research questions about school desegregation in boston

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Home - General histories of the Boston Public School system and individual schools

Busing Crisis - The most controversial era for the Boston Public Schools

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Desegregating Boston Public Schools

Forty years later it has been added to the Boston Public Schools curriculum.  Busing changed not just Boston's public school system, but its politics, demographics and culture.  Possibly nothing in Boston's twentieth century history had a greater affect on the city and its citizens.

W hile not exhaustive,  t he following contains lists of material  that chronicle, discuss and explain this still controversial era and its aftermath. 

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• Scholarly Works
• Dissertations and Theses
• Journalism and Media

• Desegregation: the Boston orders and their origin by Boston Bar Association Call Number: LB3062.B67x Publication Date: 1975

• Black Sisyphus: Boston schools and the Black community,1790-2000 by Bryn Upton Call Number: LA306 .B7U559 2003ax Publication Date: 2003 Photocopy of thesis. Also available through the Dissertations and Theses database.
• Court desengagement in the Boston public schools toward a theory of restorative law by Murninghan, Marsha Marie Call Number: LC214.23 .B67 1983x Publication Date: 1983 Thesis on microform. Also available through the Dissertations and Theses database.
• The effects of court-ordered school desegregation on the public school system of Boston, Massachusetts by O'Donnell, Mark D. Call Number: LC214.23.B67 O36 1996ax Publication Date: 1996 Photocopy of thesis. Also available through the Dissertations and Theses database.
• Nothing will stop us: the climax of racial segregation in the Boston public schools, 1963-1974 by Howard John Chislett Call Number: LC212.23.B67 C48 1979ax Publication Date: 1979 Thesis on microform
• The organization of anti-busing protest in Boston, 1973-1976 by Begley, Thomas M. Call Number: LC214.523.B67 B43 1981ax Publication Date: 1981 Thesis on microform.
• Social conflict and social movements an exploratory study of the black community of Boston attempting to change the Boston public schools by Mottl, Tahi Lani, 1945- Call Number: LC214.23.B67 M68 1976ax Publication Date: 1976 Thesis on microform. Also available through the Dissertations and Theses database.
• Farah Stockman's Boston Globe commentary This page contains links to Farah Stockman's commentary on the legacy of busing published in the Boston Globe, for which she won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for commentary.

Find a wealth of material--including film, audio files, photographs, letters, archival material from local organizations, and more, on the Digital Commonwealth website. This link shows all the available material digitized in Digital Commonwealth related to the busing era in Boston. 

Government Publications

• Federal Government
• State Government
• City Government

• Report on Racial Imbalance in the Boston Public Schools by United States Commission on Civil Rights, Massachusetts Advisory Committee Call Number: CR1.2:SCH6/10B Publication Date: 1965 Looks at the organization and racial composition of the schools; effect of discrimination in public housing; consideration of the policy of the Boston School Committee; comparison of student performance and teacher qualifications in predominately white, non-white and integrated schools and an examination of compensatory programs.
• Hearing Before the United States Commission on Civil Rights; Hearing Held in Boston, Massachusetts, June 16-20, 1975. This resource includes the text of the 1975 hearing before the United States Commission on Civil Rights held to examine the program and plans for the desegregation of Boston's schools. Developments surrounding the implementation of Phase I as ordered by the Federal district court in 1974. Also included are the plans for the implementation of Phase II as ordered by the same court in June 1975. Statements by State and national officials, as well as testimony from politicians, students, school administrators, educators, and representatives of public and private agencies are included.
• Student desegregation plan by US District Court. District of Massachusetts Call Number: GOVDOC/LB3062.U66X Publication Date: 1975 ..."Phase 2 plan"; shows number of minority and bilingual students in each school district; indicates which colleges and universities will work with each district; gives guidelines for assigning students, transportation considerations, timetables for implementation, etc....
• Fastcase This link opens in a new window Fastcase’s libraries include primary law from all 50 states, as well as deep federal coverage going back to 1 U.S. 1, 1 F.2d 1, 1 F.Supp. 1, and 1 B.R. 1. The Fastcase collection includes cases, statutes, regulations, court rules, and constitutions. Fastcase also provides access to a newspaper archive, legal forms, and a one-stop PACER search of federal filings.

