The School Busing Controversy, 1970-75

Résumé du livre

The school bus became a symbol of public school integration in the 1970s. As a symbol, it tended to represent simultaneously the emotions of integrationists (who saw it as a vehicle of escape from the ghetto and towards equality) as well as supporters of "neighborhood schools" (to whom the practical concepts of safety and poverty were more meaningful than the more abstract "equal opportunity.:) The resort to bussing as a means to achieve integrated education was caused by an array of devices designed to maintain segregated schools: the closing of public schools, the creation of private schools, a southern governor's "standing in the classroom door: to prevent physically the enrollment of two black students in a university of thousands, the linking of integrationists with communists. Underlying all these methods, the chief defense against public school integration since 1954 has been procrastination. Bussing presented an immediate, direct threat to the varied manifestations of procrastination. -- Taken from preface.