Busing in Boston in His Term Paper

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Total Length: 2092 words ( 7 double-spaced pages)

Total Sources: 1

Page 1 of 7

(Formisano 69)

Formisano analyzes the specific actions taken against busing by different groups and the response of the authorities to these actions. He also notes how similar actions occurred in other cities where integration was moving forward, including San Francisco and Chicago. Actions in these cities constituted the beginning of resegregation and increasing ghettoization. Boston became a symbol of what not to do. To assure that his order was followed, Garrity became more and more involved in the say-to-day details of the operation of the schools. In addition, more and more social scientists came to the conclusion that the costs of desegregation in these terms were not worth it. Studies have shown that busing did have many positive effects, though opponents still claim that busing was simply a failure. Formisano asks the key question, which is who paid the cost for busing. In some areas, blacks paid the price as all-black schools that actually worked were closed. Formisano also nots that during the desegregation era, the number of black principals, administrators, and teachers declined greatly.

Formisano asks why Boston became such a central issue in this effort and finds a number of reasons, from the patterns of residency to the dominance of the Catholic Church in the city and its emphasis on parental rights.

Formisano also asks why the plan failed, and he finds that for all his hands-on actions, Garrity failed to correct many of the problems with his plan. He appointed a group to design a new plan, and they created one with less busing and even greater racial imbalance. Many administrators worked to thwart the plan from the start and in some cases even managed to benefit from the chaos created. The police and city judges sided with the opponents, so enforcement was clearly lax. Garrity himself did not pursue enforcement as he might have done:

Judge Garrity's judicial personality made him reluctant to interfere, as he saw it, with First Amendment rights to freedom of speech, so that school boycotters and perpetrators of violence were given wide leeway.

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Even more importantly, Judge Garrity allowed the school committee majority, led by Kerrigan, to defy the court's authority without penalty. (Formisano 228)

As Formisano says of the whole period,

In the end, it was a war nobody won. The antibusing movement failed in that Judge Garrity's decision withstood all the appeals mounted against it in the courts and streets. Not for eleven years did Garrity withdraw and turn immediate responsibility for the schools back to the school committee. Yet as one ROAR activist claimed later, with only partial inaccuracy: "We never gave up. We won... " Indeed, the resistance resulted, particularly if white flight is counted as one expression of antibusing, in schools that by the 1980s were more highly segregated by race than before. They also were more lopsided than ever -- debilitatingly so -- in the lower-class composition of their students. (Formisano 203)

Formisano offers an interesting discussion of the events and a strong analysis of how they developed, what they meant, and why they occurred at all. He also provides a national context as well as background on the situation in Boston leading up to this court decision and its aftermath. The degree to which the busing plan failed is noted, though less attention is given to what ha happened since and the way the problem either persists or has been solved in a different way.

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