Editing Desegregation busing (section)

=== 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>