Editing Desegregation busing (section)

== Historical examples ==

=== Boston, Massachusetts ===
{{Main|Boston desegregation busing crisis}}
In 1965 Massachusetts passed into law the Racial Imbalance Act, which ordered school districts to desegregate or risk losing state educational funding. The first law of its kind in the nation, it was opposed by many in Boston, especially less-well-off white ethnic areas, such as the Irish-American neighborhoods of [[South Boston]] and [[Charlestown, Boston]].<ref name="NYT-Fox-2012-01-29">{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/28/us/kevin-h-white-82-boston-mayor-during-busing-crisis-dies.html |title=Kevin H. White, Mayor Who Led Boston in Busing Crisis, Dies at 82 |last=Fox |first=Margalite |work=The New York Times |date=January 27, 2012 |access-date=January 29, 2010}}</ref>

=== Springfield, Massachusetts ===
Unlike Boston, which experienced a large degree of racial violence following Judge [[Arthur Garrity]]'s decision to desegregate the city's public schools in 1974, Springfield quietly enacted its own desegregation busing plans. Although not as well-documented as Boston's crisis, Springfield's situation centered on the city's elementary schools. Much of the primary evidence for Springfield's busing plans stemmed from a March 1976 report by a committee for the Massachusetts Commission on Civil Rights (MCCR). According to the report, 30 of the city's 36 elementary schools were grouped into six separate districts during the 1974–75 school year, and each district contained at least one racially imbalanced school. The basic idea behind the "six-district" plan was to preserve a neighborhood feeling for school children while busing them locally to improve not only racial imbalances, but also educational opportunities in the school system.<ref name="mccr">Massachusetts Commission on Civil Rights, "[http://www.law.umaryland.edu/marshall/usccr/documents/cr1259.pdf The Six-District Plan: Integration of the Springfield, Mass., Elementary Schools]", ''University of Maryland Law School Library'', pp. 1–50.</ref>

=== Charlotte, North Carolina ===
Charlotte operated under "freedom of choice" plans until the Supreme Court upheld Judge McMillan's decision in [[Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education|Swann v. Mecklenburg 1971]]. The NAACP won the Swann case by producing evidence that Charlotte schools placed over 10,000 white and black students in schools that were not the closest to their homes. Importantly, the Swann v. Mecklenburg case illustrated that segregation was the product of local policies and legislation rather than a natural outcome.<ref>{{Cite book|last=McRae|first=Elizabeth|title=Mothers of Massive Resistance: White Women and the Politics of White Supremacy|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2018|isbn=9780190271725|pages=219–220}}</ref> In response, an anti-busing organization titled Concerned Parents Association (CPA) was formed in Charlotte. Ultimately, the CPA failed to prevent busing. In 1974, West Charlotte High school even hosted students from Boston to demonstrate the benefits of peaceful integration. Since Capacchione v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in 1999, however, Charlotte has once again become segregated.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Charlotte Talks: Segregation In Charlotte Education|url=https://www.wfae.org/show/charlotte-talks-with-mike-collins/2019-12-03/charlotte-talks-segregation-in-charlotte-education|access-date=2021-04-13|website=WFAE 90.7 – Charlotte's NPR News Source|language=en}}</ref> A report in 2019 shows that Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools are as segregated as they were before the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Nordstrom|first=Kris|title=Stymied by Segregation: How Integration can Transform North Carolina Schools and the Lives of its Students|url=https://www.ncjustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/STYMIED-BY-SEGREGATION-Integration-can-Transform-NC-FINAL-web.pdf|url-status=live|website=North Carolina Justice Center|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201129112855/https://www.ncjustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/STYMIED-BY-SEGREGATION-Integration-can-Transform-NC-FINAL-web.pdf |archive-date=2020-11-29 }}</ref>

=== Kansas City, Missouri ===
{{See also|Missouri v. Jenkins}}
In 1985, a federal court took partial control of the [[Kansas City, Missouri School District]] (KCMSD). Since the district and the state had been found [[severally liable]] for the lack of integration, the state was responsible for making sure that money was available for the program. It was one of the most expensive desegregation efforts attempted and included busing, a [[magnet school]] program, and an extensive plan to improve the quality of [[inner city]] schools. The entire program was built on the premise that extremely good schools in the inner-city area combined with paid busing would be enough to achieve integration.