• The desegregation packet by Massachusetts Research Center Call Number: GOVDOC/LB3062.M365/1974BX Publication Date: 1974 This packet is a compilation of reports giving a chronology of events in Boston, the constitutional background, financial prespectives, information on the use of the school bus in the US and brief factual material on desegregation in other US cities.

• A statement of policy and recommendations on the subject of racial imbalance and education in Boston public schools by Boston (Mass.). Superintendent of Public Schools Call Number: LB3062 .B66 Publication Date: 1965
• Student desegregation plan, December 16, 1974 in accordance with the order of October 31, 1974 of the u. S. District court, district of Massachusetts establishing filing date and general contents of a student desegregation plan by Boston Public Schools Call Number: GOVDOC/LB3062.S87X Publication Date: 1974 This report includes description and maps showing proposed zones and districts; discussion of the philosophy underlying new educational programs; lengthy description of the magnet school concept; explores the problem of racial balance in Boston as it relates to the surrounging suburbs; indicates statistics on the enrollment of various minority students in the communities within the Boston standard metropolitan area; emphasizes the need for the suburbs to take responsibility for integrating schools and describes the aims of various regional groups that are working to that end.

Media and More

The resources listed below do not fit neatly in the boxes above.  The Boston Globe and the Boston Public Schools have created websites tracking the history of desegregation in Boston.  The City of Boston Archives has pre-selected collections of official records so you do not need to search a catalog.  The ERIC database includes scholarly articles and government reports, many full-text.  The Boston TV News Digital Library website returns 150 videos when Boston busing is searched.

• An alternative plan for the integration of Boston's public schools by Mel King Call Number: MK/75.1 Publication Date: 1975 An alternative plan submitted by then Massachusetts State Representative Mel King to Judge Arthur Garrity.
• Beyond Busing : Boston School Desegregation Archival Resources at Northeastern University A place for educators, students, activists, researchers, and anyone with a general interest to begin investigating primary sources related to 35 plus years of work around school desegregation in the city. These sources explore the history of desegregation in Boston beginning with the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 through to the Morgan v. Hennigan case in 1974.
• Boston Public Library Microtext Collection A 2-reel collection of articles from the Boston Globe entitled Boston Busing, 1969-1975. These are arranged chronologically. The call number is LC214.53.B67B38x.
• Busing: 40 years later The Boston Globe's 40th anniversary report on busing in Boston. This website includes oral histories, photographs, video and in-depth articles.
• City of Boston Archives A collection of various city records from the Segregation Era, including those from the Citywide Parents Council, the Law Department, School Committee Secretary and Louise Day Hicks.
• Digital Commonwealth This links leads to photos found after searching the terms, Busing - School Integration.
• History of Boston Busing and Desegregation An online, interactive project of the Boston Public Schools intended for students, educators and average citizens.
• Moakley Archive and Institute Digital Collections at Suffolk University Recordings and transcripts for a selection of the interviews available through the Moakley Oral History Project.
• Moakley Oral History Project at Suffolk University The Moakley Archive Oral History Project includes transcripts of taped interfiews with Congressman John Joseph (Joe) Moakley's family, friends, staff, colleagues, political opponents, and constituents on issues pertinent to his career. Under Interviews by Topic, interviews addressing busing are listed under the "Garrity Decision". These interviews may include other topics, so check the table of contents to see where the busing discussion occurs. See below for a link to audio for select interviews.
• Boston Globe (1872-1992) via Proquest This link opens in a new window Searchable full-page and article reproductions back to the first issue on March 4, 1872. Coverage:  Morning Edition only.
• Boston Globe (1980-Present) This link opens in a new window Provides full-text articles for staff-written news items, feature stories, columns, and editorials for the Boston Globe . Coverage: 1980-present
• Boston TV News Digital Library This link opens in a new window This collaboration between the Boston Public Library, Cambridge Community television, Northeast Historic Film and WGBH Educational Foundation aims to bring to life local news stories produced in and about Boston from the early 1960’s to 2000. Coverage: Boston Public Library WHDH film collection (1960- mid-1970s) Cambridge Community Television (1988 to 1999) Northeast Historic Film’s WCVB film collection (1970-1979) WGBH The Reporters (1970-1973) Evening Compass (1973-1975) Ten O’Clock News (1976-1991)
• ERIC This link opens in a new window The Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC), sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, provides access to some 14,000 documents and over 20,000 journal articles from Resources in Education (RIE) and Current Index to Journals in Education (CIJE). In addition, ERIC provides coverage of conferences, meetings, government documents, theses, dissertations, reports, audiovisual media, bibliographies, directories, books and monographs. Coverage: 1966-present
• Last Updated: Jan 9, 2024 11:36 AM
• URL: https://guides.bpl.org/bpshistory

‘The practice was nowhere near the policy.’ History of segregation in Boston schools examined

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Lindsa McIntyre, high school superintendent of Boston, describes the first high school she attended as an “annex.”

