material from local organizations, and more, on the Digital Commonwealth website. This link shows all the available material digitized in Digital Commonwealth related to the busing era in Boston. 

Government Publications

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• Report on Racial Imbalance in the Boston Public Schools by United States Commission on Civil Rights, Massachusetts Advisory Committee Call Number: CR1.2:SCH6/10B Publication Date: 1965 Looks at the organization and racial composition of the schools; effect of discrimination in public housing; consideration of the policy of the Boston School Committee; comparison of student performance and teacher qualifications in predominately white, non-white and integrated schools and an examination of compensatory programs.
• Hearing Before the United States Commission on Civil Rights; Hearing Held in Boston, Massachusetts, June 16-20, 1975. This resource includes the text of the 1975 hearing before the United States Commission on Civil Rights held to examine the program and plans for the desegregation of Boston's schools. Developments surrounding the implementation of Phase I as ordered by the Federal district court in 1974. Also included are the plans for the implementation of Phase II as ordered by the same court in June 1975. Statements by State and national officials, as well as testimony from politicians, students, school administrators, educators, and representatives of public and private agencies are included.
• Student desegregation plan by US District Court. District of Massachusetts Call Number: GOVDOC/LB3062.U66X Publication Date: 1975 ..."Phase 2 plan"; shows number of minority and bilingual students in each school district; indicates which colleges and universities will work with each district; gives guidelines for assigning students, transportation considerations, timetables for implementation, etc....
• Fastcase This link opens in a new window Fastcase’s libraries include primary law from all 50 states, as well as deep federal coverage going back to 1 U.S. 1, 1 F.2d 1, 1 F.Supp. 1, and 1 B.R. 1. The Fastcase collection includes cases, statutes, regulations, court rules, and constitutions. Fastcase also provides access to a newspaper archive, legal forms, and a one-stop PACER search of federal filings.

• The desegregation packet by Massachusetts Research Center Call Number: GOVDOC/LB3062.M365/1974BX Publication Date: 1974 This packet is a compilation of reports giving a chronology of events in Boston, the constitutional background, financial prespectives, information on the use of the school bus in the US and brief factual material on desegregation in other US cities.

• A statement of policy and recommendations on the subject of racial imbalance and education in Boston public schools by Boston (Mass.). Superintendent of Public Schools Call Number: LB3062 .B66 Publication Date: 1965
• Student desegregation plan, December 16, 1974 in accordance with the order of October 31, 1974 of the u. S. District court, district of Massachusetts establishing filing date and general contents of a student desegregation plan by Boston Public Schools Call Number: GOVDOC/LB3062.S87X Publication Date: 1974 This report includes description and maps showing proposed zones and districts; discussion of the philosophy underlying new educational programs; lengthy description of the magnet school concept; explores the problem of racial balance in Boston as it relates to the surrounging suburbs; indicates statistics on the enrollment of various minority students in the communities within the Boston standard metropolitan area; emphasizes the need for the suburbs to take responsibility for integrating schools and describes the aims of various regional groups that are working to that end.

Media and More

The resources listed below do not fit neatly in the boxes above.  The Boston Globe and the Boston Public Schools have created websites tracking the history of desegregation in Boston.  The City of Boston Archives has pre-selected collections of official records so you do not need to search a catalog.  The ERIC database includes scholarly articles and government reports, many full-text.  The Boston TV News Digital Library website returns 150 videos when Boston busing is searched.

• An alternative plan for the integration of Boston's public schools by Mel King Call Number: MK/75.1 Publication Date: 1975 An alternative plan submitted by then Massachusetts State Representative Mel King to Judge Arthur Garrity.
• Beyond Busing : Boston School Desegregation Archival Resources at Northeastern University A place for educators, students, activists, researchers, and anyone with a general interest to begin investigating primary sources related to 35 plus years of work around school desegregation in the city. These sources explore the history of desegregation in Boston beginning with the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 through to the Morgan v. Hennigan case in 1974.
• Boston Public Library Microtext Collection A 2-reel collection of articles from the Boston Globe entitled Boston Busing, 1969-1975. These are arranged chronologically. The call number is LC214.53.B67B38x.
• Busing: 40 years later The Boston Globe's 40th anniversary report on busing in Boston. This website includes oral histories, photographs, video and in-depth articles.
• City of Boston Archives A collection of various city records from the Segregation Era, including those from the Citywide Parents Council, the Law Department, School Committee Secretary and Louise Day Hicks.
• Digital Commonwealth This links leads to photos found after searching the terms, Busing - School Integration.
• History of Boston Busing and Desegregation An online, interactive project of the Boston Public Schools intended for students, educators and average citizens.
• Moakley Archive and Institute Digital Collections at Suffolk University Recordings and transcripts for a selection of the interviews available through the Moakley Oral History Project.
• Moakley Oral History Project at Suffolk University The Moakley Archive Oral History Project includes transcripts of taped interfiews with Congressman John Joseph (Joe) Moakley's family, friends, staff, colleagues, political opponents, and constituents on issues pertinent to his career. Under Interviews by Topic, interviews addressing busing are listed under the "Garrity Decision". These interviews may include other topics, so check the table of contents to see where the busing discussion occurs. See below for a link to audio for select interviews.
• Boston Globe (1872-1992) via Proquest This link opens in a new window Searchable full-page and article reproductions back to the first issue on March 4, 1872. Coverage:  Morning Edition only.
• Boston Globe (1980-Present) This link opens in a new window Provides full-text articles for staff-written news items, feature stories, columns, and editorials for the Boston Globe . Coverage: 1980-present
• Boston TV News Digital Library This link opens in a new window This collaboration between the Boston Public Library, Cambridge Community television, Northeast Historic Film and WGBH Educational Foundation aims to bring to life local news stories produced in and about Boston from the early 1960’s to 2000. Coverage: Boston Public Library WHDH film collection (1960- mid-1970s) Cambridge Community Television (1988 to 1999) Northeast Historic Film’s WCVB film collection (1970-1979) WGBH The Reporters (1970-1973) Evening Compass (1973-1975) Ten O’Clock News (1976-1991)
• ERIC This link opens in a new window The Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC), sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, provides access to some 14,000 documents and over 20,000 journal articles from Resources in Education (RIE) and Current Index to Journals in Education (CIJE). In addition, ERIC provides coverage of conferences, meetings, government documents, theses, dissertations, reports, audiovisual media, bibliographies, directories, books and monographs. Coverage: 1966-present
• Last Updated: Jan 9, 2024 11:36 AM
• URL: https://guides.bpl.org/bpshistory

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Busing & Beyond: School Desegregation in Boston

The story of busing and desegregation in Boston begins much earlier than most people imagine. In 1847, a young black girl named Sarah Roberts sued the city of Boston for having to walk past five schools in order to attend an inferior black-only school in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of the city. The courts found against her in the landmark Roberts v. Boston case, but it turned the tide of public opinion sufficiently to have the state legislature outlaw school assignment by race in 1855. Massachusetts thus became one of the first states with legally mandated school integration, long before the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision.

However, the schools of the City of Boston gradually resegregated during the mid 1930s through the early 1970s. The reasons for this are many, but center on the city itself becoming far more racially segregated by neighborhood due to redlining (racially biased mortgage lending), discriminatory homeowners insurance practices, and, most notably, the construction of public housing that was allocated by race in the post-World-War-II era. Community and judicial efforts to push the City of Boston to voluntarily desegregate its schools failed, and in 1974, a federal judge imposed court-ordered desegregation via busing between neighborhoods in the landmark Morgan v. Hennigan decision. The court-ordered busing was implemented during the 1974-1975 school year, and assigned many students to schools in neighborhoods far from where they lived in an effort to racially balance school assignment. There was a hostile backlash by many white residents of Boston, and many city residents of all races had questions about the busing method for implementing desegregation as well as the efficacy of desegregation. The topic remains an issue in Boston, where despite the 1974 decision and continuing efforts to integrate its schools, many schools remain racially imbalanced today.

• Kerry Dunne, Weston Public Schools, Massachusetts

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• Postwar United States (1945 to early 1970s)
• African Americans

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In 1954, after debating the case,   Brown v. Topeka Board of Education , the United States Supreme Court ruled that segregation of public schools violated the Constitution by denying the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment . The Brown ruling had the greatest impact in southern states, where school segregation was "de jure" or implemented according to law. In many northern cities like Boston, segregation of schools was not codified as law but racial segregation of public schools still occurred. In Boston, this “de facto” (by fact) segregation happened in part because economic disparities affected neighborhood demographics and these disparities increased after WWII. African-Americans and whites settled into different neighborhoods; public schools located in those neighborhoods were attended by predominantly African-Americans or whites who lived nearby. Since schools grew increasingly segregated in Boston the 1950s and 1960s--not by law but by circumstance--public schools in Boston were not actively desegregated after the Brown decision.

In 1961, a Boston activist,  Ruth Batson , led a series of meetings between the Education Committee of the NAACP and the Education Committee on the Boston Public Schools (CBPS) to investigate the situation in Boston's schools. In the mid-1960s, some African American parents began boycotting Boston schools for the wide discrepancies in districts. Black school districts, they found, were overcrowded, understaffed, often dirty, and lacking in supplies and teaching tools while white districts had newer buildings, more teachers, ample supplies, and newer technology. According to CBPS reports, schools in black districts received only 65 percent of the per-student funding that schools in white districts received [1]. The Massachusetts State Education Coordinator appointed the Advisory Committee on Racial Imbalance and Education to investigate the allegations of inequity and racial segregation of Boston's public education system. In April 1965, the committee released a report detailing racial division within Boston's public schools. Finding that over half of the city's African American students attended 28 schools which were at least 80% black and that sixteen schools of the schools were 96% black, the committee concluded that such “racial imbalance” (the term they substituted for de facto segregation) “represents a serious conflict with the American creed of equal opportunity.”[2]. To redress the de facto segregation occurring in Boston public schools, they recommended that African American students be bused from their urban neighborhoods into surrounding suburbs that were inhabited predominantly by whites. Busing students, they believed, would help to achieve the goal of the newly-passed Massachusetts Racial Imbalance Act (1965): to promote racial and ethnic diversity in public schools. The Boston School Committee rejected the recommendation. In 1966, the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (METCO) was formed. The grassroots organization addressed the issue of de facto segregation and attempted to satisfy the aims of the Racial Imbalance Act in a peaceful and voluntary manner.

With goals of improving educational opportunities to urban students, decreasing the racial separation of urban and suburban schools, and diminishing de facto segregation of schools, METCO’s program bused thousands of African American children from Boston to suburban schools. Despite its success, METCO functioned as a voluntary program on a comparatively small scale; the majority of public schools were not fully integrated.  On March 14, 1972, the NAACP filed a class action lawsuit against the Boston School Committee on behalf of Tallulah Morgan and other concerned parents disturbed by the inequities their children encountered due to de facto segregation of schools. Led by Morgan, the plaintiffs in this case alleged that the Boston School Committee intentionally violated the 14th Amendment of the U. S. Constitution.

The case, formally titled  Talullah Morgan et al v. James Hennigan et al , was assigned to federal judge Wendell Arthur Garrity, Jr.  On June 21, 1974, after months of testimony and investigation, Judge Garrity found that the Boston School Committee had intentionally endorsed systemic segregation of the Boston Public Schools. The U. S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit unanimously upheld Garrity’s ruling and ordered the Boston School Committee to design a permanent school desegregation plan that addressed the placement of students and teachers, facility improvement procedures, and the use of busing on a citywide basis.

When the Boston School Committee failed to present an adequate plan, the federal court began desegregating the Boston public schools by busing students to schools outside of their neighborhoods. Garrity’s decision, especially the implementation of busing public school students to new schools, provoked heated reactions from residents of Boston and sparked much controversy.  Morgan v. Hennigan  was commonly referred to as “Boston Schools Desegregation Case” and became known colloquially in Boston as “the Garrity decision” or “forced busing.”

As exhibits on this site showcase, city and state officials were deluged with thousands of letters expressing the heated reactions of parents, teachers, students, and local organizations. As other exhibits explore, Judge Garrity also received thousands of letters from Boston's inhabitants, some protesting and others praising his decision. The letter below (courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration [NARA] in Boston), echoes the sentiment of thousands of letters written by African Americans who, feeling unprotected by Boston city officials, appealed directly to Garrity. 

Petitioning Garrity in 1975, Boston politicians and activists, including Bruce Bolling, Doris Bunte, and Melvin H. King, starkly described that in South Boston, “black children are unable to go to and from school in safety . . . are being subjected to harassment both day and night from random groups of whites cruising down the streets shouting epithets, hurling rocks and generally posing a threat to the well-being of Blacks in the city." They demanded:

Judge Garrity… it is your responsibility to see to it that your desegregation order is fully enforced… we do hope you act swiftly on these requests as we feel that the very life of the Black community in Boston hangs in the balance.”

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in Boston houses the federal records pertaining to the case, including copies of letters sent by government officials to Garrity. See: Civil Action Case Files, 1938-1995 for more materials and view  select digitized files  related to  Morgan v. Hennigan .

De facto segregation in education presented a thorny problem in Boston long before the Garrity decision to integrate schools by busing students outside of their neighborhoods sparked controversy, fear, violence, and attracted widespread international media attention. And the legacy of de facto segregation in Boston persisted long after the 1970s, as exhibits on this site illustrate. More information about the history of civil rights in America and the integration of Boston's schools may be found online; please see the  Online Resources on this site for a list of digital projects. All of the archival collections used on this site contain additional primary source materials. Additionally, the books listed below provide contextual information about the history of desegregation of Boston Public Schools.

Photograph credits

Photograph of Ruth Batson, ca.1961, courtesy of Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University. Rights status is not evaluated.

Portrait of Wendell Arthur Garrity, Jr. ca.1985, courtesy of  Holy Cross Magazine , Sept. 1999. Rights status is not evaluated. See full obituary  here .  

Select secondary sources related to desegregation of Boston Public Schools

Ruth Batson,  The Black Educational Movement in Boston: A Sequence of Historical Events: a Chronology  (Boston, MA: Northeastern University, School of Education), 2001.

Laura Shana Kohl, "The Response of the Catholic Church to the Desegregation of the Boston Public Schools, 1973-1976" (Cambridge, MA: A.B. Honors Thesis, Harvard University), 1987. 

Kofi Lomotey and Charles Teddlie. ed.,  Forty Years After the Brown Decision: Implications of School Desegregation for U.S. Education  (New York: AMS Press), 1996.

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

Jim Vrabel,  A People's History of the New Boston  (Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press), 2014.

[1] Vrabel,  A People's History , 49-50.

[2] Lukas,  Common Ground , 130.

“I’d Rather Go to School in the South”: How Boston’s School Desegregation Complicates the Civil Rights Paradigm

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• Jeanne Theoharis  

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F rom Mississippi to Massachusetts, unequal schooling was a crucial battleground of the black freedom struggles that followed WWII. Understood as one of the primary ways that a racial caste system was perpetuated in America, civil rights activists across the nation saw schools as the front line for racial justice. Analyzing school struggles outside of the South, then, is a critical site for exploring and expanding the civil rights narrative. Indeed, the nature of school segregation and the variety of tactics community members used to challenge it reveal the commonalties between the racial landscapes of Northern and Southern cities and the struggles to change them across the United States. At the same time, the particular ways that Northern segregation operated and the tools whites used to defend it meant that Northern activists had to prove that segregation actually existed, was harmful, and was enacted deliberately by the state. Because Northern segregation was not usually defended as segregation, scholars have often marginalized these civil rights struggles for educational equality, casting white resistance more sympathetically as a movement against busing to protect neighborhood schools. Within this paradigm, it becomes nearly impossible to understand how a black teenager living in Boston in 1974 would wish to be going to school in the South.

They seem to think we’re animals or something. They just don’t want us to be able to get the kind of education they’ve already got. — Margie, a black student who desegregated South Boston High on September 12, 1974 I’d rather go to school in the South.