=== Las Vegas, Nevada ===
In May 1968, the [[Southern Nevada]] chapter of the [[National Association for the Advancement of Colored People]] (NAACP) filed a lawsuit against the [[Clark County School District]] (CCSD). The NAACP wanted the CCSD to acknowledge publicly, and likewise, act against the ''de facto'' segregation that existed in six elementary schools located on the city's Westside.<ref name="ronan">Matthew, Ronan, ''A History of the Las Vegas School Desegregation Case: Kelly et al. v. Clark County School District'' (Las Vegas: UNLV, 1998), pp. 28, 33, 94.</ref> This area of Las Vegas had traditionally been a [[black neighborhood]]. Therefore, the CCSD did not see the need to desegregate the schools, as the cause of segregation appeared to result from factors outside of its immediate control.

The case initially entered the Eighth Judicial District Court of Nevada, but quickly found its way to the [[Nevada Supreme Court]]. According to [[Brown&nbsp;II]], all school desegregation cases had to be heard at the federal level if they reached a state's highest court. As a result, the Las Vegas case, which became known as ''Kelly v. Clark County School District'', was eventually heard by the U.S. [[Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals]]. On May 10, 1972, the Ninth Circuit handed down its decision in favor of the NAACP, which therefore required the CCSD to implement a plan for integration. The CCSD then instituted its ''Sixth Grade Center Plan'', which converted the Westside's six elementary schools into sixth-grade classrooms where nearly all of the school district's sixth graders (black and white alike) would be bused for the 1972–73 school year.<ref name="ronan" />

=== Los Angeles, California ===
In 1963, a lawsuit, ''Crawford v. Board of Education of the City of Los Angeles'',<ref>Crawford v. Board of Ed. of Los Angeles {{ussc|458|527|1982}}</ref> was filed to end segregation in the [[Los Angeles Unified School District]].  The [[California Supreme Court]] required the district to come up with a plan in 1977.  The board returned to court with what the court of appeal years later would describe as "one of if not the most drastic plan of mandatory student reassignment in the nation".<ref>''Crawford v. Board of Educ. of the City of Los Angeles'', 200 Cal. App. 3d 1397, 1402 (1988).</ref> A desegregation busing plan was developed, to be implemented in the 1978 school year.  Two suits to stop the enforced busing plan, both titled ''Bustop, Inc. v. Los Angeles Board of Education'', were filed by the group Bustop Inc., and were petitioned to the [[United States Supreme Court]].<ref>''Bustop, Inc. v. Los Angeles Bd. of Ed.'', {{ussc|439|1380|1978}}</ref> The petitions to stop the busing plan were subsequently denied by [[Justice Rehnquist]] and [[Justice Powell]].  California Constitutional Proposition&nbsp;1, which mandated that busing follow the [[Equal protection clause]] of the U.S. Constitution, passed in 1979 with 70 percent of the vote.  The ''Crawford v. Board of Education of the City of Los Angeles'' lawsuit was heard in the Supreme Court in 1982.<ref>David S. Ettinger, "[http://www.lacba.org/Files/LAL/Vol26No1/1302.pdf The Quest to DESEGREGATE Los Angeles Schools] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080228005530/http://www.lacba.org/Files/LAL/Vol26No1/1302.pdf |date=2008-02-28 }}", ''Los Angeles Lawyer'', March 2003</ref> The Supreme Court upheld the decision that Proposition&nbsp;1 was constitutional, and that, therefore, mandatory busing was not permissible.

=== Nashville, Tennessee ===
In comparison with many other cities in the nation, [[Nashville]] was not a hotbed of racial violence or massive protest during the civil rights era. In fact, the city was a leader of school desegregation in the South, even housing a few small schools that were minimally integrated before the ''Brown v. Board of Education'' decision in 1954. Despite this initial breakthrough, however, full desegregation of the schools was a far cry from reality in Nashville in the mid-1950s, and thus 22 plaintiffs, including black student Robert Kelley, filed suit against the Nashville Board of Education in 1955.

The result of that lawsuit was what came to be known as the [["Nashville Plan"]], an attempt to integrate the public schools of Nashville (and later all of [[Davidson County, Tennessee|Davidson County]] when the district was consolidated in 1963). The plan, beginning in 1957, involved the gradual integration of schools by working up through the grades each year starting in the fall of 1957 with first graders. Very few black children who had been zoned for white schools showed up at their assigned campus on the first day of school, and those who did met with angry mobs outside several city elementary schools. No white children assigned to black schools showed up to their assigned campuses.