“The cafeteria served as the gymnasium. The windows were cracked, broken or peeling,” she said. “The books were old, the room was cold.”

McIntyre spoke about her experiences attending both segregated and desegregated Boston schools during a panel talk, “Racial Inequality and Struggle for Equity in the Boston Public School System,” on Wednesday at Blackman Auditorium on Northeastern’s Boston campus. 

Part of the university’s Myra Kraft Open Classroom series, the panelists discussed school segregation and the fight for racial equality in the school system from the 19th century to the present. The panel talked about issues that Boston still faces today, issues that can be applied anywhere else. 

“What we have experienced in Boston takes place everywhere else in the world,” Northeastern distinguished professor and panel moderator Ted Landsmark said. “And as often as not it took place around who has access to education, and who doesn’t.”

Panelist Rev. Stephen Kendrick kicked things off with a little-known but consequential story from the 19th century.

He told the audience about Sarah, a 4-year-old Boston girl who in 1847 became the subject of a court case around school segregation. Sarah had to walk past several white schools to get to a Black school each morning. So her father, a printer named Benjamin Roberts, sued the city of Boston on her behalf. 

Roberts v. City of Boston made it to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, where the family ultimately lost—Sarah was denied access to white schools in 1850. The case would set the precedent for “separate but equal” in the United States, established by the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).

The case had other implications for the future, however: Attorney Charles Sumner’s argument that segregation had to end anticipated the Brown v. Board of Education decision. “He warned the whole nation that segregation had to be ended, or there was a dark future for all of us, together,” Kendrick said. 

The case was part of a larger abolitionist movement in Boston, one that led to the peaceful desegregation of Boston schools in 1854. But, Kendrick warned, “The story is not over … in many ways, we have ground to make up.”

Over 100 years later, Boston would face another challenge in the form of the busing crisis. Those who watched the news at the time may remember images of violent encounters on the street. But, as Jim Vrabel, author of “A People’s History of the New Boston,” said, there was far more to it than that. 

“History is more than images, as powerful as they are, and sometimes as accurate as they are,” he said. “History is also about decisions and details.”

By detailing the policy decisions that went into establishing court-mandated busing in Boston in 1974, Vrabel said, he illustrates that history could have taken a very different course. 

“It’s not inevitable that desegregation and busing failed in Boston,” he said. “It might have succeeded, if individuals in positions of authority at the time … had done a better job. It might have worked. And instead of dividing the city and its people, it might have brought them together.”

“All of what we heard, I’ve experienced,” said McIntyre as she rounded out the panel. “The policy said, ‘desegregate.’ But the practice was nowhere near the policy, and it hurt. It hurt to raise your hand to want to answer a question that was asked by your teacher and to be invisible. It hurt to be ignored.”

McIntyre ended up going to a private high school, she said, but she returned to her local school for her final year and “found all my friends failing.” “They all had tremendous potential, but it was ignored or stifled,” she said.

She discussed how this experience informs how she approaches her current position as superintendent, from helping students to feel accepted, to making sure their needs and their safety is at the center, to making sure they are engaged in discourse, to bringing joy into the classroom.

“Our students have historically been marginalized, and traditionally been underserved,” she said. “Our mission around equity and action is to eliminate the achievement gap, to provide equitable and excellent student outcomes.”

In this way, history is informing the present and the future, something Vrabel emphasized in his talk.

“We still have trouble talking about it, but we must because we need to learn from history. Especially because history has a way of coming back around at us,” Vrabel said. “We need to learn from the lessons of the past mistakes of the past so we can confront the challenges of the present in the future.”

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Boston Public Schools, Re-Writing History: The Boston Busing Crisis : Getting Started

Welcome, scholars from the Boston Public Schools!