— Cynthia, another black student who desegregated South Boston High and had a brick thrown at her head An earlier and different version of this paper was published in the fall 2001 issue of Radical History Review (issue 81): 61–93.1 would like to thank Adina Back, Matthew Countryman, Paisley Currah, Scott Dexter, Robin Kelley, Earl Lewis, Alejandra Marchevsky, Karen Miller, Komozi Woodard, my students at Brooklyn College, my three University of Michigan UROP research assistants: Jacqueline Woods, Nikkela Byrd, and Robyn Stanton, and my family for their insights, contributions and support of this work.

An earlier and different version of this paper was published in the fall 2001 issue of Radical History Review (issue 81): 61–93.1 would like to thank Adina Back, Matthew Countryman, Paisley Currah, Scott Dexter, Robin Kelley, Earl Lewis, Alejandra Marchevsky, Karen Miller, Komozi Woodard, my students at Brooklyn College, my three University of Michigan UROP research assistants: Jacqueline Woods, Nikkela Byrd, and Robyn Stanton, and my family for their insights, contributions and support of this work.

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Race, Politics, and Geography in the Development of Public Schools in the Southern United States

Chapter 10: Strategies of segregation: Race, residence, and the struggle for educational equality

Charter School Segregation in Detroit

While this paper focuses on school desegregation campaigns in the 1960s and 1970s, black Bostonians have a long history of activism around schools. Blacks petitioned for their own school in 1781, and in 1806 the city agreed to help fund an existing school in the African Meetinghouse. This was rebuilt in 1835 to become the Abiel Smith School. Having trouble sustaining the Smith School, blacks turned to pressuring the city to allow blacks into white schools. In 1855, the legislature passed a bill disallowing racial and religious distinctions for enrolling students in public schools. Emmett Buell, School Desegregation and Defended Neighborhoods (Lexington: Lexington Books, 1982), 59–60.

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Some examples include Robert Weisbrot, Freedom Bound (New York: W. W. Norton, 1990),

Adam Fairclough, Better Day Coming (New York: Viking, 2001),

William Chafe, The Unfinished Journey (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999),

Philip Klinkner, The Unsteady March (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), and the Eyes on the Prize documentary television series I and II (Blackside Productions, aired on PBS).

Most works portray whites as victims of liberal (suburban) good intention, and these authors see their job as contextualizing white resistance to busing as a class-based ethnic struggle. Such works include Anthony Lukas’s Common Ground (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985),

Alan Lupo’s Liberty’s Chosen Home (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1977),

George Metcalf’s From Little Rock to Boston (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1983),

Ronald Formisano’s Boston Against Busing: Race, Class, and Ethnicity in the 1960s and 1970s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991),

Book   Google Scholar  

and Michael Ross and William Berg’s “I Respectfully Disagree with the Judge’s Order”: The Boston School Desegregation Controversy (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1981), which portray blacks largely as passive actors in the drama.

Even Steven Taylor’s recent book, Desegregation in Boston and Buffalo: The Influence of Local Leaders (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), which claims to examine the role of local leaders focuses decisively on white resistance.

A clear example is James Patterson’s recent study of the effects of Brown v. Board of Education: “Starting in 1973, the struggle consumed the city for many years, generally (as in Little Rock in 1957 and in many other places) pitting working-class whites against wealthier white people—‘limousine liberals’ to their foes—and some blacks.” James Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 173

As historian Craig Wilder has written about New York, “ Segregation was the initial stride of domination. The Central Brooklyn ghetto allowed white people to hoard social benefits while people of color became the primary consumers of social ills. Its residents underwrote the life chances of those outside its borders.” Craig Wilder, A Covenant with Color (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 216.

Ruth Hill, ed., The Black Women Oral History Project from The Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America (Westport, Conn.: Mechler, 1991), 117.

Brian Sheehan, The Boston School Integration Dispute (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), 71–72.

Jon Hillson, The Battle of Boston (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1977), 65.

Tahi Mottl, “Social Conflict and Social Movements: An Exploratory Study of the Black Community of Boston Attempting to Change the Boston Public Schools” (Ph.D. diss., Brandeis University, 1976), 174.

Henry Hampton, Voices of Freedom (New York: Bantam, 1990), 588–589.

Ruth Batson, “Statement to the Boston School Committee” in Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader (New York: Penguin, 1991), 598.

Teele , Evaluating School Busing: Case Study of Operation Exodus (New York: Praeger, 1973).

For more in-depth treatment on the free schools, see Jonathan Kozol’s Free Schools (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972).

The decision withstood numerous appeals all the way to the Supreme Court and was given a bar association award the next year. Robert Dentier and Marvin Scott, Schools on Trial: An Inside Account of the Boston Desegregation Case (Cambridge: ABT Books, 1981), 4.

As the Boston Bar Association noted, Garrity “concluded that the School Committee’s actions over the past 10 years with respect to segregation in the schools may have helped to create the segregated residential patterns which the School Committee now sought to use in an attempt to justify the segregation found to exist in the schools. Even beyond that, Judge Garrity found that the School Committee ‘with awareness of the racial segregation of Boston’s neighborhoods, had deliberately incorporated that segregation in the school system.’“ John Adkins, James R. McHugh, and Katherine Seay, Desegregation: The Boston Orders and Their Origin (Boston Bar Association Committee on Desegregation, August 1975), 22.

It is interesting how whites in Boston are never called segregationists, while whites in Southern cities who attacked desesgregation are. See also David Roediger’s The Wages of Whiteness (New York: Verso, 1991) for a more extended exposition of how white working-class identity has long rested on ideas of racial superiority and the ways these ideas provide a psychic wage for working-class whites whose class position might make them natural allies with black workers. Michael MacDonald’s memoir of growing up in South Boston makes a similar point, “We all were on food stamps but most of the jokes around town were about black people on welfare. The same thing with living in the projects and eating wellie cheese—those were black things.” Michael MacDonald, All Souls: A Family Story from Southie (New York: Ballantine, 1999), 71.

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Theoharis, J. (2003). “I’d Rather Go to School in the South”: How Boston’s School Desegregation Complicates the Civil Rights Paradigm. In: Theoharis, J., Woodard, K. (eds) Freedom North: Black Freedom Struggles Outside the South, 1940–1980. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4039-8250-6_6

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The Lasting Legacy of the Busing Crisis

Desegregating schools by shuttling kids across town failed. That doesn’t mean the achievability or significance of the original goal must fail, too.

“When we would go to white schools, we’d see these lovely classrooms, with a small number of children in each class,” Ruth Batson recalled. As a Boston civil-rights activist and the mother of three, Batson gained personal knowledge of how the city’s public schools shortchanged black youth in the 1950s and 1960s. “The teachers were permanent. We’d see wonderful materials. When we’d go to our schools, we would see overcrowded classrooms, children sitting out in the corridors, and so forth. And so, then we decided that where there were a large number of white students, that’s where the care went. That’s where the books went. That’s where the money went.”

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Batson was one of the millions of black parents and citizens in cities like Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, and New York who saw firsthand how school segregation and inferior educational opportunities harmed black students in the decades after Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Like black parents across the country Batson cared deeply about education and fought on behalf of her children and her community. Batson’s three-decade-long struggle for education equality in Boston illuminates both the long history of black civil-rights activism in the North and the resistance from white politicians and parents that thwarted school desegregation. The battles Batson fought are still ongoing and are being discussed today with renewed urgency. Thanks to work by Nikole Hannah-Jones , Richard Kahlenberg , and many others, school integration is being debated publicly in a way not seen in nearly 40 years. The popular understanding of school desegregation, however, is sketchy, and terms like “busing,” “de facto segregation,” and “neighborhood schools” are commonly used but poorly understood. There is a gap between what scholars like Jeanne Theoharis and Ansley Erickson have established about the history of school segregation and how the popular conversation proceeds. In order to think about how school integration can work in 2016 and beyond, it is crucial to reckon with the history of school-desegregation efforts in cities like Boston and to appreciate how people like Batson dedicated their lives to improving educational opportunities for black children.

Batson was on the front lines of the school-desegregation battles in Boston. Born and raised in Roxbury, Batson recalled being exposed to politics at an early age by her Jamaican parents, who supported Marcus Garvey. “We heard racial issues constantly being discussed” at regular Sunday community meetings at Toussaint L’Ouverture Hall, Batson remembered. “I knew that there were flaws in the cradle of liberty.” As a former Boston public-schools student herself and the mother of three school-age daughters, Batson knew Boston’s schools were resolutely segregated, with vast differentials in funding, school resources, and teacher quality. Batson ran for the Boston School Committee in 1951, and her campaign fliers urged voters, “For your children’s sake, elect a mother.” Though she lost the election, Batson nonetheless dedicated herself to showing people how Boston school officials used subtle techniques to maintain school segregation. She was dismayed to see Boston’s schools grow more segregated in the decades after Brown , as the district bused white children to white schools with more resources and more experienced teachers.

“What black parents wanted was to get their children to schools where there were the best resources for educational growth—smaller class sizes, up-to-date-books,” Batson recalled. “They wanted their children in a good school building, where there was an allocation of funds which exceeded those in the black schools; where there were sufficient books and equipment for all students.” In short, Batson understood that school integration was about more than having black students sit next to white students. As she knew, more than 80 percent of Boston’s black elementary-school students attended majority-black schools, most of which were overcrowded. Across Boston’s public schools in the 1950s, per-pupil spending averaged $340 for white students compared with only $240 for blacks students. Over the years, data of this sort failed to persuade the Boston School Committee, which steadfastly denied the charge that school segregation even existed in Boston.

In the 1960s, Boston School Committee chairwoman Louise Day Hicks, who became a local and national symbol of the “white backlash” to school desegregation, consistently resisted the demands of civil-rights advocates. Describing a particularly contentious meeting in August 1963, The Boston Globe reported, “Hicks gaveled the last meeting with Negro leaders to a close in something short of three minutes when the speaker mentioned the words, de facto segregation—just mentioned the words.” For Hicks, acknowledging segregation at all might lead to having to do something about it. “We’re not quibbling about a word,” Batson told the Globe . “It is not the word. It is the fact that it exists. Our whole quarrel is with their refusing to admit that the situation exists.”

Batson and other civil-rights activists, parents, and students in Boston were organized and creative in their protests against school segregation. In June 1963, for example, Batson and other NAACP members met with the Boston School Committee while 300 black Bostonians demonstrated outside of City Hall. “We make this charge: that there is segregation in fact in our Boston public-school system,” Batson told the School Committee. “The injustices present in our school system hurt our pride, rob us of our dignity, and produce results which are injurious not only to our future but to those of the city, state, and nation.” In a hearing room crowded with press, the School Committee did not respond positively to these charges. “We made our presentation and everything broke loose,” Batson recalled. “We were insulted. We were told … our kids were stupid, and this was why they didn’t learn. We were completely rejected that night.” A week later, Batson and other civil-rights advocates organized a “Stay Out for Freedom” protest, with nearly 3,000 black junior and senior high-school students staying away from public school. Organizers preferred “stay out” to “boycott” because students were staying away from public school to attend community-organized “Freedom Schools.” “I feel that the Stay Out for Freedom Day was a success,” Batson told the Globe . “It demonstrated to the Boston community that the Negro community is concerned and that they want action.”

In September 1963, a month after the March on Washington, Batson led more than 6,000 black and white protesters on a march through Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood to protest school segregation. The march concluded at Sherwin School, built in 1870, five years after the end of the Civil War. Pointing to the dilapidated 93-year-old building, NAACP Boston executive secretary Thomas Atkins told the crowd: “This is where Negro kids go to school in Boston! What are you going to do about it?” After observing a moment of silence for the four young girls killed a week earlier in the bombing at the 16th Street Baptist Burch in Birmingham, Alabama, the crowd joined Susan Batson, Ruth Batson’s teenage daughter, in a chant that clearly outlined the marchers’ demands. Susan Batson shouted, “Jim Crow—” The crowd replied, “Must go!” “The School Committee”—“Must go!” “De Facto”—“Must go!” “Mrs. Hicks”—“Must go!”

As civil-rights pressure continued through the fall of 1963, Hicks and the Boston School Committee only grew stronger in their opposition to school desegregation. When Hicks received the most votes in the November 1963 School Committee election, she saw the victory as a referendum on school desegregation. “The people of Boston have given their answer to the de facto segregation question,” Hicks argued. Having failed to oust Hicks or elect someone to the School Committee who would support school desegregation, the black community organized a second “Stay Out For Freedom” on February 26, 1964. The “stay out” kept more than 20,000 students (more than 20 percent of the city’s public-school students) out of school and connected Boston to similar school boycotts that took place earlier in the month in New York and Chicago. Like her peers in other cities, Batson encountered school officials and politicians who refused to believe that unconstitutional school segregation could exist outside of the South.

It wasn’t until the mid-1970s that Boston’s “busing crisis” finally garnered national attention. It was easy to forget that this wasn’t a new phenomenon, that black people in Boston and other cities had been fighting for years to secure equal education, and that powerful local officials and national politicians underwrote school segregation in the North. School desegregation was about the constitutional rights of black students, but in Boston and other Northern cities, the story has been told and retold as a story about the feelings and opinions of white people. The mass protests and violent resistance that greeted school desegregation in mid-1970s Boston engraved that city’s “busing crisis” into school textbooks and cemented the failure of busing and school desegregation in the popular imagination. Contemporary news coverage and historical accounts of Boston’s school desegregation have emphasized the anger that white people in South Boston felt and have rendered Batson and other black Bostonians as bit players in their own civil-rights struggle.

One reason Boston’s “busing crisis” continues to resonate for so many people is that it serves as a convenient end point for the history of civil rights, where it is juxtaposed with Brown v. Board of Education (1954) or the Little Rock school-integration crisis (1957). In this telling, the civil-rights movement, with the support of federal officials and judges, took a wrong turn in the North and encountered “white backlash.” The trouble with the “backlash” story is that the perspectives of white parents who opposed school desegregation figured prominently in the very civil-rights legislation against which they would later rebel. In drafting the 1964 Civil Rights Act, for example, the bill’s Northern sponsors drew a sharp distinction between segregation by law in the South and so-called “racial imbalance” in the North, amending the Act to read:

“Desegregation” means the assignment of students to public schools and within such schools without regard to their race, color, religion, or national origin, but “desegregation” shall not mean the assignment of students to public schools in order to overcome racial imbalance.

This language was directly designed to keep federal civil-rights enforcement of school desegregation focused away from the North. White politicians and parents in cities like Boston, Chicago, and New York regularly pointed to the 1964 Civil Rights Act to justify the maintenance of white schools. This landmark legislation therefore actually allowed school segregation to expand in Northern cities.

Most people today associate busing with Boston in the 1970s, but as Batson knew, organized resistance to school desegregation in the North started in the mid-1950s. As early as 1957, white parents in New York rallied against a proposed plan to transfer 400 black and Puerto Rican students from Brooklyn to schools in Queens. In Detroit in 1960, thousands of white parents organized a school boycott to protest the busing of 300 black students from an overcrowded school to a school in a white neighborhood. In Boston in 1965, Hicks made opposition to busing a centerpiece of her political campaigns. “It was Mrs. Hicks who kept talking against busing children when the NAACP hadn’t even proposed busing,” the Globe noted.

With busing, Northerners had found a palatable way to oppose desegregation without appealing to the explicitly racist sentiments they preferred to associate with Southerners. “I have probably talked before 500 or 600 groups over the last years about busing,” Los Angeles Assemblyman Floyd Wakefield said in 1970. “Almost every time, someone has gotten up and called me a ‘racist’ or a ‘bigot.’ But now, all of the sudden, I am no longer a ‘bigot.’ Now I am called ‘the leader of the antibusing effort.’” White parents and politicians framed their resistance to school desegregation in terms like “busing” and “neighborhood schools,” and this rhetorical shift allowed them to support white schools and neighborhoods without using explicitly racist language.

