Desegregation Busing in The United States - History

History

The origins of desegregation busing can be tracked back to two major developments that occurred in the United States during the 1940s and 1950s.

Prior to World War II, most public schools in the country were de jure or de facto segregated. All Southern states had Jim Crow laws mandating racial segregation of schools. Northern states and some border states were primarily white (as of 1940, populations of Detroit and Chicago were more than 90 percent white) and, furthermore, existing black populations were confined to ghettos by various restrictive covenants.

Starting in 1941, the so-called Second Great Migration brought large numbers of blacks into Northern cities. Shelley v. Kraemer (1948) allowed them to settle in formerly white neighborhoods, contributing to racial tension. Meanwhile, the post-war housing boom and the rise of suburbia allowed whites to migrate into the suburbs. By 1960, all major Northern cities had sizable black populations (23 percent in Chicago, 29 percent in Detroit). Blacks tended to be concentrated in inner cities, whereas newer suburbs of most cities were almost exclusively white.

At the same time, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown vs Board of Education (1954) overturned racial segregation laws for public schools that had been in place in a number of states since the late 19th century, and ruled that separate but equal schools were "inherently unequal". Although the Brown decision affirmed principles of equality and justice, it did not specify how its ruling would promote equality in education. Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP wanted a speedy process for desegregating the school districts, but the Court waited until the following year to make its recommendations. Reasons for delaying had to do with the changes in the Court and with Chief Justice Earl Warren steering a careful course given the expected opposition from Southern states. In May 1955, the Court ruled in Brown II that the school districts desegregate "with all deliberate speed." Public school administrators had to begin the process of desegregating the schools through the development of policies that would promote racial mixing. A backlash of resistance and violence ensued. Even members of Congress refused to abide by the decision. In 1956 over a hundred congressmen signed the Southern Manifesto, promising to use all legal means to undermine and reverse the Court's ruling.

The impact of the ruling in both the North and South was limited because whites and blacks tended to live in all-white or all-black communities. Initial integration in the South tended to be symbolic: for example, the integration of Clinton High School, the first public school in Tennessee to be integrated, amounted to admission of twelve black students to a formerly all-white school.

The struggle to desegregate the schools received impetus from the African-American Civil Rights Movement, whose goal was to dismantle legal segregation in all public places. The movement's efforts culminated in Congress passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Civil Rights Act of 1965. Signed by President Lyndon Johnson, the two laws signaled the end of discriminatory voting practices and segregation of public accommodations. The importance of these two laws was the injection of both the legislative and executive branches joining the judiciary to promote racial integration. In addition, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 authorized the federal government to cut off funding if Southern school districts did not comply and also to bring lawsuits against school officials who resisted.

The momentum continued with two additional Supreme Court decisions aimed at implementation. In 1968, the Warren Court in Green v. County School Board of New Kent County, rejected a freedom of choice plan. The Court ordered the county to desegregate immediately and eliminate racial discrimination "root and branch." Then in 1971, the Burger Court in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education ruled that the school district must achieve racial balance even if it meant redrawing school boundaries and the use of busing as a legal tool. The impact of Green and Swann served to end all remnants of de jure segregation in the South. However, the consequence of the Swann decision ushered in new forms of resistance in subsequent decades. The decision failed to address de facto segregation.

Consequently, despite being found "inherently unequal" in Brown vs Board of Education, by the late 1960s public schools remained de facto segregated in many cities - because of demographic patterns, school district lines being intentionally drawn to segregate the schools racially, and, in some cases, due to conscious efforts to send black children to inferior schools. Thus, for example, by 1969, more than nine of every ten black students in Nashville still attended all-black schools. Evidence of such de facto segregation motivated early proponents of plans to engage in conscious "integration" of public schools, by busing schoolchildren to schools other than their neighborhood schools, with an objective to equalize racial imbalances. Proponents of such plans argued that with the schools integrated, minority students would have equal access to equipment, facilities and resources that the cities' white students had, thus giving all students in the city equal educational opportunities.

One argument against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that opponents of the proposed legislation found particularly compelling was that the bill would require forced busing to achieve certain racial quotas in schools. Proponents of the bill, such as Emanuel Celler and Jacob Javits, said that the bill would not authorize such measures. Leading sponsor Sen. Hubert Humphrey wrote two amendments specifically designed to outlaw busing. Humphrey said "if the bill were to compel it, it would be a violation, because it would be handling the matter on the basis of race and we would be transporting children because of race." While Javits said any government official who sought to use the bill for busing purposes "would be making a fool of himself," two years later the Department of Health, Education and Welfare said that Southern school districts would be required to meet mathematical ratios of students by busing.

Another catalyst for the development of busing was an influential sociological report on educational equality commissioned by the U.S. government in the 1960s. It was one of the largest studies in history, with more than 150,000 students in the sample. The result was a massive report of over 700 pages. That 1966 report — titled "Equality of Educational Opportunity" (or often simply called the "Coleman Report" after its author James Coleman) — the study contained many controversial findings. One conclusion from the study was that, while black schools in the South were not significantly underfunded as compared to white schools, and while per-pupil funding did not contribute significantly to differences in educational outcomes, socially disadvantaged black children still benefited significantly from learning in mixed-race classrooms. Thus, it was argued that busing (as opposed to simply increasing funding to segregated schools) was necessary for achieving racial equality.

