Posted on 06/28/2019 1:08:54 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
It was an unmitigated disaster. My younger sisters got caught up in it and became pawns for a liberal agenda. Totally unnecessary and downright cruel to the kids involved.
We were blindsided and figured the feds really put the screws to them but we couldn't have been more wrong.
The booster club of one of the high schools had figured a way to incorporate the Consent Decree into a recruiting scheme for black athletes already in place for the surrounding smaller towns.
BTW,this is the same town that gave America a book,a movie and a TV series. Yep,"Friday Night Lights"
My parents moved from Charlotte to an adjacent county specifically to keep me from being bused across town. My junior and senior high schools were in a smaller town, were good schools, and were pretty well integrated.
Oh I should have been clearer. The district uses family income as a way of making the schools reflect the county’s population. School choice zones can get pretty wide spread to make sure one race or ethnic group does not have a super majority. It achieves integration without having to go by race.
You may find this interesting. It gives the background of the court order and the lifting of it.
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/977/1202/2399898/
Here is the lifting of the court supervised order that lead to busing. We were under this supervision for over 20 years.
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/977/1202/2399898/
It was not popular with blacks or whites - I was doing some research in a couple of elementary schools in southwest Philadelphia back in the early sixties at about the time when the city was first starting to experiment with busing to “integrate” the schools - the schools were “segregated” because they served local neighborhoods where the residents, both white and black, tended to self-segregate according to race - as well as family, culture, and common values - I watched each morning as a bus would pull up to a school and a bunch of kids - predominantly black or white - would climb off and would themselves promptly self-segregate together in some corner of the playground until the bell would sound sending them into the building - even as naïve and uninitiated to the ways of the world as I was back then, I knew this was not going to work to bring kids together into a cohesive, neighborly, supportive learning environment.....
I grew up in the Deep, Deep South.
We got our first black kids in my elementary and junior high in the mid-60s without any busing.
They just came.
IIRC, just 4 or 5 at each school the first year, then complete desegregation the following year .
Teachers introduced them as “new students” and that was that.
They took their places and opened their books.
Teachers told us “remember the Golden Rule.” We were expected to be polite, treat others as we wished to be treated.
When the black kids came, we were just reminded to continue to behave ourselves.
A couple of white kids at my school would sometimes, out of earshot of teachers, harass other whites with taunts of “n****r lover” but didnt confront blacks directly.
I never saw any fights at my schools.
When MLK was assassinated, several white & black kids joined hands and prayed in front of my middle school. Nobody got jumped.
In the 70s, I attended college at a renowned party school ruled by good old boy fratboy rednecks.
I remember watching the 6 o’clock news at a popular bar with a bunch of fellow students, during the court-ordered busing in Boston.
The Bostonians were cursing, rioting, rocking the buses, howling for a lynching of the terrified children.
I distinctly remember several comments from my fellow “rednecks” while watching this news.
The consensus being, these damn Yankees are forever tarring us with the racist brush, yet look at their behavior.
Started after I graduated and ended before I was married and had school age kids...the interim was used to consume copious amounts of alcohol and chase girls who didn’t have anything against drunks....made for some interesting evenings and mornings....
G.B Trudeau deplatformed for this? Wink, nudge.
Doonesbury, Halloween, 1974.
https://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/1974/10/31
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.