Describing opposition to busing as something other than resistance to school desegregation was a move that obscured the histories of racial discrimination and legal contexts for desegregation orders. In covering school desegregation in Boston and other Northern cities, contemporary news media took up the busing frame, and most histories of the era have followed suit. Americans’ understanding of school desegregation in the North is skewed as a result, emphasizing innocent or unintended “de facto segregation” over the housing covenants, federal mortgage redlining, public-housing segregation, white homeowners associations, and discriminatory real-estate practices that produced and maintained segregated neighborhoods, as well as the policies regarding school siting, districting, and student transfers that produced and maintained segregated schools.

Understanding the history of school desegregation in Boston and other Northern cities makes it clear that so-called “de facto” residential and school segregation in the North were anything but innocent. While civil-rights advocates initially promoted this distinction between “Southern-style” and “Northern-style” segregation to build a political consensus against Jim Crow laws in the South, the de jure/de facto dichotomy ultimately made it possible for public officials, judges, and citizens in the North and South to deny legal responsibility for the visible realities of racial segregation. As black writer James Baldwin observed in 1965, “‘De facto segregation’ means Negroes are segregated, but nobody did it.”

Over the past two decades, scholars like Thomas Sugrue, Beryl Satter, and David Freund have revealed the vast web of governmental policies that produced and maintained racially segregated neighborhoods and schools in the North, as well as the civil-rights activists who fought against these structures of racial discrimination. These studies provide overwhelming evidence that, in every region of the country, neighborhood and school segregation flowed from intentional public policies, not from innocent private actions or free-market forces. Among the most important aspects of this body of scholarship is that it shows that the distinction between de jure segregation and de facto segregation is a false one.

The crisis in Boston and in other cities that faced court-ordered school desegregation was about unconstitutional racial discrimination in the public schools, not about busing. Judge W. Arthur Garrity’s decision in Morgan v. Hennigan (1974) made it clear that the Boston School Committee and superintendent “took many actions in their official capacities with the purpose and intent to segregate the Boston public schools and that such actions caused current conditions of segregation in the Boston public schools.” Judges issued busing orders to school districts—such as Denver, Detroit, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and Pontiac—that were found guilty of intentional de jure segregation in violation of Brown and the Fourteenth Amendment. U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare chief Leon Panetta—who was fired from President Richard Nixon’s administration for advocating for investigations into school segregation in the North—said in late 1969:

It has become clear to me that the old bugaboo of keeping federal hands off Northern school systems because they are only de facto segregated, instead of de jure segregation as the result of some official act, is a fraud … There are few if any pure de facto situations. Lift the rock of de facto, and something ugly and discriminatory crawls out from under it.

The challenge for civil-rights lawyers and activists like Batson was that it was extraordinarily difficult to lift all of the rocks of “de facto” to expose the illegal discrimination underneath.

For over half a century, parents, school officials, politicians, and writers from across the political spectrum have described busing as unrealistic, unnecessary, and unfair, most often citing Boston as evidence that busing and school desegregation failed. The problem is that busing is so routinely described as having failed that Americans have lost sight of what this equation—“busing failed”—asks them to believe about the history of civil rights in the United States. Agreeing that busing and school desegregation failed makes it possible to dismiss the educational goals that were a pillar of the civil-rights movement and to dismiss the constitutional promise of equality endorsed by Brown , though it was never fully realized. This busing narrative is comforting because it authorizes people to accept the continuing racial and socioeconomic segregation of schools in the United States as inevitable and unchangeable. The national resistance to school desegregation was immense but not inevitable. If Americans are indeed ready to think seriously again about school integration, we must start by reckoning with the history of school segregation in the North and remembering the stories of people like Ruth Batson.

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Introduction, boston public schools before the 1970s, boston’s educational reform movement, federal tyranny, or opportunity, citizen participation, bureaucratic resistance, disillusionment and decline of the councils, explaining failure.

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Making Desegregation Work: Citizen Participation and Bureaucratic Resistance in the Boston Public Schools, 1974–85

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Greta de Jong, Making Desegregation Work: Citizen Participation and Bureaucratic Resistance in the Boston Public Schools, 1974–85, Journal of Social History , Volume 56, Issue 2, Winter 2022, Pages 463–489, https://doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shac028

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Court-ordered desegregation of the Boston Public Schools in the 1970s has often been cast as an example of federal overreach that inflicted a disruptive “forced busing” plan on the city, generating only racial conflict and trauma while failing to ensure educational equality. Yet by encouraging citizen participation in developing and implementing plans for eliminating racism from the school system, the court order opened space for parents and community members to get involved in the public schools on an unprecedented scale. While some white Bostonians responded to desegregation with racist violence, others took advantage of the opportunities provided by the court order to press their vision for a more inclusive school system that would prepare children to live in an interracial democracy. Their efforts came up against an entrenched, self-interested bureaucracy that had no interest in sharing power or significantly reallocating educational resources. The struggles over education reform that played out in the offices of school administrators reveal the diverse interests and motivations that undermined school desegregation in Boston and allowed inequities to persist.

Amid media coverage of angry white people throwing rocks at buses full of children, reports of fights and racial conflicts in newly integrated schools, and commentaries that depicted a city in crisis, a sun-colored pamphlet produced by the Citywide Parents Advisory Council (CPAC) presented a brighter side to court-ordered desegregation of the Boston Public Schools (BPS) in the 1970s. Titled Parents Make a Difference! and featuring an interracial group of adults and children on the cover, the pamphlet explained how the parent and community councils established by the court order were working to enhance education for all children in the system. Already, parents had secured new resources and improvements at a dozen schools around the city, and the councils were active in shaping implementation of the desegregation plan. Parent participation was crucial to ensuring quality education, CPAC asserted, and the council network offered many opportunities for those seeking to influence decisions that affected their children. 1

Encouraging parents and other citizens to take a more active role in the BPS was a central component of the plan, but one that critics of the court order largely ignored. The Boston School Committee (BSC) and the segregationist group Restore Our Alienated Rights (ROAR) denigrated District Court Judge W. Arthur Garrity Jr. for imposing “forced busing” on families and accused him of abrogating parents’ rights. Casting themselves as defenders of the city’s beleaguered working class, some political leaders excoriated middle-class suburbanites who supported desegregation but were themselves exempt from a plan that only applied to the inner city and left all-white schools in the larger metropolitan area untouched. 2 Like their counterparts in the South, segregationists in Boston railed against the tyranny of the federal government and lamented the loss of (mostly fictional) neighborhood schools attended by children who lived within walking distance. Framing desegregation as an edict passed down by dictatorial elites was a useful tactic for inciting resistance to the court order while shielding opponents from accusations of racism. 3

Early accounts of Boston’s “busing crisis” noted the bigotry that lay beneath the surface of these arguments but did little to challenge the notion that the desegregation plan came with great costs and few concrete benefits for children or the city as a whole. Focusing on working-class white neighborhoods such as South Boston and Charlestown where much of the violence was concentrated, studies by Alan Lupo, J. Anthony Lukas, Emmett H. Buell, and Ronald P. Formisano highlight the class resentments as well as the racial antagonism expressed by parents who felt victimized by out-of-touch lawmakers and judges. These authors fault the court order for focusing too heavily on racial ratios and failing to acknowledge underlying economic inequities. A common theme running through these works is that poor white and Black families were equally afflicted by a plan that, according to Lupo, amounted to little more than shuffling children “from one lousy school to another, by telling oppressed whites and oppressed blacks that they must mingle for some greater social good.” 4

More recent strands in the historiography have shifted the focus away from white reactions to desegregation and examined the antiracist activism of African American and Latinx residents in the decades leading up to the court order. As analyses by Jeanne F. Theoharis, Zebulon Vance Miletsky, and Tatiana M. F. Cruz have shown, desegregation did not come to the BPS through the autocratic actions of a lone federal judge. Rather, decades of lobbying and protests finally secured compliance with state and federal laws that mandated equal access to education. Viewing the struggles over desegregation through the eyes of families that had long been denied rights that white residents took for granted foregrounds the broader social justice goals that were at stake and decenters the complaints of more privileged citizens. Pushing back against scholars who explain racist violence as an outgrowth of class oppression, Theoharis warns against naturalizing such responses as the only ones possible on the part of working-class white people, noting that both opposition to and support for the court order cut across socio-economic groups. 5

Examining citizen participation in the court-ordered councils shows that alternatives to the “reactionary populism” expressed by segregationists did indeed exist. 6 While their racist neighbors protested and refused to comply with the desegregation plan, other white Bostonians joined efforts to make it work. People on both sides understood that Garrity’s court order came at a pivotal time in the nation’s efforts to ensure educational equity, giving events in Boston significance beyond the city. Supporters hoped Boston could become a model for successfully integrating urban school systems by encouraging citizen involvement and paying attention to the quality of education offered “at the end of the bus ride.” Opponents warned that chaotic schools and an exodus of middle-class families lay in store for cities that were subjected to similar orders from the courts. With public support for racial justice already waning in the mid-1970s, the outcome of Boston’s desegregation “ordeal” had national ramifications. 7

The well-publicized activities of ROAR members and others who obstructed implementation of Garrity’s orders convinced many Americans that federally mandated school integration was a mistake. Meanwhile, those who labored in support of desegregation were largely hidden from view, depriving citizens seeking to address persistent racial disparities in education then and now of potential frameworks for success. Excavating the experiences of Bostonians who worked across racial and class lines to improve education for all children provides a counternarrative to histories that focus on conflict and failure. It may also shed light on the conditions that are apt to foster such cooperation and those that can destroy positive efforts for systemic change. Tracing the rise, achievements, and limits of Boston’s court-ordered parent and community councils reveals a piece of the story that is left unexamined in existing studies, which mention the councils only in passing and without noting their roots in local activism or their transformative possibilities.

The councils had their origins in an interracial education reform movement that pre-dated the 1970s and encompassed goals that went beyond desegregation. Court intervention enabled these activists to press their vision for remaking the school system through the cooperative efforts of families, teachers, administrators, political leaders, and communities, working for the benefit of all. By mandating citizen participation in developing and implementing plans for eliminating racism from the school system, Judge Garrity opened space for people to get involved in the public schools on an unprecedented scale. An extensive network of volunteer councils working at the school, district, and city levels was charged with monitoring progress toward desegregation and ensuring the delivery of quality education throughout the BPS. Early achievements offered some hope for those seeking to create an inclusive public school system that could better serve the needs of an interracial democracy. Over time, however, the obstructive tactics of administrators who preferred to maintain the status quo undermined reform efforts and embittered many council participants. Alongside the overt and violent opposition of ROAR, the quiet resistance of school system personnel presented major obstacles and increased the amount of labor required to make desegregation work. Moving the spotlight away from the racial conflicts that occurred in white working-class neighborhoods to examine the battles over education policy fought in the offices of the Boston School Department (BSD) illuminates how other, more powerful forces blocked social change in this era.

Boston’s public school system was the oldest in the nation, dating back to edicts issued by leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1640s requiring communities to provide young people with instruction in reading, writing, and religious values. The American Revolution pushed public education in a more secular direction, giving schools a new role in preparing citizens to live as free and independent members of a democratic republic. 8 In the nineteenth century, Massachusetts Board of Education secretary Horace Mann and other supporters of universal free education argued that public schools benefited the whole society by promoting shared values, breaking down class barriers, generating economic prosperity, and ensuring an informed citizenry. 9 Under the leadership of Mann and superintendent John D. Philbrick, school administration and instruction methods were modernized, and at the turn of the twentieth century the BPS was widely regarded as one of the best school systems in the nation. In the 1930s, financial constraints imposed by the Great Depression and the temptations offered to those who would use their positions for personal gain began to undermine educational quality. Political rather than educational concerns dominated administrators’ decision making. The five-member BSC became a favorite domain for corrupt politicians to acquire power, distribute jobs and contracts to their friends, and use as a springboard for election to higher office. In 1944, a study of the BPS by the city’s Finance Commission observed that the BSC operated without clear policies or plans and “without any adequate conception of the responsibilities of a public board or the obligations of public stewardship.” Aging and unsafe buildings, outdated curricula based on rote learning, and an insular teaching corps all undermined effective instruction, leaving graduates ill-prepared for a rapidly changing economy and society. 10

Parents who had concerns about Boston’s public schools faced dismissive attitudes from teachers, principals, and system administrators. In the 1960s, young couple Louise and Larry Bonar joined a small group of other parents to push for changes in their local schools in Brighton, without much success. School officials thought “that was not any of our business,” Louise Bonar explained. “We were just parents, providing the raw material, and how dare we ask them?” 11 In a letter to BPS superintendent William Ohrenberger in 1968, Larry Bonar complained that many principals took suggestions for reform as a personal affront and viewed citizens who were interested in what was happening in the schools as “troublemakers and subversives.” Even parents who simply wanted to monitor their own child’s progress could not do so because educators withheld “basic information they have every right to know.” 12

The only official avenue for participation was through the Home and School Association (HSA), an organization of parents and teachers that was funded and controlled by the BSC. In most schools, the HSA acted as a rubber stamp for principals and rarely challenged their authority. Teachers whose jobs and promotions depended on pleasing higher-level administrators avoided criticisms of the school system and generally voted the way their principals told them to. Parent members were expected to endorse whatever decisions were made by teachers and administrators. 13 A study conducted by Boston’s League of Women Voters (LWV) in 1967 quoted BSC member Thomas Eisenstadt as saying that the HSA was a “company store” and that “no impetus for change or innovation ever comes from the Association.” Noting that some other urban school systems allowed more meaningful parent participation than the BPS, the LWV advocated for mechanisms that gave citizens a greater voice in shaping school policy. 14

For African Americans, the school system’s deficiencies were exacerbated by racism. White people dominated the BSC, the HSA, and the BSD, and school officials generally ignored concerns raised by Black residents regarding the education of their children. 15 Racial discrimination within the BPS intensified in the mid-twentieth century as policy makers responded to an influx of Black migrants from the South. Between 1940 and 1970, the city’s African American population increased from 23,679 to 104,707. Meanwhile, many white Bostonians moved to the suburbs or left the area altogether, reducing their number from 745,366 to 524,709. 16 As the proportion of Black children in the BPS increased to more than 30 percent in those decades, school officials grew alarmed. Fearing the loss of more white families from the system, the BSC adopted policies aimed at containing Black students within particular schools. 17

Although a state law passed in 1855 prohibited schools from denying admission to anyone for racial or religious reasons, BPS administrators and urban planners used zoning, school siting, and enrollment policies to create an education system that segregated students almost as effectively as the Jim Crow South. 18 Reports prepared by the Boston branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1963 noted that Black students were concentrated in the city’s oldest and most dilapidated school buildings, enduring leaky roofs, broken plumbing, loose windows, and overcrowded classrooms. Children attending mostly Black schools scored lower than city averages on achievement tests that were administered each year in all grades. 19 Some teachers and principals openly expressed racist beliefs suggesting that African Americans failed to succeed academically because they were naturally unintelligent or did not value education. 20

Black activists were not the only ones concerned about these conditions. The fight against Nazi Germany during World War II and the rise of the postwar civil rights movement convinced many white Bostonians of the need for a more egalitarian system of public education. Growing up and attending schools in the working-class, racially transitioning neighborhood of Roxbury, Henry Allen noticed the racism that permeated the BPS. After graduating from college in the mid-1960s, he remained in Roxbury as it became a predominantly African American community and supported school desegregation efforts. For Allen, equalizing educational opportunities for all children was “absolutely the right thing to do.” 21 Louise Bonar reached the same conclusion watching television coverage of the violent attacks on civil rights activists who participated in mass protests against segregation in the South. Bonar shocked her relatives and neighbors in Brighton by studying urban teaching at Simmons College, accepting a post at a mostly Black school, and actively seeking out opportunities for her family to interact with African Americans. 22

