10
cally in the direction of using every available
and reasonable tool, including busing. Old seg¬
regation patterns are deeply rooted and slow
to give way. It became evident that many
American children would never see desegre¬
gated classrooms unless positive steps were
taken to break the old pattern.
Nevertheless, courts did not leap to order
wholesale busing. On the contrary, busing was
called for only when necessary to undo the
unconstitutional wrong of segregated schools.
Despite the care with which the courts acted
and despite the fact that many years had gone
by since the Brown decision, busing drew a
violent reaction during 1970 and 1971 in some
communities. Busing began dominating the Na¬
tion’s headlines. Two buses were overturned in
Lamar, South Carolina, and buses were burned
in Denver and Pontiac.
But these headline-making incidents were
the exception rather than the rule. While they
were happening, scores of districts were deseg¬
regating quietly. Moreover, the incidents us¬
ually have occurred at the beginning of the
school year. Once the school-opening tensions
and disturbances settle down, desegregation
generally goes forward in orderly fashion.
Many a superintendent, board, and court has
struggled to find a way to desegregate effec¬
tively without busing. They have had to con¬
clude, in the final analysis, that there is no
other way. Given the tightly segregated neigh¬
borhoods in most American communities, de¬
segregation simply is not possible in many local¬
ities without busing and isn’t likely to be for
years to come. Where courts have ordered
school districts to carry out desegregation
plans involving busing, they have done so for
a sound reason : namely, that a violation of the
Constitution must have an effective remedy and
some way to bring the violation to an end.
Without that, the constitutional right to attend
an unsegregated school is meaningless.
3.As an issue of national controversy, busing
has created a forest of fears, myths, and in¬
correct and misleading statements. For ex¬
ample, busing for desegregation purposes fre¬
quently is described as “massive” busing. But,
as we have seen, the number of children bused
solely for desegregation purposes is relatively
small.
Busing for desegregation purposes often is
called “forced” busing. But, as noted previ¬
ously, pupil transportation in America followed
closely behind compulsory education, which
“forces” children to go to school, whether on
foot or by bus. Thus, any busing in a State
with a compulsory attendance law could be
called “forced” busing, for the child has to go
to school and attend the school to which he is
assigned, and the bus is his means of getting
there. Moreover, as mentioned previously, bus
trips to private schools — to which parents freely
choose to send their children — often are much
longer than trips to public schools.
Somehow the busing-for-desegregation de¬
bate has become clouded in its own language
and expressions, in which the word “busing”
almost always follows such labels as “massive”
and “forced,” and in which the defenders of
busing are pictured as wanting children bused
simply to have the experience of being bused.
Somehow a pattern of fears and myths has
become fixed in the minds of the public, making
it hard to sort out the facts and determine
what is true and what is false. This chapter
will deal, one by one, with some of the fears
and myths often heard about busing:
1. A child has a right to attend a “neighbor¬
hood” school.
Long before the busing issue, there were
parents who wanted the right to send their
children to the school of their choice. Some¬
times they wanted to send their children to
the “neighborhood” school and sometimes they
wanted to send their children to schools outside
the neighborhood.
Parents who felt that their children should
attend the same school as children in the next
block wanted the say-so about which of two
nearby schools would be their “neighborhood”
school. Sometimes parents have felt that the
route to one school would be safer than the
route to another because of traffic, the lack of
sidewalks or crossing guards, and so on.