After a decade of this gradual integration strategy, it became evident that the schools still lacked full integration. Many argued that [[Housing Segregation]] was the true culprit in the matter. In 1970 the ''Kelley'' case was reintroduced to the courts. Ruling on the case was Judge [[Leland Clure Morton]], who, after seeking advice from consultants from the [[United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare]], decided the following year that to correct the problem, forced busing of the children was to be mandated, among the many parts to a new plan that was finally decided on. This was a similar plan to that enacted in [[Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools]] in [[Charlotte, North Carolina|Charlotte]], [[North Carolina]], the same year.

What followed were mixed emotions from both the black and white communities. Many whites did not want their children to share schools with black children, arguing that it would decrease the quality of their education. While a triumph for some, many blacks believed that the new plan would enforce the closure of neighborhood schools such as Pearl High School, which brought the community together. Parents from both sides did not like the plan because they had no control over where their children were going to be sent to school, a problem that many other cities had during the 1970s when busing was mandated across the country. Despite the judge's decision and the subsequent implementation of the new busing plan, the city stood divided.

As in many other cities across the country at this time, many white citizens took action against the desegregation laws. Organized protests against the busing plan began before the order was even official, led by future mayoral candidate Casey Jenkins. While some protested, many other white parents began pulling their children out of the public schools and enrolling them in the numerous private schools that began to spring up almost overnight in Nashville in the 1960s and 1970s. Many of these schools continued to be segregated through the 1970s. Other white parents moved outside of the city limits and eventually outside the Davidson County line so as not to be part of the Metropolitan District and thus not part of the busing plan.

In 1979 and 1980, the ''Kelley'' case was again brought back to the courts because of the busing plan's failure to fully integrate the [[Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools]] (MNPS). The plan was reexamined and reconfigured to include some concessions made by the school board and the Kelley plaintiffs and in 1983 the new plan, which still included busing, was introduced. However, problems with "[[white flight]]" and private schools continued to segregate MNPS to a certain degree, a problem that has never fully been solved.<ref>Richard A. Pride and J. David Woodard, ''The Burden of Busing: The Politics of Desegregation in Nashville, Tennessee'', University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville: 1985.</ref>

=== Pasadena, California ===
In 1970 a [[United States district court|federal court]] ordered the desegregation of the public schools in [[Pasadena, California]]. At that time, the proportion of white students in those schools reflected the proportion of whites in the community, 54 percent and 53 percent, respectively. After the desegregation process began, large numbers of whites in the upper and middle classes who could afford it pulled their children from the integrated public school system and placed them into private schools instead. As a result, by 2004 Pasadena became home to 63 private schools, which educated one-third of all school-aged children in the city, and the proportion of white students in the public schools had fallen to 16 percent. In the meantime, the proportion of whites in the community has declined somewhat as well, to 37 percent in 2006. The superintendent of Pasadena's public schools characterized them as being to whites "like the bogey-man", and mounted policy changes, including a curtailment of busing, and a publicity drive to induce affluent whites to put their children back into public schools.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.penfamilies.org/www/pen/Files/LA%20Daily%20Journal%20Article%20on%20Pasadena%20School%20Reform.doc |title=Archived copy |access-date=2007-01-07 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070616180135/http://www.penfamilies.org/www/pen/Files/LA%20Daily%20Journal%20Article%20on%20Pasadena%20School%20Reform.doc |archive-date=2007-06-16}}</ref>

=== Prince George's County, Maryland ===
{{unreferenced section |date=October 2014}}
In 1974, [[Prince George's County, Maryland|Prince George's County]], Maryland, became the largest school district in the United States forced to adopt a busing plan. The county, a large suburban school district east of [[Washington, D.C.]], was over 80 percent white in population and in the public schools. In some county communities close to Washington, there was a higher concentration of black residents than in more outlying areas. Through a series of desegregation orders after the ''Brown'' decision, the county had a neighborhood-based system of school boundaries. However, the [[NAACP]] argued that housing patterns in the county still reflected the vestiges of segregation. Against the will of the Board of Education of Prince George's County, the federal court ordered that a school busing plan be set in place. A 1974 [[Gallup poll]] showed that 75 percent of county residents were against forced busing and that only 32 percent of blacks supported it.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Hunt, Thomas C.; Carper, James C.;Lasley, II, Thomas J.;Raisch, C. Daniel |title=Encyclopedia of Educational Reform and Dissent |date=20 January 2010 |publisher=SAGE Publications, Inc |isbn=978-1-4129-5664-2 |url=http://sk.sagepub.com/reference/educationalreform}}</ref>