While some parents fixated on the harm their children might suffer if they attended racially mixed schools, others viewed integration as an educational necessity that benefited all students and the society as a whole. Louise and Larry Bonar were appalled by the racism and parochialism they saw in Brighton’s mostly white schools and the effects that this stultification had on young minds. Children were not being taught to think or develop problem-solving skills but to obey authority, and any display of creativity or imagination was quickly stifled. Seeking a different type of education for their children, the Bonars joined Henry Allen and other parents to secure federal funding and BSC approval for the William Monroe Trotter Elementary School in Roxbury, an early magnet school that drew a diverse student body from throughout the city and some suburbs when it opened in 1969. 23 Unlike other white parents who cited concerns about safety or lower educational standards as reasons for opposing desegregation, those who founded the Trotter School viewed ensuring equal rights for African Americans and doing what was best for their own children as complementary rather than competing goals. Allen believed integration was “a question of absolute justice” and that “entwined in the very definition of a quality education is a diverse education, is people knowing and understanding different communities and cultures and learning from one another.” 24

These families’ efforts on behalf of BPS children reflected nationwide trends that encouraged grassroots movements for social change across the political spectrum in the 1960s and 1970s. The civil rights movement, antiwar movement, and the feminist movement inspired progressive reformers and provided models for activism aimed at making institutions more responsive to constituents who were previously ignored. Community action programs established by the federal government’s Great Society initiatives mandated that low-income people be included in designing projects that served their communities. Many Americans joined neighborhood organizations that tackled local issues such as inadequate public services, corrupt municipal governments, and urban renewal projects that threatened to destroy people’s homes. 25 Both opponents and supporters of desegregation in Boston often had experience with earlier struggles that pitted them against the city’s political elite. Louise Bonar recalled that change was “in the air” and that despite the challenges of starting a new interracial school in Roxbury, it did not seem unusual “to just take an idea and [say] ‘We should do that, so let’s do that.’” 26

Although Black activists led the struggle for desegregation, a diverse coalition of labor, religious, and civic organizations supported these efforts. At a public hearing held at the request of the NAACP in June 1963, BSC members heard from representatives of dozens of groups urging them to end school segregation in the city. Ruth Batson of the NAACP’s Education Committee provided a detailed account of research findings that demonstrated clear patterns of racial discrimination in the BPS. Labor leader Julius Bernstein outlined the role that working people had played in advocating for public schools since the nineteenth century and called on the committee to fulfill “the promise of American democracy” by ensuring equal educational opportunities for African Americans. Sumner Rosen of the American Veterans’ Committee decried the lack of transparency that characterized the relationship between school administrators and the community, calling on the BSC to restore trust through better communication and accountability. Spokespeople for the Massachusetts Council of Churches, the Congress of Racial Equality, Citizens for the Boston Public Schools, the Bay State Law Society, and other organizations sounded similar themes, highlighting the racial disparities and bureaucratic indifference that undermined education for all children in the system. 27

Despite the evidence amassed by reformers, the all-white BSC denied that it discriminated against African Americans. Committee members cited residential segregation, parents’ preference for sending children to schools close to their homes, and the cultural backgrounds of Black students—anything but the decisions made by themselves—as reasons for the problems cited by their critics. 28 Committee chair Louise Day Hicks leveraged her opposition to desegregation and defense of “neighborhood schools” to enhance her political career, winning election to the city council in 1969 and going on to serve a term in the U.S. House of Representatives in the early 1970s. 29 Most other committee members also maintained an intransigent stance and refused to admit that racism was a problem in the BPS. In March 1965, Joseph Lee argued that the BSC had always acted with the best interests of African Americans at heart and contrasted the welcoming atmosphere in Boston with the exclusionary tactics of suburban communities that aimed to keep them out. According to Lee, the concentration of Black students in certain schools proved there was no discrimination, since no self-respecting racist would allow white students to be “submerged by Negro majorities in 45 Boston schools.” 30

Continued pressure from civil rights activists who organized school stay-outs, mass demonstrations, vigils, and a visit to the city by Martin Luther King Jr. failed to move the committee. The NAACP and its allies had more success with state education leaders, who agreed to study the extent and effects of “racial imbalance” (a euphemism used to describe segregation that seemed unintentional rather than mandated by law) in Massachusetts schools and issued a report in April 1965 recommending action. 31 In August, the legislature passed the Racial Imbalance Act (RIA) and ordered districts that contained imbalanced schools to develop plans for addressing the problem. 32 Still, the BSC declined to act. For the next decade, the committee repeatedly filed inadequate plans that were rejected by the board of education, forfeiting millions of dollars in state funds that could have been used to enhance education and ease the transition to integrated schools. Meanwhile, residential segregation and the number of imbalanced schools in Boston increased. Between 1964 and 1972, white enrollment in the BPS dropped from 70,703 to 63,798 and nonwhite enrollment increased from 21,097 to 33,429, pushing the number of imbalanced schools to sixty-four. 33 Instead of adopting state officials’ suggestions for integrating the schools, however, BSC members used the shifting demographics to justify their inaction, arguing that redistricting and other recommended changes would only lead to more white flight from the system. The committee’s stonewalling eventually made it impossible to draw up effective plans without including busing among the tools used to comply with the law. When state officials drew up such a plan for desegregating Boston’s schools in November 1972, the BSC refused to implement it and instead challenged it in court. 34

As the committee continued to block reform efforts, an interracial alliance began to coalesce around efforts to elect progressive candidates to the BSC and ensure more citizen involvement in policy decisions. In 1970, a directory of organizations concerned with the state of public education in Boston listed more than a hundred neighborhood organizations, social service agencies, parent groups, civic associations, educational and cultural institutions, and other entities representing every social demographic and geographical area of the city. Activists from a broad cross-section of these organizations formed the City-Wide Educational Coalition (CWEC) in January 1972. Executive director Mary Ellen Smith was a white teacher who was fired along with five others for supporting protests by Black students and parents at the Christopher Gibson School in 1968, and the group included others who were active in earlier reform efforts as well. 35 Members developed a “Community Agenda for the Boston Public Schools” that asserted the need to “utilize the creative skills of parents, teachers, students, and community residents in the development and execution of school policy.” More cooperation between the BSD and the broader community, improved services for bilingual and special education students, initiatives to hire more racially diverse teachers and administrators, and an end to racial and gender discrimination were needed to ensure high-quality education in the BPS. School desegregation was essential, CWEC stated, “because it is law, because it is good educational practice and because it is necessary to building a cohesive society.” 36

In the early 1970s reformers pressed the BSC to create parent and community advisory councils in each school and district. Committee members expressed mild support for the idea, but it ultimately fell by the wayside as finding ways to prevent or delay desegregation consumed their attention. 37 Frustrated by the BSC’s intransigence and inadequate enforcement of the RIA, a group of Black parents filed a lawsuit in federal court in March 1972. No longer content to acquiesce in the pretense that racial imbalance was accidental or caused by forces beyond school officials’ control, the plaintiffs’ legal team charged the BSC with violating the Fourteenth Amendment by deliberately maintaining a segregated school system that denied Black children an equal education. 38

Judge Garrity’s ruling in the case, filed on June 21, 1974, brought the weight of the federal government down on the side of racial justice. The 152-page decision rejected the BSC’s professions of innocence and carefully documented how school officials discriminated against African Americans. Responding to claims that BSC policies aimed to preserve neighborhood schools in accordance with parents’ preferences, Garrity observed that exceptions were commonly granted to enable white students to avoid attending mostly Black schools that were closer to their homes. Even if parents’ concerns were genuine, he noted, they did not relieve the committee of its legal responsibility to desegregate the schools. As a temporary measure, Garrity ordered the BSC to implement the state desegregation plan for the 1974–75 school year (Phase I). He then gave the defendants until December to develop a long-term plan for integrating the school system, effective in fall 1975 (Phase II). 39

Garrity’s decision came at the high point of federal efforts to end racism in public education. For more than a decade after the Supreme Court declared the South’s segregated schools unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), most school districts refused to comply with the ruling, necessitating further action by Congress and the courts. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 empowered federal agencies to withhold funds from school systems that failed to eliminate racial discrimination, and Supreme Court rulings in several cases between 1968 and 1971 clarified that ineffective desegregation plans must be replaced with measures (including busing, if necessary) that actually worked. Meanwhile, the federal district courts issued divided opinions on whether the law required school systems outside the South to take similar action. The Supreme Court settled that question in Keyes v. Denver School District No. 1 (1973), upholding a finding that school officials had deliberately segregated some schools and ordering the entire district to desegregate. 40 The BSC’s actions were similar to those used by the school board in Denver, and Garrity cited several aspects of the Keyes case in his own ruling. 41 The trajectory of federal court decisions alarmed opponents of school desegregation in Boston and elsewhere. Expressing her determination to continue the fight against “forced busing of our school children,” Louise Day Hicks told a supporter in Florida: “As Boston goes, so will the entire nation and we just cannot allow that to happen.” 42

Among segregationists in Boston, the decision sparked outrage. An unsigned letter to Garrity asked, “Who elected you to play God with my children? . . . Law by decree smack’s of Big Brother Hitler style.” 43 State senator William M. Bulger of South Boston reinforced such sentiments in a response to a WCVB-TV editorial that condemned the violent responses of some citizens in his district and encouraged peaceful acceptance of the judge’s ruling. “South Boston parents are fighting for their most basic natural rights,” Bulger stated. Like many of his constituents, the senator viewed the court order as “an outrageous interference with a parent’s natural right to be responsible for the upbringing and education of children.” 44 Other critics of the court order pointed out that Garrity lived and sent his own children to school in suburban Wellesley, so he would not have to suffer the consequences of his decision. 45 These arguments served to delegitimize Garrity and justify lawless responses to his desegregation orders. Convinced that the threat of federal tyranny and the imposition of an unjust ruling by an elitist outsider warranted forceful opposition, segregationists urged families not to send their children to school and threatened those who did. Throughout the late 1970s, parents and students who complied with the law endured verbal harassment, death threats, vandalism of their property, and physical attacks. 46

As widespread as such opposition seemed, it was by no means universal. Henry Allen was elated by the decision and thought it was a “just and moral thing to have happen and was long overdue.” 47 In an opinion piece written for her local newspaper, Brighton resident Laura Ross praised the judge for upholding the law and exposing how the BSC’s racist manipulations deflected attention from “the poor quality of all public schools in the city.” 48 Similarly, a former teacher from Dorchester interrupted the stream of hate mail that Garrity received to congratulate him on saying publicly what everyone knew: that Boston schools were terrible and doing little to educate children. She had worked in the BPS for six years but quit when she could “no longer stand being part of a system doing so much harm and so little good for pupils . . . a system where politics, promotions, and paychecks have long since supplanted education as the principal concern of the school committee, the administrators, and many teachers.” 49

Supporters of the court order saw Garrity’s decision as a chance to enact a more inclusive and democratic vision for their city rather than an oppressive federal diktat. Segregation undermined the learning conditions of all children, not just African American children, and racially integrated schools were essential for preparing the next generation for success. A flyer highlighting the potential benefits of the desegregation plan noted, “With integration, our children can learn to live together in our multi-racial, multi-national society. With integration, it will be possible for black and white parents, facing basically the same problems, to work together to insure that EVERY Boston school provides a quality education for ALL our children.” For too long, politicians had played on racial fears to deflect attention from problems that existed in the schools instead of coming up with solutions. The court ruling provided an opportunity for citizens to press school officials to do better and prioritize the education of children over their own political ambitions. 50

Reformers believed that empowering parents and other stakeholders to take a more active role in the BPS was essential to improving the quality of education. Shortly after Garrity announced his decision, supporters urged him to create a mechanism for citizen participation to assist with integration efforts and encourage broader changes within the school system. Some activists highlighted the positive role played by the Community Education Council (CEC) in Denver as that city moved to implement its own desegregation plan. The council’s forty-one members included representatives from area churches, businesses, labor unions, educational institutions, and community organizations who were appointed by District Court Judge William Doyle to help monitor progress toward integration and ensure peaceful execution of the plan. 51 After traveling to Denver to meet with council members in November 1974, Boston community organizers Patrick Jones and Percy Wilson reported favorably on what they had seen and learned. In a letter to Garrity, Jones stated that the citywide council “made the critical difference in Denver and we feel strongly that the absence of such a responsible group of leaders in Boston has impeded the smooth implementation of desegregation here.” 52

Garrity was receptive to the idea of increasing citizen participation in the BPS. After the Boston Teachers Union requested court action on measures to alleviate racial tensions in September 1974, the judge ordered the BSC and superintendent of schools to establish Racial-Ethnic Parent Councils (REPCs) and Racial-Ethnic Student Councils (RESCs) in schools with ten or more white and Black students enrolled. The REPCs were elected by parents of children attending each school and included an equal number of white and Black representatives (three each for elementary schools, four each for middle schools, and five each for high schools). Representation was also provided for Asian American and Latinx parents at schools where sixty or more pupils from those groups were enrolled. Parent council duties included working to resolve racial conflicts; fostering communication among parents, students, teachers, and administrators; and promoting a sense of “understanding and common purpose” in the community. The same order created CPAC, a fourteen-member body made up of an equal number of white and Black parent representatives drawn from the REPCs in each of the city’s six school districts, plus one Asian American and one Latinx representative who were elected at large. 53

When the BSC failed to develop an acceptable desegregation plan of its own to replace the state plan that was in effect during Phase I, Garrity appointed a panel of masters and experts to assist the court in crafting a new Phase II plan. The panel reviewed and incorporated elements from various proposals put forward by the plaintiffs and defendants to the case as well as other interested parties, including community groups. 54 Supporters of citizen involvement in the schools continued to lobby for the inclusion of councils for this purpose, arguing that they could help generate broad support for the plan and ensure its success. 55 The report of the masters submitted to the judge and parties for review in March 1975 included recommendations for ensuring citizen participation in Phase II through parent and community councils formed to assist with implementation. 56

Garrity incorporated these suggestions into the final version of the plan. Far from being a meaningless numbers game based on racial quotas imposed by clueless suburban elites, as opponents claimed, Phase II laid out a design for the public schools in line with the ideals of the city’s grassroots education reform movement. In an introduction outlining the rationale for federal intervention to end racial discrimination, Garrity explained that the plan also aimed to improve the overall quality of education in the BPS. White as well as Black students suffered from outdated curricula, deteriorating buildings, and poor academic performance, he noted, and attempts to improve the system had been thwarted by school officials’ commitment to segregation. Phase II provided an opportunity to restore “a vision for an equitable and effective public school system … that will be free, universal, inclusive, and sound in ways that meet the educational needs and aspirations of all of Boston’s citizens,” he asserted. 57

The plan created eight community school districts where school assignments were based on parents’ preferences within parameters needed to ensure desegregation. It also included a citywide school district (District IX) made up of magnet schools that were open to everyone. These schools used the lure of special programs and curricular themes to attract students and achieve integration. Schools in both the community and magnet districts benefited from pairings with area colleges, universities, businesses, and cultural institutions that provided access to resources beyond those typically provided by the BSD. The range of options that were available meant parents’ decisions could now be based on whether their children’s educational needs were met rather than the racial composition of particular schools. As the judge emphasized, Phase II aimed not just to ensure that students from diverse backgrounds attended school together but to improve “the quality of education available in Boston’s public schools for all students whatever their race or ethnic origin.” 58 Court experts Robert Dentler and Marvin Scott observed that the plan showed “a deeper, more positive concern with educational reform than any previous federal court case.” 59