A federal court found that in Boston, schools were constructed and school district lines drawn intentionally to segregate the schools racially. In the early 1970s, a series of court decisions found that the racially imbalanced schools trampled the rights of minority students. As a remedy, courts ordered the racial integration of school districts within individual cities, sometimes requiring the racial composition of each individual school in the district to reflect the composition of the district as a whole. This was generally achieved by transporting children by school bus to a school in a different area of the district.

"Forced busing" was a term used by many to describe the mandates that generally came from the courts. Court-ordered busing to achieve school desegregation was used mainly in large, ethnically segregated school systems, including Boston, Massachusetts; Cleveland, Ohio; Columbus, Ohio; Kansas City, Missouri; Pasadena, California; Richmond, Virginia; San Francisco, California; Detroit, Michigan; and Wilmington, Delaware. From 1972 to 1980, despite busing, the percentage of blacks attending mostly-black schools barely changed, moving from 63.6 percent to 63.3 percent.

The judge who instituted the Detroit busing plan said that busing "is a considerably safer, more reliable, healthful and efficient means of getting children to school than either car pools or walking, and this is especially true for younger children." He therefore included kindergarten children in the busing scheme: "Transportation of kindergarten children for upwards of forty-five minutes, one-way, does not appear unreasonable, harmful, or unsafe in any way." The resultant Supreme Court case, Milliken v. Bradley, imposed limits on busing. The key issue was whether a district court could order a metropolitan-wide desegregation plan between urban Detroit and suburban school districts. Busing would play a key role in the implementation phase. The Court essentially declared that federal courts did not have the authority to order inter-district desegregation unless it could be proven that suburban school districts intentionally mandated segregation policies. The implication of the decision was that suburban school districts in the North were not affected by the principles established by Brown. De facto segregation was allowed to persist in the North. The courts could order desegregation where segregation patterns existed, but only within municipalities, not suburban areas. The lasting consequence of the Milliken decision is that it opened the door for whites to flee to the suburbs and not be concerned about compliance with mandatory integration policies.

For the 1975-76 school year, the Louisville, Kentucky school district, which was not integrated due to whites largely moving to the suburbs, was forced to start a busing program. The first day, 1,000 protestors rallied against the busing, and a few days into the process, 8,000 to 10,000 whites from Jefferson County, Kentucky, many teenagers, rallied at the district's high schools and fought with police trying to break up the crowds. Police cars were vandalized, 200 were arrested, and people were hurt in the melee, but despite further rallies being banned the next day by Louisville's mayor, demonstrators showed up to the schools the following day. Kentucky Governor Julian Carroll sent 1,800 members of the Kentucky National Guard and stationed them on every bus. On September 26, 1975, 400 protestors held a rally at Southern High School, which was broken up by police tear gas, followed by a rally of 8,000 the next day, who marched led by a woman in a wheelchair to prevent police reprisals while cameras were running. Despite the protests, Louisville's busing program continued.

With waning public support, the courts began relaxing judicial supervision of school districts during the 1990s and 2000s, calling for voluntary efforts to achieve racial balance. In the early 1990s, the Rehnquist Court ruled in three cases coming from Oklahoma City, Kansas City, and DeKalb County, Ga. that federal judges could ease their supervision of school districts “once legally enforced segregation had been eliminated to the extent practicable." With these decisions, the Rehnquist Court opened the door for school districts throughout the country to get away from under judicial supervision once they had achieved unitary status. Unitary Status meant that a school district had successfully eliminated segregation in dual school systems and thus no longer bound to court-ordered desegregation policies. Then in 2002, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision in Belk v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education which declared that the school system had achieved desegregation status and that the method to achieve integration, like busing, was unnecessary. The refusal of the Court to hear the challenges to the lower court decision effectively overturned the earlier 1971 Swann ruling. Finally, in 2007, the Roberts Court produced a contentious 5-4 ruling in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1(PICS). The decision prohibited the use of racial classifications in any student assignment plan to maintain racial balance. Whereas the Brown case ruled that racial segregation violated the Constitution, now the use of racial classifications violated the equal protections clause of the 14th Amendment. Writing for the minority, Justice Breyer said the “ruling contradicted previous decisions upholding race-conscious pupil assignments and would hamper local school boards' efforts to prevent ‘resegregation’ in individual schools.”

Civil Rights advocates see the 2007 ruling as the inevitable consequence of gradual Court decisions dating back to the early 1970s to ease judicial supervision and limit important tools to achieve integrated schools. Even those school districts that voluntarily created race-conscious programs are under pressure to abandon these efforts as more white parents are refusing to participate in any pupil assignment programs. In some cases, white parents filed reverse discrimination lawsuits in court. Wherever the courts have backed away from mandating school districts to implement desegregation plans, resegregation of Blacks and Latinos has increased dramatically. In 1988, 44 percent of southern black students were attending majority white schools, about 435 in 1000. In 2005, 27 percent of black students were attending majority white schools, an average of 270 in 1000. The PICS decision is sure to accelerate these trends. The ruling reflects the culmination of the conservatives' central message on education that “race should be ignored, inequalities should be blamed on individuals and schools, and existing civil rights remedies should be dismantled.” In 2001 Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act(NCLB) which was promptly signed by President George W. Bush. The law put a premium on student testing, not integration, to measure academic progress. Financial penalties were incurred on schools if students did not demonstrate adequate academic performance. Initially supported by Democrats, the law, critics say, has failed to address adequately the achievement gap between whites and minorities and there are problems with implementation and inflexible provisions.