The struggle to desegregate Boston’s public schools

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10 SOCIALIST ACTION FEBRUARY 2015 BOSTON—This academic year marks the 40th anniversary of the struggle to desegregate the Boston Public Schools. No celebrations have been held to mark the event; there is no commemo­ ration and little public commentary. Local television stations are making no use of the ample film footage they pos­ sess and are broadcasting no special programs of this important chapter in Boston’s history.

Discreet silence, with a few excep­ tions, has been maintained throughout the city. The ruling elite favor forgetful­ ness of their shameful past.

However, those who fought for civil rights and racial equality then, and the generation that is inspired to take up new challenges today, have every rea­ son to remember or learn the history of previous struggles, even when the results were not successful.

With a 1954 Supreme Court order to integrate public schools throughout the United States, racial equality in Boston had been delayed and denied. In 1974 U. S. District Court Judge Arthur Garrity released his decision, finding “that the evidence established that the school authorities had knowingly carried out a systematic program of segregation … and had intentionally brought about or maintained a dual school system” that was “unconstitutionally segregated.”

Further, the racist policies of the school committee operated “to the det­ riment of black pupils who generally were receiving an education unequal to that being given white pupils.”

No one could honestly dispute the facts or find them surprising. As Black community activist Mel King wrote, “Judge Garrity was faced with over­ whelming evidence. The School Com­ mittee had kept excellent records of its policies. … In effect, the Judge had no choice but to respond to history” (“Chain of Change,” 1981, pp. 158-159). A federal appeals court would later up­ hold Garrity’s decision.

Despite its liberal reputation, Boston had long been divided racially and eth­ nically by neighborhoods, and the pub­ lic schools mirrored that segregation. For example, South Boston High School, known as “Southie,” had a 100% white pupil enrollment at the time of Garri­ ty’s order. Needless to say, no minority faculty members were employed there.

Schools within the proportionally small Black community were the worst in the city, underfunded, overcrowded, and generally neglected. These schools also received the least qualified and least capable teachers. More than a decade of appeals by Black parents to the school committee, city council, and state legislature had resulted in no real improvement.

For all that Boston politicians spoke of their love of neighborhoods, the school committee was elected on a city-wide and not a neighborhood or district ba­ sis. This policy was a deliberate and legal means to preserve an all-white (and all Democratic Party) school com­ mittee. It ensured that Boston’s Black community, then only 10 percent of the population and confined primarily to an area known as Roxbury, would not be able to elect a minority candidate. Nor were any minority school adminis­ trators ever appointed by these school committees.

Finally, by order of Judge Arthur Gar­ rity, the Boston public schools began to carry out a desegregation plan that, in its first phase, would bus 20,000 of the city’s 93,000 pupils. Black students were sent from their neighborhoods to South Boston, a predominantly white, Irish area, to begin the creation of a racially integrated school system in the city. Students from “Southie” were likewise sent into the Black community of Roxbury. It was this order that gave rise to the noxious phrase “forced bus­ ing.” Black students replied, more accu­ rately: “It’s not the bus, it’s us.”

The victory in court was the conclu­ sion of a years-long effort for funda­ mental civil rights for the beleaguered Black community in Boston, but it was certainly not the end of the battle. Vig­ orous and brave action by Black par­ ents, students, and their allies in the courts, streets, and classrooms result­ ed in a temporary triumph.

In early 1975, pro-busing forces con­ sisting of hundreds of activists from around the country and dozens of student groups organized a national conference in Boston that founded the National Student Coalition Against Racism (NSCAR). With the NAACP, a major demonstration in favor of busing was called for the following spring that succeeded in drawing approximately 15,000.

In addition to demonstrations, NSCAR organized teach-ins, public debates, and forums, including campaigns to educate against the death penalty. Its press releases promptly countered the lies and distortions of the anti-busing organizations and their spokespeople.

NSCAR campus chapters were set up in high schools and colleges through­ out the United States. Members of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) were instrumental in all of these efforts and provided many staff members for day-to-day work. SWP militants were also elected to leadership positions within NSCAR, where they helped to build a broad and united organization.

NSCAR provided factual material to educate about the nature of the strug­ gle. One of NSCAR’s resolutions stated: “The real issue in the school desegrega­ tion battle is not busing—the means to get better schools—but the democratic right of Blacks to get the equal educa­ tion now denied them.”

Yet, over time, the white majority found a way to re-assert its power. Un­ able to block the federal order that bused students throughout the city to achieve racial balance, unable to roll (Left) Jan. 8, 1975: Buses arrive at South Boston High School (Below) Feb. 11, 1975: Whites kick Black student (on ground) outside Hyde Park High School.

back the buses themselves, whites in Boston turned from legal chal­ lenges to mob violence and ulti­ mately to the abandonment of the public schools, leaving them much smaller and more segregated than they were before the desegrega­ tion order was implemented. By 1988, overall student numbers had fallen to 57,000, of which only 15% were white. The Boston public schools were once again resegregated.

Last fall, former Boston Mayor Ray Flynn recalled those years in an article titled: “40 years later, busing ruling still misguided” (Boston Herald, Sept. 3, 2014). When buses began rolling to South Boston in 1974, Flynn was the state representative of “Southie” and a leading opponent of “forced busing.”

Flynn was never the biggest big­ ot in Boston; his political forte was a more refined, a more respect­ able racism. His customary tone was not angry but aggrieved, in sorrow for the good white people of Southie and all the trials they had to endure. Unlike the more charismatic near-criminals in city politics, Flynn was the somewhat slow-witted but reasonable reaction­ ary. His was the ideal public face of prejudice. It’s a role he continues today.

In this article Flynn recalls what he refers to as “an ugly time.” Flynn indig­ nantly states: “Not only did the federal court decision by Judge W. Arthur Gar­ rity remove city government control over our schools, it denied parents a voice in where their children could at­ tend school.”

Flynn continues, “The injustice to parents was ignored by ‘elites’ during this horrendously flawed and insensi­ tive process… I knew many of these parents. They were fine, decent and concerned mothers and fathers who were not racists or haters as they were sometimes described in the media.”

This article is a cover-up for what was indeed an ugly time; it whitewashes white racism in a veneer of phony pop­ ulism, falsely pitting elites versus par­ ents, that is, white parents. Black peo­ ple in Boston never had a public voice. The article itself is a misguided effort to mis-educate readers too young to know what really occurred in Boston 40 years ago.

Flynn mentions racism only once in his article, and then only to deny that it existed. He won’t acknowledge that racism was the driving force that unit­ ed white opposition to busing and to the desegregation order. A phrase like “our schools” was often heard in the 1970s, but it never referred to the en­ tire city. “Our schools” was a code word for “white schools” that would remain white by forcibly excluding Blacks and other minorities.

School Committee member and may­ oral candidate Louise Day Hicks, a champion of Boston bigotry, famously said, “A racially imbalanced school is not educationally harmful.” Never mind that the Supreme Court had ruled to the contrary 20 years before.

It is sheer nonsense and brazenly de­ ceitful to say that white parents were simply decent people who were denied their rights. The only right they lost was the right to deny equal treatment to Black citizens of Boston. It is simply not credible to deny the dominating presence of white racists and haters. Minority students were the targets (continued on page 11, in “Polish miners on strike”)