This guide introduces resources to support your research on activism for racial equity in and desegregation of Boston Public Schools. Use the tabs on the left to explore primary sources related to the lives and work of 5 activists; Ruth Batson, Paul Parks, Jean McGuire, Ellen S. Jackson, and Carmen Pola.

What are Primary Sources?

Primary sources are first-hand sources created at the time of a particular event or period under study. They may be artifacts or observations or accounts of events and experiences. We'll be reviewing letters, photographs, interviews, and more.

Searching in Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections' Digital Collections

To get started viewing archival material, we recommend visiting your activist’s page first by clicking on their name in the menu to find archival records created by them, that mention their name, or that document something your activist was involved in. 

You can search and view all the digitized records related to Boston school desegregation here . 

If you would like to search all of the Archives and Special Collections' digitized records you can visit our Digital Repository here . 

When searching you can filter your results by year and by type of archival record: text, image, audio, moving image:

Click on your result to see a preview and some description about what your document is and is about. If your result is a document or has more than one page, scroll to the bottom and click “download” to see the full document: 

Primary Sources about Busing and School Desegregation in Boston

• Beyond Busing: Boston School Desegregation Archival Resources This site is an entry-point for Boston school desegregation archival resources. These sources explore the history of desegregation in Boston beginning with the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 through to the Morgan v. Hennigan case in 1974.
• Boston Desegregation Project Explore digitized materials related to Boston desegregation from the Northeastern University Archives.
• (Digital Public Library of America) Busing & Beyond: School Desegregation in Boston An overview and primary sources related to the story of busing and desegregation in Boston.
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• Last Updated: Feb 13, 2024 2:52 PM
• URL: https://subjectguides.lib.neu.edu/BPS

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A search setting that removes search results based on source attributes. Limiters vary by database but often include publication date, material type, and language. Also called: filter or facet.

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• Scholarly articles are published in journals focused on a field of study. also called academic articles.
• Scholarly books are in-depth investigations of a topic. They are often written by a single author or group. Alternatively in anthologies, chapters are contributed by different authors.

Beyond Busing

Many resources exist for learning about school desegregation in Boston. The majority of resources we have compiled here draw directly from the Boston Public Schools Desegregation Collection, including interactive maps and student-curated digital exhibits that provide examples for how the primary source materials can be interpreted and curated. Other resources outside of the Collection offer greater context to the history of racial justice organizing in Boston and highlight the work and resources generated by community-led organizations both past and present.

Contextualizing Resources

Timelines -  A variety of primary and secondary source documents provide context and detail the events surrounding school desegregation in Boston.

Digital Exhibits -  Student-created exhibits demonstrate how the collections’ materials can be interpreted and curated.

Legal History - Case summaries, histories, and links to digitized case files

Boston's Desegregation History StoryMap - This StoryMap gives an overview of each of the institutions and collections that make up the Boston School Desegregation Collections.

Map of Freedom Schools -  Explore the locations of the institutions that hosted Freedom Schools around Boston in 1974.

Citywide Coordinating Council StoryMap -  The Citywide Coordinating Council was formed to monitor the implementation and progress of school desegregation in Boston ordered by Judge Garrity in his decision in Morgan v. Hennigan . Monitor reports from high security risk high schools in 1975 are mapped to the schools’ locations in this StoryMap, which invites the viewer to both place primary sources within their individual school contexts and to draw connections between the experiences of schools across the city.

Community and Archival Resources

Union of minority neighborhoods.

Boston Busing/School Desegregation Project -  The Union of Minority Neighborhoods (UMN) launched the Boston Busing/School Desegregation Project in 2011 in order to address the painful history of school desegregation in Boston and to develop a better understanding of its impact on current public school education issues. Resources include three reports produced by UMN that detail the goals and organization of the project and present the results of interviews, community events, film screenings, and other research.

“Can We Talk? - Learning from Boston's Busing/Desegregation Crisis" (2011 film) -  “Can We Talk?” is a 55 min documentary produced by the Union of Minority Neighborhoods that highlights the voices of individuals who lived through and were impacted by “busing” and school desegregation in Boston in the 1970s.

Freedom House

Freedom House Photographs -  The Freedom House Photographs website provides access to digitized photographs and negatives dating 1950-1975 from the Freedom House collection  in Northeastern University's Archives and Special Collections. Freedom House, a Roxbury-based community organization, was active in the school desegregation movement in Boston beginning in the 1960s. The organization was the site of one of the Freedom Schools and helped organize hotlines and information centers for parents.