Though the order placed responsibility for eliminating segregation with school officials, Garrity aimed to deploy the talents and expertise of other residents as well in achieving this goal. To supplement the school-level and citywide parent councils established earlier, Phase II enabled broader community participation through the Citywide Coordinating Council (CCC) and Community District Advisory Councils (CDACs) established in each of the nine school districts created by the plan. 60 By enlisting citizens representing the various stakeholders in public education beyond the families directly served by the schools, Garrity hoped to ensure a strong base of support that could mobilize the political and financial resources needed to transform the BPS. 61 The scope of parent and community participation built into the plan at every level set Boston apart from earlier desegregation cases. Although the CCC was intended to be a temporary monitoring body similar to the CEC in Denver, Garrity and his supporters envisioned the REPCs, CDACs, and CPAC as permanent fixtures that could carry on the work of ensuring equal opportunities for all children after the court’s supervision ended. 62

The court chose forty-two civic leaders reflecting the economic, social, and political diversity of the city to serve on the CCC. Among the appointees were many people who were active in earlier education reform activities, including Ruth Batson, Julius Bernstein, Louise Bonar, and Mary Ellen Smith. Other members had backgrounds in areas such as business, higher education, religious organizations, and social service agencies. 63 The CCC informed the public about the purpose and benefits of school desegregation, monitored compliance with the court order, mediated problems, and made regular reports to the judge on progress the city was making toward educational equity. 64 In January and February 1976, the council held public hearings to give residents in each district an opportunity to provide feedback regarding their experiences with Phase II and make suggestions for improving its implementation. Although ROAR activists disrupted some of the meetings, other citizens appreciated the chance to make their views known and offered recommendations for solving problems with transportation, student-teacher ratios, and the poor condition of some facilities. In a letter thanking the CCC for holding the hearings, teacher Phyllis Conlon praised the group for helping to address long-standing problems in the school system. “In my particular school, issues that were brought up at that meeting were investigated the very next day,” she reported. “Lights that had been broken were fixed and an aide was assigned to my overcrowded classroom. Believe me, with this extra help, the quality of education in my class has certainly improved.” 65

The CDACs provided another mechanism for citizens to enact reforms. Each district-level council had twenty members and contained a mix of parents and non-parents with an interest or expertise in education. The REPCs and RESCs in each district elected ten parents and two students to serve on their local CDAC. The remaining eight members might be teachers, school officials, university professors or administrators, police, clergy, business owners, labor leaders, or community activists who were nominated by the CCC and appointed by the court. These councils acted as advisory groups to district superintendents. Garrity intended CDACs to serve as places where “parents, students, school staff and others involved in education . . can meet to discuss the educational needs of the district and to monitor the peaceful desegregation of the district’s schools.” 66

Contradicting critics’ complaints regarding Garrity’s dictatorial tendencies, the court’s efforts to ensure broad participation in decision-making democratized the school system and provided ways for citizens’ voices to be heard. During Phase I, CWEC staff members who helped to set up REPCs observed that the parents who attended meetings typically identified an array of issues apart from desegregation that merited attention, such as the need for new textbooks, equipment, and educational programs. 67 In March 1976 Mary Ellen Smith informed Judge Garrity that the councils “allowed parents to get involved in the Boston public schools in a way that was never before possible. Parents are increasingly demanding answers from the School Department as to why their schools lack books, teachers, etc.—sometimes they even get responses.” 68 One year later, a CCC report noted how new forms of citizen involvement challenged the dominance of the BSC and HSA over the school system, forcing administrators to take more diverse interests into account. “A previously closed, hierarchical structure is being shaken by the prospect of a more open, democratic model that demands effective participation by all those who have a stake in public schools,” the report stated. 69 Another description of the councils observed that their membership and activities encompassed “nearly the entire economic, geographic, and racial, ethnic, linguistic range of this city. Poor single parents serve alongside university professors; non-english speaking immigrants sit with savvy black and white community activists; representatives of the business and university communities, too, share in the lives of these councils.” 70

Some parents who participated in the council network had initially opposed the court order but changed their views after working with other families in their children’s new schools. Jane Margulis of Savin Hill was nervous about sending her daughter to school in Columbia Point, a predominantly African American and Latinx community. She decided to overcome her fears by organizing a coffee meeting and inviting other parents so they could get to know each other. “I wasn’t going to feel safe unless I knew people there,” she told a reporter. “I figured we could make a deal—you take care of my kids and I’ll take care of yours.” Her efforts succeeded in building trust and facilitated the success of the school’s REPC. Over the next several years, Margulis served on the REPC, the CCC, and CPAC in addition to working as a neighborhood coordinator for CWEC. Similarly, Moss Hill parent Frank McDonough was not pleased when he learned that his children were assigned to a school in Jamaica Plain. Working with the REPC helped the family adjust to the situation, though, and McDonough was also heartened by his son’s reaction to the news that they were going to attend a new school in a community where many students spoke Spanish: “Gee, Dad, maybe I can learn Spanish.” 71

Not least among the benefits of the court order was that it gave the BSD access to state and federal funds that were available to assist school systems with desegregation. Throughout the city, parent councils developed proposals and secured money for various projects to improve the quality of their schools, including library enhancements, tutoring programs, and other initiatives. 72 Schools where councils were able to forge cooperative relationships among parents, principals, and teachers demonstrated that desegregation could occur peacefully and with significant benefits for everyone. At public hearings held by the CCC in April 1977, REPC members from several schools explained how parents, school staff, and community members worked together to create high-quality educational programs and a welcoming, safe atmosphere for all children whether they lived locally or were bused in from other neighborhoods. Iris Stroud stated that at the Maurice J. Tobin Elementary School in Roxbury, children were comfortable, happy, learning, and in no hurry to go home at the end of the day. When her own daughter left for kindergarten each morning, Stroud knew she was going to a place where she would receive “the same love for those couple of hours at school that she will get at home.” 73

Not everyone welcomed the infusion of new people, ideas, and pressures for reform. During the first year of Phase II, observers reported seeing “severe problems of delay, secretive rather than helpful practices, and instances of condescending attitudes by school department personnel towards parents and outside agencies which wanted to help.” 74 Education reformer John D. O’Bryant, who became the first African American to serve on the BSC in 1977, noted the aversion some committee members displayed toward citizen participation. “Even with the court order, in the beginning it was still difficult for parents to have access because the School Committee was in non-compliance and they avoided parents whenever they had the opportunity,” he stated. 75 In a report to Garrity in November, the CCC confirmed that the BSC continued to obstruct implementation of his orders and listed several areas where the committee had yet to meet its obligations, including improvements to educational programs and community participation. 76

The same report expressed little confidence in the abilities of system administrators to competently carry out the desegregation plan “or indeed to implement any policy which requires comprehensive management.” 77 To be fair to the BSD, the task of overhauling the school system would have been challenging under any circumstances, and it was further hamstrung by the BSC’s hostility toward the project. The committee was slow to approve funds and staffing needed to adequately prepare parents, teachers, and administrators. Some employees who were hired because of their political connections rather than their qualifications were terrible at their jobs. Reliable information regarding basic factors such as enrollments, demographic data, and classroom capacities was hard to find, which played havoc with the student assignment process. The BSC also fired several administrators who tried in good faith to carry out the court’s orders, discouraging others from being too cooperative. 78

Within the BSD fear of repercussions, bureaucratic lethargy, lax oversight, and lack of interest in ensuring the success of Phase II were powerful obstacles to change. 79 Administrator John Coakley acknowledged in March 1976 that many staff members were apprehensive about the effects of the plan and reluctant to modify the way the system had operated for decades. “Practices, habits of years standing are being altered,” he observed. “Change is no simple matter.” 80 More concretely, closer scrutiny by parents, community members, and the court threatened opportunities for patronage and graft that some employees used to enrich themselves. 81 The machinations of BSD personnel who were determined to maintain control over the system was a source of endless frustration among parents and community members seeking to improve education. Citizen volunteers often found that council participation became a form of arduous labor, requiring huge expenditures of time and energy by those attempting to realize the full potential of the court order.

Administrative resistance was most evident at the local school level, manifesting in bitter struggles between principals and parents over the activities of REPCs. A report from CDAC VII on developments during the first year of Phase II stated that many of the district’s REPCs were not performing very well because of “the general failure of school officials to place much importance in the work of these councils.” 82 Parents were willing and eager to be involved, but they received no encouragement or support from school authorities who preferred not to include them in decision making. At the Blackstone Square School, it proved difficult for the REPC to function at all. 83 Blackstone REPC co-chair Patricia Young and secretary Katherine Knight reported that school staff obstructed their work by failing to inform parents of meetings, taking no action on their concerns, and preventing them from forming a committee of parents and teachers to address racial conflicts among the students. Young and Knight believed these tactics were designed to demoralize council members, in hopes they would abandon efforts to improve conditions at the school. 84

Staff of the CCC observed that similar problems existed at other schools throughout the city. The BSC and district superintendents neglected the court-ordered councils and did not encourage people to participate in them. This lack of support from upper administration meant principals “felt free to ignore or actively thwart the work of the REPC’s.” Some principals refused to meet with the parent councils and denied them access to mailing lists and other information they needed to function effectively. “REPC members, in some schools, have been made to feel as if they are trespassers and interlopers,” the CCC report stated. “Their right to enter the school has been challenged, their interest in their children’s educations have not been welcomed, but resisted by the building administrators.” The interracial parent councils were supposed to help foster mutual understanding and a sense of common purpose, the CCC pointed out, but this was hard to do at schools where principals accorded them no respect, used racial slurs to refer to some members, and showed little regard for the safety or education of the children placed in their care. 85

The district-level councils also encountered hostility to their activities. Members of CDAC VII reported in March 1976 that the district superintendent had moved from overt antagonism toward the council to treating them with indifference, rarely seeking or taking any advice they offered. Under the heading “Entrenched Opposition to the Plan,” they wrote: “Although it is hard to draw a line between incompetence and non-compliance with the Court order in most single instances, the overall picture of non-supportive actions in so many areas can only lead to the conclusion of a pervasive, institutionalized resistance to the desegregation plan and the persistence of the feeling that this resistance will lead to its ultimate defeat.” 86 School officials subtly undermined citizen participation by failing to provide needed information, setting impossibly short deadlines for councils to provide input into decisions, and then disregarding that input once it was received. 87 In March 1977, CCC staff observed that although BPS superintendent Marion Fahey had issued several circulars advocating parent involvement and BSD cooperation with the councils, most administrators remained unsupportive and seemed to be “awaiting the day that parents ‘go away’ with the expectation that the citizen input structures will disappear when the U.S. District Court relinquishes its role.” 88

Some administrative resistance stemmed from genuine disagreements over the proper place of parents and community members in the schools. Even as education reformers were urging Garrity to include mechanisms for citizen participation in crafting the Phase II desegregation plan, school officials pushed back against the idea. A statement adopted by the Boston Elementary Principals Association in April 1975 warned that its members were “unalterably opposed to any suggestion which places community councils or similar groups in a decision-making or administrative role.” Though they welcomed advice and interest from others, they asserted, legal responsibility and therefore ultimate authority over the schools lay with them. 89 As frequently as council members complained about administrators’ efforts to keep them out of the schools, principals and teachers complained about intrusions into their workspace by lay people who were not qualified to interpret what they saw. Boston Teachers Union president Henry Robinson opposed giving parents a role in hiring and evaluating teachers because they lacked the appropriate expertise. “If someone is going to evaluate me then that person should be really an expert, or should be better than I am,” he explained. “Because . . . how can they tell what I’m doing is right or wrong. We want the parents to get involved. But there’s a difference between getting involved and taking over.” 90

In conflicts between school officials and citizen stakeholders over their appropriate spheres of influence, Garrity favored an expansive interpretation of council responsibilities. A memorandum and orders issued in September 1977 made clear that the councils’ efforts to improve conditions in the schools were appropriate and reflected the court’s intent. Noting that previous orders relating to the citizen participation network all assumed a broad mandate for the court-ordered councils, Garrity asserted: “All matters which are apt to facilitate or hinder the desegregation process in particular schools or districts or citywide are appropriate subject matters for citizen concern and action.” 91 With encouragement from the court, the list of activities that school-level councils were involved in grew to include the creation of transportation and safety teams, crafting policies regarding student discipline, reviewing curricular programs and materials, helping to develop proposals for new programs, screening applicants for administrative positions, and fighting for needed repairs at their schools. As one observer noted, REPCs were “involved with almost every aspect of the educational life of their schools… . The parent councils are developing their own definitions of what is their business and what is not.” 92

Despite the court’s support for citizen participation in the school system, council members continued to face obstacles to their efforts. Citizen volunteers often donated hundreds of hours of labor to projects that were later nixed by administrators. In 1976, for example, parents who served on screening committees to evaluate applicants and recommend finalists for principal positions in their districts diligently read through copious amounts of material, sat through long meetings, and endured patronizing treatment from BSD personnel, only to have their recommendations ignored by the board of superintendents and the BSC. A report prepared by CWEC noted that the selection procedures discouraged meaningful participation by parents and favored incumbents who were known by the superintendents. 93 Several parents expressed their frustration with the process at a BSC meeting in August. One woman wondered why she and others on her committee had put so much effort into choosing a principal if the person they recommended—unanimously—was not going to be hired. “I spent a lot of time at these screening committee meetings, and I went early and picked up my reports so I could read about everything… . Then I find out I might as well not have been there at all,” she stated. 94

Experiences like these caused many people to drop out of the councils and discouraged others from becoming involved. Peter Driscoll, a CDAC coordinator who had been in the fight for education reform for eleven years, resigned in May 1979 after finally exhausting his ability to shoulder “the incredible amount of work which is required to make even small progress.” 95 The same month, the REPC at the Henry Grew School disbanded and parents began withdrawing their children from the school after months of complaining about the conduct of its principal yielded no action from the BSD. 96 Observers who noted that parent participation in the BPS was waning attributed the decline to continued opposition from system administrators and the difficulty of securing meaningful changes. An editorial that appeared in the Boston Globe in February 1981 explained, “The general weakness of the current parent structure is attributable to its lack of real power. Might as well stay home as venture out to a night meeting to advise someone who doesn’t have to listen.” 97

Other constraints added to council members’ growing reluctance to expend precious time and energy on activities that held such little reward. Many participants found it hard to fit council membership into other commitments such as work, childcare, and family time. Those who did not own cars incurred significant unreimbursed expenses to attend meetings outside their immediate neighborhoods, and some people were afraid to venture into parts of the city where they felt unwelcome. 98 School officials’ preference for holding meetings during their regular working hours conflicted with the needs of parents who had day jobs of their own and could not afford to take time off work to attend. 99 The CCC noted the obstacles to participation faced by working-class families, reporting to the court that the financial burdens of council membership discouraged many people from becoming involved. 100

In the late 1970s and early 1980s economic recession, stagnant incomes, rising inflation, and committee fatigue further eroded citizen participation. Council members who once had the luxury of being full-time volunteers, spending their days harassing recalcitrant school administrators and their evenings attending committee meetings, now had to find paid jobs to help support their families. 101 At the same time, the school system was hurt by budget cuts, falling enrollments, school closings, and teacher layoffs that undermined the achievements of earlier years. In November 1980, Massachusetts voters approved Proposition 2 1/2, a ballot measure that capped property taxes and reduced local governments’ ability to fund public services. The Boston city council cut its budget by 25 percent and laid off thousands of workers, with devastating consequences for the BPS. 102 Superintendent Paul Kennedy’s assessment of the budget constraints the system faced for the 1982 financial year indicated how far out of reach the goals of earlier educational reformers now seemed. In contrast to the vision of educational excellence for every child laid out in the Phase II desegregation plan, Kennedy framed the central challenge merely as providing “essential service within the limits of the will and the ability of the public to pay.” 103

As hopes for transforming the BPS into an integrated, broadly supported, and universally excellent school system faded, political leaders found a convenient scapegoat in Judge Garrity. As Robert Dentler observed, the BSC and city council generally refused to act on anything related to desegregation unless directly ordered to by the judge, then accused Garrity of overreaching his authority when he tried to ensure compliance. This in turn allowed administrators to evade responsibility by contending that the system was being run by the court rather than themselves. 104 Some parents interviewed by CWEC in the 1980s were convinced that Garrity had single-handedly destroyed the city’s public schools. “None of my kids had any problems in public school until busing,” one parent stated. 105 Others believed the court order had only exacerbated racial tensions and worsened the quality of education in the BPS. Several parents thought it was good that Garrity was preparing to end the court’s involvement because “he was the one that screwed it up” and “made a mess of things.” 106

