Reading this chapter from Matthew F. Delmont’s Why Busing Failed, has changed my view and understanding of the notion of busing. White mothers in the early 1960s protested against busing and held signs reading “I will not put my children on a bus” and “keep our children in neighborhood schools” (23). White mothers were going against the “pairing plan” of transferring students between black, Puerto Rican and white schools because of the bus ride there. The bus ride reasoning is clearly not the reason behind these mothers’ protests, but a gateway excuse to show that they were opposed to desegregation.
Some parents were more forward with their intentions of the protest and sent the Board of Education unambiguous letters complaining about the distance their children would travel to get to school and some letters were explicitly racist. In Dr. Kenneth Clark’s Commission on Integration’s zoning report, Clark dismisses the rumors from the white parents stating that their kids would be brought into black neighborhoods since those rumors were planted. Reports have shown that white parents would put their children on buses to take them a very far distance to get to a white school, so in a way, they are contradicted themselves.
Aside from this, the white mothers protest of three mile walk received so much publicity and media attention just because they were white. On the contrary, it took years for black families to get attention and a ton of more walking, or at least more time and effort. Similar to the Harlem Nine and the Gary Plan families, a group was formed for the white anti-busing families called the Parents and Taxpayers. In a way, the white parents do not see themselves as equal to black families who are also parents and taxpayers. The white mothers and families protesting saw themselves as superior to the black families and the thought of desegregation as an inconvenience to them based on their racist beliefs.
After reading the chapter from Matthew F. Delmont’s Why Busing Failed, my view has also changed on what I think about when I hear “busing”. I like the way Kiki writes “notion of busing” in her opening line, because the act of busing is more than just a means of transportation for every student of every race. The biggest takeaway for me from this chapter was that “busing” symbolizes white people not wanting to desegregate their neighborhoods. Although “busing” tried to allow African American and Puerto Rican students into white neighborhoods to desegregate them, it seems to have caused more chaos than it did help. I agree very much with Kiki when she says that “the bus ride reasoning is clearly not the reason behind these mothers’ protest”. I too think that these white mothers used this as an excuse for being opposed to desegregation.
Delmont describes how “‘busing’ developed as shorthand for politicians and parents to describe and oppose school desegregation in polite terms that distinguished them from the South” (Delmont, 18). By doing so, he also demonstrates what we talked about in class – how New York shaped the Civil Rights Act and taken it in a different direction. It is interesting to see how much attention was brought upon the idea of “busing” because primary white people were protesting. When African Americans would suggest reform, it would take a lot longer for the topic to become an important manner. Now, the symbolism of “busing” really makes me think about equality and how unfair some races have been treated.
Thanks for both of these posts. One of Delmont’s primary purposes in his book is to get us to see the way that media and popular discourse framed issues around desegregation, and how the term “busing” came to mean more than just a mode of transportation. I’m glad he achieved that goal for the two of you.