This project was created using the CERES: Exhibit Toolkit with help from the Digital Scholarship Group at the Northeastern University Library .

Segregation and Integration in Boston

Matthew Delmont, Why Busing Failed: Race, Media, and the National Resistance to School Desegregation (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2016), 77-92, 190-208 .

Charles Ogletree, Jr., All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half Century of Brown v. Board of Education (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004), 57-78.

Mug battle question: In 1975 an “anti-busing” amendment was attached to the federal education spending bill (the one that passed–several previous amendments did not) that said that no federal funds could be used by school systems “to assign teachers or students to schools for reasons of race.” What was the name of the Senator who wrote the amendment?

Answer: Joe Biden. Congratulations to Anna Yerxa for winning it in a showdown!

Further reading (and listening and viewing): There are few topics in Boston’s history that have received more attention than “busing.” Many of the books on the topic that are most read and assigned however are problematic in ways that become clear in Prof. Delmont’s book  Why Busing Failed (see “Moving Beyond ‘Common Ground'” on the book’s companion site ).

• Beyond Busing: Boston School Desegregation Archival Resources (Northeastern Library)
• Boston Public Schools Desegregation Project (Northeastern Digital Repository Service)
• Busing and Beyond: School Desegregation in Boston (DPLA)
• Busing in Boston: A Research Guide (Suffolk University Moakley Archive and Institute)
• Morgan v. Hennigan (1974)
• Leon Neyfakh, Fiasco Season 3 (the Battle for Boston)

See below for the full interview with Prof. Landsmark:

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Created by graduate students in the History and American Studies departments at UMass Boston, this site showcases letters, photographs, legal documents, artifacts, and interviews that explore de facto segregation in Boston and the federally-mandated desegregation of Boston public schools. Students unearthed materials from various collections in separate Boston archives, selected a representative sampling, and presented them here, together, in new collaborative context.

Featured Item

Mayor kevin h. white playing pool, ca. 1971-1974.

Photograph of Mayor Kevin H. White playing pool with unidentified individuals, ca. 1971-1974

Featured Collection

Mayor kevin h. white records, 1929-1999 (bulk, 1968-1983)..

The Mayor Kevin H. White records, 1929-1999 (Bulk, 1968-1983), are located within the City of Boston Archives. The sample of items from the Kevin H.…

Featured Exhibit

Back to square one: racial imbalance in the boston public schools.

  racial: ra·cial│\ˈrā-shəl\ │adj. (1862) 1: of, relating to, or based on a race 2: existing or occurring between races imbalance: im·bal·ance │\(ˌ)im-ˈba-lən(t)s\│n. (ca. 1890) lack of...

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Boston schools desegregation, then and now: through the eyes of a Black student who survived the 1970s turmoil

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Cedric Turner was 16 years old when bell bottoms were polyester and “The Bump” filled radio airwaves, moving young people to knock their hips together to the beat. It was the dawn of the disco era, with colored lights flashing in nightclubs as music blasted away.

A street-wise kid from Mattapan, Turner was Black, six-foot-two and a standout football player at English High School in the Fenway. Until 1972, English was all boys, with some of the biggest, fastest athletes in the city.

But when Turner remembered the football games recently, his stories weren’t about high school glory days. They were stories of violent racist encounters.

The first year of desegregation, the team’s bus ride into East Boston for a game was harrowing. Angry white people came out of their homes to hurl rocks, bottles and the n-word at the mostly Black players as they arrived.

“We got these parents stoning us and calling us names, throwing sticks and rocks — grandmas, grandpas, mothers and fathers,” Turner said, recalling how the coach told them to duck down in their seats. “They was breaking the windows. And we’re like, what the hell. And then we have to play a game?”

Boston gets its racist reputation in part from the violent, televised reaction to court-ordered school desegregation of the 1970s. That violence was sprawling, and not limited to just South Boston and Charlestown. The thousands of traumatized Black children across the city who experienced it are the parents and grandparents of today’s students.

Key figures from that era say the next mayor of Boston must address the pain, rebuild trust and fix an educational system that, according to Harvard and the Boston Foundation, is once again intensely segregated.

“The problems that were manifest then are still in play. There’s no doubt about it,” said Marcy Murninghan, who was hired as a Harvard graduate student to help implement the desegregation order. “And that is the challenge of our time. The remedy may be very different and should be different. But the problem is still there.”