In contrast, Bostonians who were more closely involved with implementing the desegregation plan placed blame for the problems afflicting the schools squarely on administrators. “Forced busing is not ruining our schools, it’s liars, cheaters & deceitful people in high office who refuse to accept parents into their kingdom for fear of being caught in there malicious schemes,” wrote one disheartened REPC member. 107 Tired of the constant excuses and buck-passing they heard from BSD staff, CDAC IX co-chairs Henry Allen and Isaac Adar asserted that the real problem was school officials’ mismanagement of the BPS. “Until such time as solid educational concerns become the first item of business on the school department’s agenda, the system will continue to follow the downward spiral which it has been pursuing over the many years prior to and following the Court Order,” they stated. 108

Surveys of parents who pulled their children out of the BPS showed that many complaints other than “busing” factored into their decisions. Chronic underfunding of programs and uncertainty created by budget cuts and school closings were hard for many people to take. Some parents felt worn down by constantly having to fight for resources in a system in which no one seemed to care whether their children learned or not. “Bad education, instability and teacher lay-offs have made me leave, and it will take too long for it to improve for my children to come back,” one parent explained. “Boston is not interested in education, they only care for cutting taxes,” concluded another. 109

For families whose limited finances did not allow them any alternatives, the BPS continued to underdeliver. In 1985, the same year that Garrity issued final orders extricating the court from the case and allowing the parties to negotiate further modifications without his involvement, CWEC conducted a series of interviews with parents that revealed persistent deficiencies in the school system. Participants noted the poor physical condition of the schools their children attended and the challenges to teaching and learning posed by buildings with peeling paint, leaks, and broken equipment. 110 A Latinx parent who thought the court had played a positive role in pushing the BPS to address such problems expressed concern that the judge was leaving the case, fearing that “there won’t be anybody responsible enough” to maintain the improvements made in educational quality, parent access, and desegregation. 111

At the national level, support for federal intervention on behalf of racial justice waned as narratives framing such efforts as misguided disasters prevailed. Funding for programs to assist with school integration dried up during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, who favored limiting the government’s role. 112 Responding to criticisms of the administration’s backtracking on civil rights, Assistant Attorney General William Bradford Reynolds echoed the views of segregationists who argued that federal initiatives had failed. “In city after city, we have seen the courts’ preoccupation with busing drive large numbers of students from the public schools, in many instances increasing, rather than decreasing, racial isolation,” he claimed. Along with many other Americans, Reagan and his advisors saw no reason to continue with “a remedy whose ineffectiveness is so manifest.” 113 In subsequent decades, the Supreme Court reversed course as well, handing down decisions that allowed school systems to resegregate. 114

In Boston and other cities, low-income African American and Latinx students made up the majority of children in public schools while middle-class families left or sent their children to private schools instead. A study undertaken in 1995 found BPS families facing many of the same challenges that existed in the 1960s: poor-quality education, racial discrimination, confusing policies and procedures, and school officials who were unresponsive to parents’ concerns. Some remnants of the court-ordered councils still existed, but they were not very effective. Even if they wanted to, many parents found it hard to get involved in council activities because of low incomes, lack of transportation, work and family commitments, language difficulties, and other obstacles. 115 Under these circumstances, few people could muster the time, energy, and financial resources to fill the gaps left by persistent underfunding and political indifference toward public education.

These outcomes were not the inevitable result of liberal social engineering by an arrogant federal judge, as segregationists claimed. Between 1974 and 1985, court-ordered desegregation in the BPS strengthened a grassroots education reform movement dedicated to increasing parent and community participation in the public schools. The school, district, and citywide councils created by the desegregation plan empowered a cadre of citizen volunteers to secure improvements in the quality of instruction and pressure administrators to include a broader spectrum of constituents in decision making. The interracial and cross-class coalitions built during this decade demonstrate the range of reactions to desegregation that existed beyond violent opposition or abandonment of the public schools. Strong federal enforcement of civil rights laws, an inclusive approach that recognized the whole community’s stake in public education, opportunities for people from diverse backgrounds to interact and cooperate with each other, and citizens who were willing and able to get involved were among the factors that encouraged progress toward educational equity in this decade. Achievements at schools where principals and teachers worked with instead of against council members showed that peaceful integration and educational enhancements occurred under the court order.

At the same time, possibilities for remaking the BPS were constrained by the large number of school officials who were reluctant to relinquish control over educational resources. Obstruction by BSC members and BSD administrators posed significant challenges to council members’ efforts and ultimately blocked meaningful reforms. Opponents of the court order played on class resentments to deflect the ire of BPS parents away from themselves and onto a suburban judge from Wellesley, eliding their own responsibility for the school system’s failures. Framing this era as one of chaos and trauma caused by a heavy-handed federal mandate that ignored local concerns does a disservice to Judge Garrity and to those Bostonians who sincerely tried to make desegregation work. Assessments of court-ordered desegregation in Boston must acknowledge the possibilities for citizen participation fostered by the Phase II plan and the wall of bureaucratic resistance that shattered every proposal for reimagining the city’s public education system thrown its way.  

Many thanks to colleagues who suggested improvements on earlier versions of this article presented in the form of conference papers and drafts: Tatiana M. F. Cruz, Dennis Dworkin, Jeffrey Helgeson, Nick Juravich, Zebulon Miletsky, and the Journal of Social History’ s anonymous peer reviewers. Thanks also to the John and Marie Noble Endowment for Historical Research, the College of Liberal Arts, and the Office of the Vice Provost for Research and Innovation at the University of Nevada, Reno, for funding that facilitated research for this article.

Citywide Parents Advisory Council (CPAC), Parents Make a Difference! , [late 1970s], file 87, box 4, Patricia Corcoran Papers (PCP), City of Boston Archives and Records Management Division.

School committee members Louise Day Hicks and John Kerrigan frequently engaged in this tactic, as did lawmakers who represented Boston in the state legislature. Although a metropolitan plan that integrated city and suburban schools might have made desegregation more effective, the Supreme Court’s decision in Milliken v. Bradley (1974) meant it was not possible to order such a plan for Boston. See Emmett H. Buell Jr., School Desegregation and Defended Neighborhoods: The Boston Controversy (Lexington, 1982), 80, 102; Robert A. Dentler and Marvin B. Scott, Schools on Trial: An Inside Account of the Boston Desegregation Case (Cambridge, 1981), 122; and J. Anthony Lukas, Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families (New York, 1985), 242.

For some analyses of the ways that colorblind rhetoric defending local control, family values, and small government enabled white parents to deny any racist intent even as they acted to maintain segregated schools, see Matthew D. Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton, 2006); Matthew Delmont, Why Busing Failed: Race, Media, and the National Resistance to School Desegregation (Oakland, 2016); Ansley T. Erickson, Making the Unequal Metropolis: School Desegregation and Its Limits (Chicago, 2016); and Elizabeth Gillespie McRae, Mothers of Massive Resistance: White Women and the Politics of White Supremacy (New York, 2018).

Alan Lupo, Liberty’s Chosen Home: The Politics of Violence in Boston (Boston, 1977), 151; Buell, School Desegregation and Defended Neighborhoods ; Lukas, Common Ground ; Ronald P. Formisano, Boston against Busing: Race, Class, and Ethnicity in the 1960s and 1970s (Chapel Hill, 1991 ) . Adam R. Nelson’s more recent book, The Elusive Ideal: Equal Educational Opportunity and the Federal Role in Boston’s Public Schools, 1950–1985 (Chicago, 2005) examines school desegregation in the broader context of federal education policy and its intersections with action at the state and local level. His conclusions regarding the implementation and impact of the court order largely reiterate those of earlier studies.

Jeanne F. Theoharis, “‘We Saved the City’: Black Struggles for Educational Equality in Boston, 1960–1976,” Radical History Review 81 (2001): 61–93; Zebulon Vance Miletsky, “Before Busing: Boston’s Long Movement for Civil Rights and the Legacy of Jim Crow in the ‘Cradle of Liberty,’” Journal of Urban History 43 (2017): 204–17; Tatiana M. F. Cruz, “‘We Took ’Em On’: The Latino Movement for Educational Justice in Boston, 1965–1980,” Journal of Urban History 43 (2017): 235–55.

Formisano, Boston Against Busing , 3. Formisano uses this term to refer to the combination of race and class resentments that motivated many opponents of the court order.

“Statement of ‘Assembly for Justice,’” September 30, 1974, 1, file 1300, box 38, Freedom House, Inc. Records (FHR), Snell Library, Northeastern University; Richard S. Burdick, “Boston’s Ordeal Over Integration, Pt. 16,” WCVB-TV 5 Editorial, October 29, [1974], 1, file 8, ser. LIc, box 37, Judge W. Arthur Garrity Jr. Chambers Papers on the Boston Schools Desegregation Case (WAGP), University Archives and Special Collections, Joseph P. Healey Library, University of Massachusetts Boston.

Joel Spring, The American School: From the Puritans to No Child Left Behind (New York, 2008), 15, 30–37, 78–88.

Horace Mann, “Tenth Annual Report to the Massachusetts Board of Education” (1846), in The School in the United States: A Documentary History , ed. James W. Fraser (New York, 2001), 52–54; American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, Labor: Champion of Public Education (Washington, 1970), 3–4, 7.

Lukas, Common Ground , 122; Dentler and Scott, Schools on Trial , 14–17; Finance Commission of the City of Boston, A Digest of the Report of the Boston School Survey (Boston, 1944), 1–5, 20–23, 27–28, 34–35, 39, 48–49, 53, esp. 4.

Louise Bonar, interview by author, April 28, 2018, MP3 audio recording, in author’s possession.

Laurence C. Bonar to William Ohrenberger, [ca. May/June 1968], 1–2, file 33, box 8, Louise Bonar and Carol Wolfe Collection of Boston Education Materials (LBCWC), John J. Burns Library, Boston College.

Peter Schrag, Village School Downtown: Politics and Education—A Boston Report (Boston, 1967), 139–41; Bonar interview.

Boston League of Women Voters, “Study of the Boston Home and School Association,” [1967], 5, 9–10, esp. 5, file 7, ser. III, box 1, Edward Blackman Papers, University Archives and Special Collections, Joseph P. Healey Library, University of Massachusetts Boston.

Hattie Dudley, “Home and School Explained,” CDAC Speak Out [Community District Advisory Council (CDAC)] I newsletter, [late 1970s?], [2], file 87, box 4, PCP.

U.S. Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940, Population , vol. II: Characteristics of the Population , pt. 3: Kansas–Michigan (Washington, 1943), 670 (Table 35); U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1970 Census of Population , vol II: Characteristics of the Population , pt. 23: Massachusetts (Washington, 1973), 62 (Table 23).

“Comparative Census Figures 1964–1971,” encl. in Victor A. McInnis to Chairman and Members of the School Committee, Superintendent of Schools, and Board of Superintendents, memorandum, November 2, 1971, 1, and Joseph Lee, “Racial Ratios,” Speech to School Committee, March 3, 1965, [draft?], 3, 6–7, both in file 55, box 7, Joseph Lee Papers (JLP), Boston Athenaeum.

Theoharis, “‘We Saved the City,’” 65–66; Morgan v. Hennigan , 379 F. Supp. 410, 415, 424–25, 469–74 (1974). For a discussion of the ways urban policy makers in other cities reinforced racial inequality through decisions that generated segregated neighborhoods and schools, see Erickson, Making the Unequal Metropolis , chap. 4.

Paul Parks, “A Statement on the Education of Negro Children in the Boston Public Schools,” May 22, 1963, 1–2, file 1309, box 38, FHR.

Ruth Batson, “Statement to the Boston School Committee,” June 11, 1963, 1, file 1309, box 38, FHR.

Henry L. Allen, interview by Rhea Ramjohn, Feb. 28, 2005, transcript, 3–6, 8, 24, esp. 24, OH-42, John Joseph Moakley Oral History Project (JJMOHP), John Joseph Moakley Archive and Institute, Suffolk University (accessed online at https://moakleyarchive.omeka.net/collections/show/1 ).

Bonar interview.

Bonar interview; Ned Schofield, “Interview with Mr. William Brennan,” March 6, 1971, 1, file 63, box 52, Center for Law and Education: Morgan v. Hennigan Case Records (CLER), University Archives and Special Collections, Joseph P. Healey Library, University of Massachusetts Boston; Allen interview, 8n8.

Allen interview, 11.

For more on the climate of social activism and some examples of grassroots organizing, see Annelise Orleck and Lisa Gayle Hazirjian, eds., The War on Poverty: A New Grassroots History, 1964–1980 (Athens, 2011); Harry C. Boyte, The Backyard Revolution: Understanding the New Citizen Movement (Philadelphia, 1980); and Suleiman Osman, “The Decade of the Neighborhood,” in Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s , ed. Bruce J. Schulman and Julian E. Zelizer (Cambridge, 2008), 106–127.

Lupo, Liberty’s Chosen Home , 85–86, 94–95; Formisano, Boston Against Busing , 3, 234–35; Bonar interview.

Boston School Committee, “Hearing to NAACP,” June 11, 1963, transcript, 8–17 (Batson), 71–74 (Rosen), 75–78, esp. 76 (Bernstein), file [8] “School Committee Hearing to NAACP June 11, 1963,” box 1, School Committee Secretary Desegregation Files, City of Boston Archives and Records Management Division. For some accounts of Black activists’ efforts to secure equal access to education before the 1970s, see Theoharis, “‘We Saved the City,’” 61–93; Delmont, Why Busing Failed , 81–87; and Miletsky, “Before Busing,” 204–17. A comprehensive chronology of Black Bostonians’ struggles for educational equality from the colonial era through the late twentieth century can be found in Ruth Batson, The Black Educational Movement in Boston: A Sequence of Historical Events; A Chronology (Boston, 2001).

Lukas, Common Ground , 133–34; Joseph Lee, “The Schools’ Fatal Self-Delusion,” January 19, 1971, in Proceedings of the School Committee of the City of Boston, 1971 (Boston, [1975]), 16, Internet Archive , https://archive.org/details/proceedingsofsch1971bost/page/16/mode/2up .

Buell, School Desegregation and Defended Neighborhoods , 61–86.

Joseph Lee, “Racial Ratios,” Speech to School Committee, March 3, 1965, [draft?], 1–2, 5, esp. 5, file 55, box 7, JLP.

Massachusetts Board of Education, Because It Is Right—Educationally: Report of the Advisory Committee on Racial Imbalance and Education (Boston, 1965), 2.

Commonwealth of Massachusetts, “An Act Providing for the Elimination of Racial Imbalance in the Public Schools,” Chap. 641 (August 18, 1965), Acts of 1965 (Boston, 1965), 414–16.

Leon T. Nelson, “Capsule History of ‘Legal Matters’ Connected with Desegregation in the Boston Public Schools (1961–1982),” 1–2, file 1540, box 43, FHR; Jim Vrabel, A People’s History of the New Boston (Amherst, 2014), 55–57; “Comparative Census Figures 1964–1971,” encl. in Victor A. McInnis to Chairman and Members of the School Committee, Superintendent of Schools, and Board of Superintendents, memorandum, November 2, 1971, 1, file 55, box 7, JLP.

Dentler and Scott, Schools on Trial , 10; “Draft,” April 5, 1974, 1, encl. in Richard Kelliher to Distribution List, memorandum, April 9, 1974, file 31, box 47, Mayor Kevin H. White Records (KHWR), City of Boston Archives and Records Management Division; Joseph M. Harvey, “Bus Issue Aired in High Court,” Boston Evening Globe , December 28, 1972, 1, 6.