The transition was very traumatic as the court ordered that the plan be administered with "all due haste". This happened during the middle of the school term, and students, except those in their senior year in high school, were transferred to different schools to achieve racial balance. Many high school sports teams' seasons and other typical school activities were disrupted. Life in general for families in the county was disrupted by things such as the changes in daily times to get children ready and receive them after school, transportation logistics for extracurricular activities, and parental participation activities such as volunteer work in the schools and [[Parent-Teacher Association|PTA]] meetings.

The federal case and the school busing order was officially ended in 2001, as the "remaining vestiges of segregation" had been erased to the court's satisfaction. Unfortunately, the ultimate result has been resegregation through changes to county demographics, as the percentage of white county residents dropped from over 80% in 1974 to 27% in 2010.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/princegeorgescountymaryland/PST040219 |title=U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts: Prince George's County, Maryland |website=www.census.gov |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200301051117/https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/princegeorgescountymaryland/PST040219 |archive-date=2020-03-01}} </ref> Neighborhood-based school boundaries were restored. The Prince George's County Public Schools was ordered to pay the [[NAACP]] more than $2&nbsp;million in closing attorney fees and is estimated to have paid the NAACP over $20&nbsp;million over the course of the case.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Hunt |first1=Thomas C. |last2=Carper |first2=James C. |last3=Lasley, II |first3=Thomas J. |last4=Raisch |first4=C. Daniel |title=Encyclopedia of Educational Reform and Dissent |date=January 12, 2010 |publisher=SAGE Publications, Inc |isbn=978-1-4129-5664-2 |page=123 |edition=1st |url=http://sk.sagepub.com/reference/educationalreform |access-date=26 December 2019}}</ref>

=== Richmond, Virginia ===
In April 1971, in the case ''Bradley v. Richmond School Board'', Federal District Judge [[Robert R. Merhige,&nbsp;Jr.]], ordered an extensive citywide busing program in [[Richmond, Virginia|Richmond]], Virginia. When the massive busing program began in the fall of 1971, parents of all races complained about the long rides, hardships with transportation for extracurricular activities, and the separation of siblings when elementary schools at opposite sides of the city were "paired", (i.e., splitting lower and upper elementary grades into separate schools). The result was further white flight to private schools and to suburbs in the neighboring counties of [[Henrico County, Virginia|Henrico]] and [[Chesterfield County, Virginia|Chesterfield]] that were predominantly white. In January 1972, Merhige ruled that students in Henrico and Chesterfield counties would have to be bused into the City of Richmond in order to decrease the high percentage of black students in Richmond's schools. This order was overturned by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals on June 6, 1972, barring forced busing schemes that made students cross county/city boundaries. (Note: Since 1871, Virginia has had independent cities which are not politically located within counties, although some are completely surrounded geographically by a single county. This distinctive and unusual arrangement was pivotal in the Court of Appeals decision overturning Merhige's ruling). The percentage of white students in Richmond city schools declined from 45 to 21 percent between 1960 and 1975 and continued to decline over the next several decades. By 2010 white students accounted for less than 9 percent of student enrollment in Richmond.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.richmond.com/news/latest-news/report-schools-segregation-by-race-income-worsening/article_a05050c1-9ea8-5ebd-b00a-239aab565e7f.html|title = Report: Schools segregation by race, income worsening| date=14 March 2013 }}</ref> This so-called "white flight" prevented Richmond schools from ever becoming truly integrated.<ref>"[http://www.vahistorical.org/civilrights/busing.htm School Busing – The Civil Rights Movement in Virginia] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071020030353/http://www.vahistorical.org/civilrights/busing.htm |date=2007-10-20 }}", Virginia Historical Society</ref> A number of assignment plans were tried to address the non-racial concerns, and eventually, most elementary schools were "unpaired".

=== Wilmington, Delaware ===
In [[Wilmington, Delaware|Wilmington]], Delaware, located in [[New Castle County, Delaware|New Castle County]], segregated schools were required by law until 1954, when, due to ''[[Belton v. Gebhart]]'' (which was later rolled into ''[[Brown v. Board of Education]]'' on appeal), the school system was forced to desegregate. As a result, the school districts in the Wilmington metropolitan area were split into eleven districts covering the metropolitan area (Alfred I. duPont, Alexis I. duPont, Claymont, Conrad, De La Warr, Marshallton-McKean, Mount Pleasant, New Castle-Gunning Bedford, Newark, Stanton, and Wilmington school districts). However, this reorganization did little to address the issue of segregation, since the Wilmington schools (Wilmington and De La Warr districts) remained predominantly black, while the suburban schools in the county outside the city limits remained predominantly white.