Turner, now 64 and a grandfather, speaks about his desegregation experiences rarely or only when asked. The subject can still make his eyes wet with tears. He considers himself a survivor of those damaging years thanks in part to the guidance of the city’s first Black principal, Robert Peterkin.

Peterkin became headmaster of English in 1974. No one told him about the desegregation court order when he arrived from Albany, N.Y., but he learned quickly. Just a few weeks after he started, as more white students enrolled at English for the first time, a riot broke out.

The cause wasn’t clear, but former teacher Joe Dotoli describes the incident in his book, A Piece of Chalk. “These were not the scuffles we were used to seeing,” the passage reads. “These were scary serious brawls. Kids were bleeding and running everywhere. ... Just as things were clearly spiraling out of control, we heard a noise that didn’t fit. Amid the yelling and cursing came a rhythmical stomping. It was the most eerie sight I have ever seen.”

The city had deployed a unit in riot gear with dogs and clubs to restore order. Peterkin, a reserved leader who favored three-piece suits, tried to stop the police onslaught, getting night-sticked in the process.

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“I first met Cedric on Oct. 8, 1974, the day of the riot at English High School,” he said recently. “He was getting ready to punch a cop.”

The retired Harvard professor said he grabbed Turner by the collar and pushed him out of the way.

“I said, 'You’re not you’re not gonna do that.’ I said, 'You know, we’ve got the Boston Police, the FBI, the marshal’s office and we’re not going to do that,'” Peterkin recalled.

Turner says today that Peterkin’s intervention likely saved him from a lengthy prison sentence. That day 38 people were injured, and 7 were arrested.

The violence continued across the city with arrests, injuries and stabbings among students and protesters. The National Guard was mobilized.

Turner said just weeks later, a football game against South Boston High School at a neutral field in Hyde Park turned into an armed standoff.

“We’re out there practicing on the field the Southie bus pulls up — two of them — and then about 10 or 15 cars pull up behind them,” Turner recalled. “And then the cats get out the cars. And they had guns.”

He imitated the sound of weapons being cocked. Phone calls were made, and Black supporters of English arrived in response, also armed.

“And they was ready, they was ready,” he said, tears welling up. “And I’m like, it’s supposed to be a football game. So I’m sorry. I’m starting to get ... that brings back a lot of ... ”

Pain, he meant.

The game was brutal, with English losing 38–0. Peterkin had to be escorted from the stands by a phalanx of adults who feared for his safety. As the team’s bus rolled away, the rocks came again, fast and hard.

These are hard memories, but Turner had bigger problems to confront upon graduation. Raised by his mother in public housing, Franklin Field in Dorchester, he and his three siblings had little to no money. He won athletic and academic scholarships to attend Miami University in Ohio.

When scholarships didn’t cover the full cost of college, Peterkin deposited money in Turner’s bank account. He and a teacher paid Turner’s airfare to Ohio. Although he still “bled Blue” for English, Boston wasn’t his city. He still couldn’t walk through some parts of the city safely, and a stroll through South Boston was “a death sentence,” he said.

“I didn’t want to come back up here ever,” he said.

But trauma can inspire someone to move forward, too.

Turner went on to earn a degree in economics from Miami University. A program there also helped him overcome a severe speech impediment that had worsened in high school. His speech therapists in Ohio advised him to never return to Boston out of fear he might risk a relapse.

But he did return. He simply needed a job and his support network was in the city. His new employer? The Boston Public Schools.

Looking back, Turner views his experiences through a lens of race and class, calling desegregation a “rigged-up game.”

“They were sending Black kids who was supposedly in bad schools over to white schools that was equally as bad,” he said. “And white kids from a messed-up white school to a Black school that was equally as bad.”

Barbara Fields, the former head of the district’s Office of Equity during desegregation, said the violent racism that erupted in Boston often obscures another central fact: The federal court order also opened up opportunities for some Black students at better white schools.

“It was not about you have to sit beside a white students in order for you to learn, it was about the district providing resources — [the district] took better care of schools that were in white communities, schools that have a white student population,” she said.

But has Boston changed? Advocates say educational resources still are not spread fairly along race and power lines in the metro area. Black and brown students are concentrated in Boston and Gateway cities, while many suburbs with overwhelmingly white and Asian populations are known for their quality schools.