League of Women Voters of Boston, Together We Can Do It! A Directory of Groups Concerned About Education in Boston’s Public Schools , January 1970, file 21, box 24, Julius Bernstein Papers (JBP), Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, New York University; City-Wide Educational Coalition (CWEC), “Citizen Participation in Urban Education: The City-Wide Educational Coalition of Boston,” April 1, 1974, 4–14, 24–25, file 24, box 1, LBCWC; “The Gibson Affair: An Analysis,” Citizens for the Boston Schools Bulletin , October 1968, 1, 4, file 24, box 24, JBP; Mary Ellen Smith, interview by Anna Maria Hidalgo, March 3, 2005, 5–13, transcript, OH-044, JJMOHP (accessed online at https://moakleyarchive.omeka.net/items/show/3747 ); Louise Bonar to Mary Ellen [Smith], [ca. April 16, 1973], file 13, box 7, LBCWC.

CWEC, “Community Agenda for the Boston Public Schools,” 1973, I-1, XI-1, file 13, box 25, Citywide Educational Coalition Records (CWECR), Snell Library, Northeastern University.

“Urgent Meeting,” [ca. June 1969], 1–2, file 13, box 7, LBCWC; League of Women Voters of Boston, “Summary of Statement of the League of Women Voters of Boston,” April 6, 1971, 1, file 13, box 7, LBCWC; CWEC, “Citizen Participation in Urban Education,” 17.

Buell, School Desegregation and Defended Neighborhoods , 93–94; Lukas, Common Ground , 218–19; Morgan v. Hennigan , 379 F. Supp. 410, 415 (1974).

Morgan v. Hennigan , 379 F. Supp. 410, 425–41, 456–63, 473, 482 (1974); Nelson, “Capsule History,” 2.

Frank T. Read, “Judicial Evolution of the Law of School Integration since Brown v. Board of Education ,” Law and Contemporary Problems 39 (winter 1975): 7–43.

Frederick D. Watson, “Removing the Barricades from the Northern Schoolhouse Door: School Desegregation in Denver” (PhD diss., University of Colorado, 1993), 40–60, 129–34, 255.

Louise Day Hicks to Mrs. J. J. Suddath, May 30, 1975, 1, file 4, box 1, Louise Day Hicks Papers, City of Boston Archives and Records Management Division.

Unsigned letter to W. Arthur Garrity, August 6, 1974 (postmark), 1, box 49, file 3, WAGP.

William M. Bulger, “Boston’s Ordeal over Integration,” October 1, [1974], file 7, box 25, JBP.

Alice C. Hayes, “Denied Basic Right,” [Letter to the Editor], clipping labeled “Herald, about 7/5/74,” box 49, file 2, WAGP.

“Statement of Rayleen Craig to James Gabriel, U.S. Attorney,” February 17, 1976, 1, file 9, box 2, LBCWC; “MCHR Minutes,” June 10, 1976, 2, cons. with Massachusetts Coalition for Human Rights, “Coalition Capsules,” June 16, 1976, file 19, box 19, JBP; “Are You Free to Go Anywhere You Want in Boston?,” flyer for Public Hearing on Racial Discord, June 21, 1979, 1, file 54, box 3, PCP.

Allen interview, 8.

Laura Ross, “Garrity Decision Uncovers Long-Standing Dual System,” reprint from Allston-Brighton Citizen Item , November 28, 1974, [3], file 8, ser. LIc, box 37, WAGP.

R. (Dorchester, Mass.) to W. Arthur Garrity, December 18, 1975, 1–2, file 34, ser. LXVIII, box 50, WAGP. Restrictions imposed by Judge Garrity on the use of his papers prevent identification of members of the public who wrote to him about his decision. I have therefore used only people’s initials and their place of residence (when known) to identify the letters cited from these files.

Committee for Unity and Equality, “We Can Make It Work!!!!,” flyer, [ca. 1974/1975?], file 8, box 25, JBP.

Florence Rubin and Elaine Kistiakowsky to W. Arthur Garrity, June 27, 1974, 1–2, file 8, ser. LIc, box 37, WAGP; National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA, A Tale of Seven Cities: Problems and Issues in School Integration/Busing and the Role of the Churches , Report of Consultation, November 21–22, 1974, 3–4, file 2, box 1, Linda Lawrence Papers, University Archives and Special Collections, Joseph P. Healey Library, University of Massachusetts Boston.

Patrick Jones to W. Arthur Garrity, December 12, 1974, 1–2, file 8, ser. LIc, box 37, WAGP.

W. Arthur Garrity Jr., “Memorandum on Teachers Union’s Request for Discussion,” Morgan v. Kerrigan , September 23, 1974, 1–2, file 2, ser. XLV, box 32, WAGP; [W. Arthur] Garrity Jr., “Memorandum and Order Establishing Racial-Ethnic Councils,” Morgan v. Kerrigan , October 4, 1974, [1]–[2], [5], esp. [2], file [13] “CPC Monitoring Compendium on Citizen Participation Orders 1986,” ser. V, box 9, Citywide Parents Council Records (CPCR), City of Boston Archives and Records Management Division.

Morgan v. Kerrigan , 401 F. Supp. 216, 225–27 (1975).

Florence R. Rubin and Elizabeth Hartl to W. Arthur Garrity, February 11, 1975, 1, file 8, ser. LIc, box 37, WAGP; Ellen Jackson and Ron Edmonds to Court Appointed Masters and Experts, [ca. February 3, 1975], 1–2, file 1532, box 43, FHR.

Jacob J. Spiegel et al., “Report of the Masters in Tallulah Morgan, et al., versus John Kerrigan, et al. ,” March 31, 1975, 57–62, file 12, ser. III, box 1, Robert Dentler Papers, University Archives and Special Collections, Joseph P. Healey Library, University of Massachusetts Boston.

Morgan v. Kerrigan , 401 F. Supp. 216, 223 (1975).

Morgan v. Kerrigan , 401 F. Supp. 216, 235–37, 240–41, 256–60, esp. 240 (1975).

Dentler and Scott, Schools on Trial , ix.

Morgan v. Kerrigan , 401 F. Supp. 216, 248 (1975).

“CDAC/District Council Liaison Subcommittee Meeting with the Judge,” February 26, 1976, 3–4, file 60, box 3, PCP.

[CCC], “Citizen Participation,” n.d. [ca. March 1977], 1, file 2, box 27, Citywide Coordinating Council Records (CCCR), Archives and Manuscripts Department, John J. Burns Library, Boston College; Margaret Del Giudice, “Wood Says Council Strengthens Role of Parents,” Boston Globe , August 27, 1976, 12.

Citywide Coordinating Council (CCC), Annual Report, 1975–1976 , July 1, 1976, vii–xxviii, file 1239, box 37, FHR.

Morgan v. Kerrigan , 401 F. Supp. 216, 265–67 (1975).

CCC Newsletter , February 1976, 2–4 and CCC Newsletter , June 1976, 4, both in file 90, box 4, PCP.

Morgan v. Kerrigan , 401 F. Supp. 216, 248–49, 267, esp. 249 (1975).

[CWEC], “City-Wide Educational Coalition Program Proposal for 1975–76,” [1975], 32–33, file 36, box 58, KHWR.

Mary Ellen Smith to W. Arthur Garrity Jr., March 30, 1976, 14–15, file 37, box 58, KHWR.

“Quality Education: Changing Definitions and Heightened Expectations,” [ca. March 1977], [3], file 2, box 27, CCCR.

Steve Krugman and Helen Chin, “Parent Council Activities, 1978–1979: A Year End Summary Report,” [1979], 2, file 117, box 5, PCP.

Dianne Dumanoski, “School ’75: Parents Work to Make Busing Work,” Boston Phoenix , August 5, 1975, 5, 14–15; Jane Morrison-Margulis to CPAC, August 14, 1980, 1–2, file [16] “Citywide Parents Advisory Council (C.P.A.C.) 1979–82,” box 15, Department of Implementation Records (DIR), City of Boston Archives and Records Management Division.

[CWEC], “City-Wide Educational Coalition Program Proposal for 1975–76,” 10.

CCC, “Public Hearing,” April 13, 1977, transcript, 27–28, 57–65, 294–98, 303–4, esp. 65, file 1, box 47, CCCR.

Massachusetts Coalition for Human Rights, “Report of MCHR Activities for the Year Ending September 1976,” 2, file 19, box 19, JBP.

John O’Bryant quoted in Miriam Clasby, “The Role of the School in the Community: Community Perspectives,” July 1979, 13, file 28, box 6, Carmen A. Pola Papers, Snell Library, Northeastern University.

CCC, “November Report of the Citywide Coordinating Council to the United States District Court,” November 1977, 3, file 12, box 20, CCCR.

CCC, “November Report of the Citywide Coordinating Council to the United States District Court,” November 1977, Letter of Transmittal, 1, I-5, file 12, box 20, CCCR.

Lupo, Liberty’s Chosen Home , 169–70; Dentler and Scott, Schools on Trial , 21, 24–27, 46, 63–64.

“Overview of CDAC 7 at Mid Year, Phase II,” [March 1976?], 5, file 118, box 5, PCP.

“Remarks of John Coakley,” March 23, 1976, file 1, box 25, JBP.

Conference of the Boston School Committee, Minutes, February 11, 1976, 9, file 16, box 11, CCCR; CWEC, “The Promotional Rating Process, An Analysis,” August 1976, 1, file 59, box 23, CCCR; Smith interview, 31–32.

[Garthenia Beal, Patricia B. Corcoran, and Donna Crowley], “Introduction” [to CDAC report in District VII Annual Report for 1975–1976], [1], file 118, box 5, PCP.

Garthenia Beal, Patricia B. Corcoran, and Donna Crowley, “Report of District Council (CDAC),” [in District VII Annual Report for 1975–1976], 2, file 118, box 5, PCP.

CDAC VII, “Minutes,” March 24, 1976, 1–2, file 60, box 3, PCP.

CCC, “Staff Memorandum on Citizen Involvement,” n.d., 1–3, esp. 1, 2, cons. w/“Staff Memorandum on Permanent Appointments,” [ca. June 1977?], file 187, box 25, Office of the President (Ryder) Records, Snell Library, Northeastern University.

“Overview of CDAC 7 at Mid Year, Phase II,” 4–5.

CCC, “Staff Memorandum on Citizen Involvement,” 3–4; Peter Driscoll to Herman Hernandez-Santana and Manny Teixeira, May 18, 1979, 2, file [14] “CDAC I General, Dec. 1978–Oct. 1980,” box 1, ser. I, CPCR.

[CCC], “Citizen Participation,” [ca. March 1977], [9], file 2, box 27, CCCR.

Ralph E. Mann to W. Arthur Garrity, April 3, 1975, 1, file 8, ser. LIc, box 37, WAGP.

Henry Robinson interviewed by Harry Savas, WBZ Radio News, “Three Years of School Desegregation: Is It Working?” June 1977, VII-1, transcript, file 83, box 4, PCP.

W. Arthur Garrity Jr., “Memorandum and Further Orders as to Citizen Participation Groups,” Morgan v. McDonough , September 1, 1977, 1–3, esp. 3, file 6, ser. XLVIa, box 33, WAGP.

“Press Advisory: Parent Councils in the Boston Public Schools,” [1978?], 4, file 84a, box 4, PCP.

CWEC, “The Promotional Rating Process, An Analysis,” August 1976, 9–22, file 59, box 23, CCCR.

Conference of the Boston School Committee, Minutes, August 3, 1976, 83, file 1, box 12, CCCR.

Peter Driscoll to Herman Hernandez-Santana and Manny Teixeira, May 18, 1979, 1, file [14] “CDAC I General, Dec. 1978–Oct. 1980,” box 1, ser. I, CPCR.

Patricia Johnson et al. to Ms. Koch, May 18, 1979, 1, file 43, box 3, PCP.

Arnita Cooper, Louella Hoffman, and Henry Allen, “Second Draft, Report Outline of the [CPAC] Sub-Committee on External Relationships,” [ca. 1981?], 7, file 117, box 5, PCP; Kirk Scharfenberg, “Nothing to Lose,” Boston Globe , February 28, 1981, 15.

“Minutes of CPAC Meeting,” July 26, 1978, 3, file 68, box 3, PCP; Marion J. Fahey, “Annual Report of Total System for the 1976–77 School Year,” July 15, 1977, [28], file 1, ser. II, box 1, WAGP; [CCC], “Citizen Participation,” [3].

CWEC, “Promotional Rating Process,” 12–13.

CCC, “March 1978 Report of the Citywide Coordinating Council to the United States District Court,” April 12, 1978, I-7, file 116, box 5, PCP.

Camilla Stewart to Judge Garrity, July 16, 1982, 1, file 24, ser. XLVIa, box 34, WAGP.

Vrabel, People’s History , 204; [CPAC], “Proposal: Parent Councils,” Sept. 17, 1981, 1–3, file 26, ser. XLVIa, box 34, WAGP.

[Paul Kennedy], “FY ’82 Budget Position Paper,” February 9, 1981, 2, encl. in Paul Kennedy to CDAC Co-Chairs, March 9, 1981 (rec.), file 26, ser. XLVIa, box 34, WAGP.

Dentler, “Urban School Desegregation,” 5–6.

[Interview notes], n.d. [summer 1985], [3], file 16, box 23, CWECR.

CWEC, Parent Survey, W7, 1985, pt. II, p. 1, file 18, box 23, CWECR; CWEC, Parent Survey, W6, 1985, pt. II, p. 1, file 18, box 23, CWECR.

Diane Hills to Mr. Howard, 1–2, May 11, 1979, cons. w/Patricia Johnson et al. to Ms. Koch, May 18, 1979, file 43, box 3, PCP.

Henry Allen and Isaac Adar to Diane Moriarty, December 5, 1980, 1–2, file [9] “Community District Advisory Council (CDAC) 1978–82,” box 5, DIR.

CWEC, “School to School Transition: A Report on the Effects of Closing Schools,” [ca. June 30, 1982], [32], [34], [38], file [18], box 15, DIR.

CWEC, Parent Survey, B17, 1985, pt. I, p. 1, file 17, box 23, CWECR.

CWEC, Parent Survey, H2, 1985, pt. II, p. 1, file 17, box 23, CWECR.

Mattleen Harris-Wright to CDAC II Members, memorandum, August 18, 1981, 1, file 26, ser. XLVIa, box 34, WAGP.

William Bradford Reynolds quoted in Tom Mirga, “Civil-Rights Panel Attacks Reagan’s Policy on Busing,” Education Week , December 15, 1982, accessed online at https://www.edweek.org/education/civil-rights-panel-attacks-reagans-policy-on-busing/1982/12 .

Gary Orfield, “Turning Back to Segregation,” in Dismantling Desegregation: The Quiet Reversal of Brown v. Board of Education , ed. Gary Orfield and Susan E. Eaton (New York, 1996), 14–22.

Following recommendations from CPAC, Garrity reorganized the council structure in July 1982. The revised structure created an all-parent network made up of School Parent Councils (SPCs), District Parent Councils (DPCs), and the Citywide Parents Council (CPC). Broader community participation at the district level was eliminated and replaced with an eighteen-member advisory committee to the CPC, appointed by its co-chairs based on nominations put forward by the SPCs. W. Arthur Garrity, “Memorandum and Semi-Final Orders on the Structure of Citizen Participation in the Desegregation Process,” Morgan v. McDonough , July 20, 1982, 2–8, file 6, ser. XLVIa, box 33, WAGP; CWEC, “Findings, Recommendations, Implications: Parent Focus Group Project, May–June 1995,” 3–5, file 20, box 18, CWECR.

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• Northeastern University Library
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• Boston Public Schools, Re-Writing History: The Boston Busing Crisis
• Getting Started
• Ruth Batson
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Boston Public Schools, Re-Writing History: The Boston Busing Crisis : Getting Started

Welcome, scholars from the Boston Public Schools!