In 1976, the U.S. District Court, in ''Evans v. Buchanan'', ordered that the school districts of New Castle County all be combined into a single district governed by the New Castle County Board of Education.<ref>Samuel B. Hoff, "{{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20081120120812/http://www.iccjournal.biz/Scholarly_Articles/Hoff,%20S/DelawareEducationandDesegregation.htm Delaware's Constitution and Its Impact on Education]}}"</ref> The District Court ordered the Board to implement a desegregation plan in which the students from the predominantly black Wilmington and De La Warr districts were required to attend school in the predominantly white suburb districts, while students from the predominantly white districts were required to attend school in Wilmington or De La Warr districts for three years (usually 4th through 6th grade). In many cases, this required students to be bused a considerable distance (12–18 miles in the [[Christina School District]]) because of the distance between Wilmington and some of the major communities of the suburban area (such as [[Newark, Delaware|Newark]]).

However, the process of handling an entire metropolitan area as a single school district resulted in a revision to the plan in 1981, in which the New Castle County schools were again divided into four separate districts ([[Brandywine School District|Brandywine]], [[Christina School District|Christina]], [[Colonial School District (Delaware)|Colonial]], and [[Red Clay School District|Red Clay]]).<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.iccjournal.biz/Scholarly_Articles/Hoff,%20S/DelawareEducationandDesegregation.htm |title=iccjournal.biz |access-date=2007-09-24 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081120120812/http://www.iccjournal.biz/Scholarly_Articles/Hoff,%20S/DelawareEducationandDesegregation.htm |archive-date=2008-11-20 |url-status=usurped}}</ref> However, unlike the 1954 districts, each of these districts was racially balanced and encompassed inner city and suburban areas. Each of the districts continued a desegregation plan based upon busing.

The requirements for maintaining racial balance in the schools of each of the districts was ended by the District Court in 1994, but the process of busing students to and from the suburbs for schooling continued largely unchanged until 2001, when the Delaware state government passed House Bill 300, mandating that the districts convert to sending students to the schools closest to them, a process that continues {{As of|2007|lc=on}}. In the 1990s, Delaware schools would utilize the Choice program, which would allow children to apply to schools in other school districts based on space.

Wilmington High, which, many felt, was a victim of the busing order, closed in 1998 due to dropping enrollment. The campus would become home to [[Cab Calloway School of the Arts]], a magnet school focused on the arts that was established in 1992. It would also house [[Charter School of Wilmington]], which focuses on math and science, and opened up in 1996.

Delaware currently has some of the highest rates in the nation of children who attend private schools, magnet schools, and charter schools, due to the perceived weaknesses of the public school system.{{citation needed|date=June 2014}}

=== Indianapolis, Indiana ===
Institutional [[Racial segregation in the United States|racial segregation]] was coming to light in Indianapolis in the late 1960s as a result of [[Civil rights movements|Civil Rights reformation.]] U.S. District Judge [[S. Hugh Dillin]] issued a ruling in 1971 which found the Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) district guilty of ''[[de jure]]'' racial segregation. Beginning in 1973, due to federal court mandates, some 7,000 African-American students began to be bused from the IPS district to neighboring township school corporations within [[Marion County, Indiana|Marion County]]. These townships included [[Metropolitan School District of Decatur Township|Decatur]], [[Franklin Township Community School Corporation|Franklin]], [[Metropolitan School District of Perry Township|Perry]], [[Metropolitan School District of Warren Township|Warren]], [[Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township|Wayne]], and [[Metropolitan School District of Lawrence Township|Lawrence]] townships. This practice continued on until 1998, when an agreement was reached between IPS and the [[United States Department of Justice]] to phase out inter-district, one-way busing. By 2005, the six township school districts no longer received any new IPS students.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://blog.history.in.gov/inequality-remade-residential-segregation-indianapolis-public-schools-and-forced-busing/|title = Inequality Remade: Residential Segregation, Indianapolis Public Schools, and Forced Busing|date = 16 February 2017}}</ref>