This guide introduces resources to support your research on activism for racial equity in and desegregation of Boston Public Schools. Use the tabs on the left to explore primary sources related to the lives and work of 5 activists; Ruth Batson, Paul Parks, Jean McGuire, Ellen S. Jackson, and Carmen Pola.

What are Primary Sources?

Primary sources are first-hand sources created at the time of a particular event or period under study. They may be artifacts or observations or accounts of events and experiences. We'll be reviewing letters, photographs, interviews, and more.

Searching in Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections' Digital Collections

To get started viewing archival material, we recommend visiting your activist’s page first by clicking on their name in the menu to find archival records created by them, that mention their name, or that document something your activist was involved in. 

You can search and view all the digitized records related to Boston school desegregation here . 

If you would like to search all of the Archives and Special Collections' digitized records you can visit our Digital Repository here . 

When searching you can filter your results by year and by type of archival record: text, image, audio, moving image:

Click on your result to see a preview and some description about what your document is and is about. If your result is a document or has more than one page, scroll to the bottom and click “download” to see the full document: 

Primary Sources about Busing and School Desegregation in Boston

• Beyond Busing: Boston School Desegregation Archival Resources This site is an entry-point for Boston school desegregation archival resources. These sources explore the history of desegregation in Boston beginning with the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 through to the Morgan v. Hennigan case in 1974.
• Boston Desegregation Project Explore digitized materials related to Boston desegregation from the Northeastern University Archives.
• (Digital Public Library of America) Busing & Beyond: School Desegregation in Boston An overview and primary sources related to the story of busing and desegregation in Boston.
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Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism                    at Brandeis University​ ​

i n v e s t i g a t i o n s

Schuster Institute-WGBH News partnership

Brown v. board, north & south, remembering  boston's busing 40 years later, wgbh news,  in partnership with the schuster institute, launched on september 8, 2014, a yearlong multimedia news series that chronicles the impact of busing and desegregation on boston over the past 40 years. the series kicks off with historical documents newly discovered in mayor kevin white's papers, and will include new reporting across radio, tv, and digital..

Research assistance has been provided by the  Boston Busing and Desegregation Project.  Original content was produced in conjunction with Brandeis Sociology Professor David Cunningham and Brandeis students in the Civil Rights and Educational Equity in the U.S. Justice Brandeis Semester.  

The Battle over Desegregating Schools

What was it like to go to school during desegregation in two cities that were prominent in that fight: Boston, Massachusetts and Jackson, Mississippi, one in the north, one in the south? Both cities violently resisted one of the most important Supreme Court decisions of the 20th century: Brown v. Board of Education,* which declared that keeping the races separated in school violated the Constitution’s promise of equal protection under the law.

Both gave us painfully iconic images: from Boston, a 1976 photograph by Stanley Forman of a white man nearly spearing a black lawyer with an American flag on City Hall Plaza; from Jackson, a 1965 photograph by Matt Heron of a white police officer wresting an American flag from a five-year-old African American boy’s hands. In Boston, white adults rioted and threw rocks at schoolbuses bearing black children. In Jackson, four years earlier, white adults had pulled their children from the public schools and enrolled them in new “private” all-white academies that hijacked public land, school materials, and funds.  

All that is public record. But what was happening inside the schools, away from the news cameras?

What was the more intimate, more daily experience of students, teachers, principals, guidance counselors, and others who lived through desegregation?

Schuster Institute Senior Fellow and WGBH Senior Investigative Reporter Phillip Martin interviews Dorchester students for some of the answers, here in three parts:

In "Dorchester Students' Essays Echo Boston's Busing Crisis, 40 Years Later," Senior Fellow Phillip Martin interviews former students from the Oliver Wendell Holmes School in Dorchester, who in 1975 wrote class essays about their experiences with desegregation. Listen  here>    

"What Happened To The Sixth Graders Who Wrote Essays About Busing?" Listen here>

Echoes of Boston's Busing Crisis

Why desegregate?

Civil rights activists and academic researchers remind us that mixing the races was never the goal; rather, equal funding and equal opportunity were. As long as black and white students were in separate schools, black schools were starved for funds, materials, teachers, and building repairs. By putting white and black students in the same classrooms, activists hoped to make that that funding discrepancy impossible.

In the end, in both cities, segregation triumphed -- in practice, if not in law. In Boston, “white flight” accelerated: many families moved to the suburbs (with black families denied mortgages at a much higher rate than white families). Others moved their children into parochial schools, leaving Boston’s schools overwhelmingly black, Hispanic and poor. In Jackson, Mississippi, public schools today are overwhelmingly black.

Boston, Massachusetts

Boston’s busing riots shocked the nation. On national television, Americans watched adults in two of Boston’s poor white neighborhoods throwing stones at buses full of terrified black children as they were bused into previously all-white schools under federal court order. "Liberal" Boston was exposed as a hotbed of racial hatred as virulent as what had been seen in the South.

But the sixth graders at the Oliver Wendell Holmes school--based in a black section of Dorchester and integrated without violence--wrote essays about their year inside this social experiment. These essays have never before been publicly seen in their entirerity. We post them in full here:

     Essays 1-17 | Essays 18-31 (PDFs)

Schuster Institute Senior Contributing Editor and New York Times bestselling author, Michael Patrick MacDonald, grew up in South Boston during the era of forced busing. Home was the Old Colony Housing Project just across the street from James "Whitey" Bulger's alleged liquor-store headquarters on Old Colony Ave. 

"Busing was the best thing that ever happened to Whitey Bulger," writes MacDonald in  "Whitey Bulger, Boston's Busing, and Southie's Lost Generation,"  an original essay for our website.

Police show of force as busing begins in Boston.

Images from the video clip "Pam Bullard reviews the events of school desegregation in 1974," WGBH Media Library & Archives.

In the face of racial unrest, police escorted some school buses.

Not So Black and White: Busing in Boston

Why desegregate?  

Boston, Massachusetts  

Brown v. Board of Education  

Sixth-graders’ essays on integration,  with  hightlights  

Social history and context  

Selected resources for

learning more

WGBH News' reporting by Phillip Martin

Dorchester Students' Essays Echo Boston's Busing Crisis, 40 Years Later  

What Happened To The Sixth Graders Who Wrote Essays About Busing?  

Michael Patrick MacDonald  

Whitey Bulger, Boston Busing, and Southie's Lost Generation

A Schuster Institute-WGBH News partnership

In the summer of 2014, the Schuster Institute brought never-before-seen archival material and selected reporting to our Senior Fellow and WGBH Senior Investigative Reporter Phillip Martin. The result is a Schuster Institute partnership with Martin and WGBH Boston Public Radio-TV-Digital and a yearlong multimedia examination of the impact of busing and desegregation in Boston over the past 40 years. 

This website offers more detail, context, and history.

The Schuster Institute reporting team included former Associate Editor Neena Pathak and Senior Fellow Maria Stenzel.

Other contributors are acknowledged here.

"THE AFRICAN AMERICAN STRUGGLE for desegregation," observes Gary Orfield, co-director at the Harvard Civil Rights Project and among the nation's leading experts on desegregation, "did not arise because anyone believed that there was something magical about sitting next to whites in a classroom. It was, however, based on a belief that the dominant group would keep control of the most successful schools and that the only way to get full range of opportunities for a minority child was to get access to those schools."

--from The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education, Civil Rights 101: School Desegregation and Civil Rights Opportunity

"Southie," Center of Boston's Busing Resistance

Schuster Institute Senior Fellow Phillip Martin and NPR remembered forced busing in South Boston in the "reality check" broadcast:

Author reads from his book "All Souls: A Family Story

From southie".

Author and Schuster Institute Consulting Editor Michael Patrick MacDonald reads from his book  "All Souls: A Family Story from Southie."  In this chapter, a grade-school-age MacDonald encounters South Boston's outraged sense of his Irish American enclave being occupied, like Belfast, by "the rich English."

IN THE BREAKTHROUGH 1954 DECISION  Brown vs. Board of Education, the United States Supreme Court declared that there is no such thing as “separate but equal,” and that therefore legally segregated schools violated the Fourteenth Amendment, which guaranteed equality under law. Brown was the first major crack in the Jim Crow laws that, for a century after slavery, continued to enforce the subordination of black people, especially in the former Confederate states.

While Brown was decided in the 1950s, actually dismantling the laws and rules that kept black students out of previously all-white schools throughout the legally segregated South took another fifteen years--and not until 1974 did a federal judge apply it to schools in the North, in Boston’s Morgan v. Hennigan.

Sixth grade students from the class of 1974, Oliver Wendell Holmes Middle School in Boston, recounted their experiences of the school year in 31 essays that, until now, were filed away in archives. Read their essays  here.  (In cases where permission to publish has not been granted, names have been redacted for privacy.)

In 1974, kids in the Boston Public Schools were facing forced busing and desegregation. Pictured above are a few students from the sixth grade class of 1974 from Oliver Wendell Holmes Elementary School. Their entire class photo can be seen  below,  with essays about their school experiences that year. 

Learn more about the

Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University>​

‘The practice was nowhere near the policy.’ History of segregation in Boston schools examined

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Lindsa McIntyre, high school superintendent of Boston, describes the first high school she attended as an “annex.”

“The cafeteria served as the gymnasium. The windows were cracked, broken or peeling,” she said. “The books were old, the room was cold.”

McIntyre spoke about her experiences attending both segregated and desegregated Boston schools during a panel talk, “Racial Inequality and Struggle for Equity in the Boston Public School System,” on Wednesday at Blackman Auditorium on Northeastern’s Boston campus. 

Part of the university’s Myra Kraft Open Classroom series, the panelists discussed school segregation and the fight for racial equality in the school system from the 19th century to the present. The panel talked about issues that Boston still faces today, issues that can be applied anywhere else. 

“What we have experienced in Boston takes place everywhere else in the world,” Northeastern distinguished professor and panel moderator Ted Landsmark said. “And as often as not it took place around who has access to education, and who doesn’t.”

Panelist Rev. Stephen Kendrick kicked things off with a little-known but consequential story from the 19th century.

He told the audience about Sarah, a 4-year-old Boston girl who in 1847 became the subject of a court case around school segregation. Sarah had to walk past several white schools to get to a Black school each morning. So her father, a printer named Benjamin Roberts, sued the city of Boston on her behalf. 

Roberts v. City of Boston made it to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, where the family ultimately lost—Sarah was denied access to white schools in 1850. The case would set the precedent for “separate but equal” in the United States, established by the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).

The case had other implications for the future, however: Attorney Charles Sumner’s argument that segregation had to end anticipated the Brown v. Board of Education decision. “He warned the whole nation that segregation had to be ended, or there was a dark future for all of us, together,” Kendrick said. 

The case was part of a larger abolitionist movement in Boston, one that led to the peaceful desegregation of Boston schools in 1854. But, Kendrick warned, “The story is not over … in many ways, we have ground to make up.”

Over 100 years later, Boston would face another challenge in the form of the busing crisis. Those who watched the news at the time may remember images of violent encounters on the street. But, as Jim Vrabel, author of “A People’s History of the New Boston,” said, there was far more to it than that. 

“History is more than images, as powerful as they are, and sometimes as accurate as they are,” he said. “History is also about decisions and details.”

By detailing the policy decisions that went into establishing court-mandated busing in Boston in 1974, Vrabel said, he illustrates that history could have taken a very different course. 

“It’s not inevitable that desegregation and busing failed in Boston,” he said. “It might have succeeded, if individuals in positions of authority at the time … had done a better job. It might have worked. And instead of dividing the city and its people, it might have brought them together.”

“All of what we heard, I’ve experienced,” said McIntyre as she rounded out the panel. “The policy said, ‘desegregate.’ But the practice was nowhere near the policy, and it hurt. It hurt to raise your hand to want to answer a question that was asked by your teacher and to be invisible. It hurt to be ignored.”

McIntyre ended up going to a private high school, she said, but she returned to her local school for her final year and “found all my friends failing.” “They all had tremendous potential, but it was ignored or stifled,” she said.

She discussed how this experience informs how she approaches her current position as superintendent, from helping students to feel accepted, to making sure their needs and their safety is at the center, to making sure they are engaged in discourse, to bringing joy into the classroom.

“Our students have historically been marginalized, and traditionally been underserved,” she said. “Our mission around equity and action is to eliminate the achievement gap, to provide equitable and excellent student outcomes.”

In this way, history is informing the present and the future, something Vrabel emphasized in his talk.

“We still have trouble talking about it, but we must because we need to learn from history. Especially because history has a way of coming back around at us,” Vrabel said. “We need to learn from the lessons of the past mistakes of the past so we can confront the challenges of the present in the future.”

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HIS 200 - Applied History

Primary sources.

Consider using search terms like school desegregation, children, education, discrimination, "separate but equal," Boston, busing, etc. as you explore the library's subscription databases and the selected outside websites with quality digitized primary source collections. If you can identify any key figures in the movement, or any landmark events, you can use their names as keywords as well. Keep in mind that many databases and websites will also have a date filter that you can use to ensure that you are looking at the right time period in history.

Databases with Primary Sources

Websites with Primary Sources

• Digital Public Library of America: Busing & Beyond: School Desegregation in Boston This link opens in a new The sources in this primary source set, including letters, photographs, maps, reports, and more, provide further insight into the context of school desegregation in Boston.
• Library of Congress: Brown v. Board at Fifty: "With an Even Hand" This link opens in a new window This exhibit displays a number of primary source documents, including images, letters, legal statements, and more, highlighting the history of desegregation efforts in schools.
• Northeastern University: Beyond Busing - Boston School Desegregation Archival Resources The Boston Public Schools Desegregation Collection is a digital library of scanned archival materials documenting the desegregation of Boston’s public schools. The collection brings together materials from numerous Boston-area institutions and covers the time period beginning with the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and focusing on the Morgan v. Hennigan case (1974) and the court-ordered plan to desegregate the Boston Public Schools (BPS).
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• Next: School Desegregation: Secondary Sources >>

Readers: Were you part of busing in Boston? Tell us your story.

We want to hear your stories as we enter the start of the school year, 50 years since the boston public schools desegregation busing order in 1974..

By Annie Jonas

It has been 50 years since the Boston Public Schools desegregation busing order on June 21, 2024. On that day, Federal Judge W. Arthur Garrity ruled in Morgan v. Hennigan that the Boston School Committee had been intentionally segregating public schools and ordered busing to desegregate the district. The order required busing students to schools across the city to more evenly distribute racial diversity. 

The federal order was meant to integrate the district, and the Black families who filed the lawsuit had hoped integration would produce better and more equitable outcomes for their children. But that hope was never realized – not then, and not now. 

In a sweeping, multi-part series, “ Broken Promises, Unfulfilled Hope ,” The Boston Globe explored the legacy of Boston’s busing era and found little has changed since the 1974 court order. For all of its effort to desegregate, Boston’s public schools remain intensely segregated today and the academic outcomes of the students they serve are staggeringly unequal. 

“Boston’s children, especially its most disadvantaged, bear the consequences of that history of failure. It is the biggest broken promise in the city’s modern history,” Globe reporters wrote .

Beginning even before the first day of school on Sept. 12, 1974 under the busing court order, and continuing for two years after, a series of racial protests and riots engulfed the city. The violence even brought national attention to the issue. From September 1974 through the fall of 1976, at least 40 riots occurred in the city.

Stones and racial slurs were hurled at buses carrying Black children into white neighborhoods. Fights broke out between students and the police were an ongoing presence at schools for years to quell or interrupt the violence.

As we enter the start of the school year – 50 years since the first day of school under the busing desegregation court order in September of 1974 – we want to hear from students, families, and others involved in busing. 

If you were a student who was bused, tell us what it was like going to school. How did busing impact you or your loved ones? What can we learn from Boston’s busing history?

If you’d like to share with us, please fill out the form below or e-mail us at [email protected] . We will not publish any part of your submission without contacting you first. We may use your contact information to follow up with you. 

Were you part of busing in Boston?

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