“We still have schools that are subpar for Black children. It’s just so disappointing,” said Kim Parker, president of the Black Educators Alliance of Massachusetts. “What we are asking for — for Black children and other children in the district — should not be like such a hard ask, right? We should not have to beg for clubs or activities that everyone in the suburbs has.”

Turner also said educators and the city’s leaders know what works, it’s a matter of mustering the political will to ensure that Black children succeed.

Despite the racial turmoil of the time, Turner said he got a pretty good education at English High. The school was in a brand-new building. He credits Peterkin with restoring order and offering extracurricular activities during the chaos of desegregation. It was no small task.

It was Peterkin who told Turner about the job in the Boston school system. He later took a position at John Hancock Investments and worked in the private sector. He settled into a comfortable life in Brockton just outside Boston, marrying Petri Morgan and starting a family.

Morgan happens to be the daughter of Tallulah Morgan, the lead plaintiff in the NAACP’s desegregation lawsuit. Her children, including Petri, were also named plaintiffs.

What Turner says he believes strongly, nearly 50 years after desegregation, is that Black kids need more resources to compete, not fewer. An economy that is driven by artificial intelligence, engineering and all things STEM demands it.

He founded Empower Yourself, a Brockton nonprofit that works with low-income Black students in middle and high schools to get them interested in science and math careers. His students enter academic competitions in economics, math and robotics. Sponsors include Fidelity, iRobot and MIT’s Lincoln Labs.

“I feel my job is leveling off the playing field for them,” Turner said.

He will call colleges, connect the students with internships and buy them plane tickets to competitions. Teachers refer some seventh-graders who don’t even know the meaning of STEM, the acronym for science, techology, engineering and math.

Turner’s own love of math came from his middle school teachers, who drilled him for two hours daily. They were white teachers at his all-Black middle school in Dorchester, the now-closed Frank V. Thompson. And those teachers were committed to one thing: education.

Correction: This article has been corrected to reflect that iRobot is a sponsor of the Brockton nonprofit Empower Yourself and Microsoft is not.

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Primary sources.

Consider using search terms like school desegregation, children, education, discrimination, "separate but equal," Boston, busing, etc. as you explore the library's subscription databases and the selected outside websites with quality digitized primary source collections. If you can identify any key figures in the movement, or any landmark events, you can use their names as keywords as well. Keep in mind that many databases and websites will also have a date filter that you can use to ensure that you are looking at the right time period in history.

Databases with Primary Sources

Websites with Primary Sources

• Digital Public Library of America: Busing & Beyond: School Desegregation in Boston This link opens in a new The sources in this primary source set, including letters, photographs, maps, reports, and more, provide further insight into the context of school desegregation in Boston.
• Library of Congress: Brown v. Board at Fifty: "With an Even Hand" This link opens in a new window This exhibit displays a number of primary source documents, including images, letters, legal statements, and more, highlighting the history of desegregation efforts in schools.
• Northeastern University: Beyond Busing - Boston School Desegregation Archival Resources The Boston Public Schools Desegregation Collection is a digital library of scanned archival materials documenting the desegregation of Boston’s public schools. The collection brings together materials from numerous Boston-area institutions and covers the time period beginning with the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and focusing on the Morgan v. Hennigan case (1974) and the court-ordered plan to desegregate the Boston Public Schools (BPS).
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Moakley Archive Finding Aids and Research Guides

Busing in boston: a research guide.

• Moakley Archive and Institute

Document Type

Research Guide

The Moakley Archive and Institute at Suffolk University has many resources that illustrate the controversy surrounding school desegregation in Boston during the 1970s. Boston’s busing crisis was sparked in 1974 with the ruling of Judge Arthur Garrity in the case of Tallulah Morgan et al. v. James Hennigan et al. Garrity ruled that the Boston School Committee had “intentionally brought about and maintained racial segregation” in the Boston Public Schools and he implemented a plan that bused students to different schools to create racial balance. At the time of the ruling, Congressman John Joseph Moakley represented South Boston, one of the neighborhoods most directly affected by the busing plan.

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Moakley Archive and Institute, "Busing in Boston: A Research Guide" (2020). Moakley Archive Finding Aids and Research Guides . 14. https://dc.suffolk.edu/researchguides/14

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Resources Documenting School Desegregation

• Overview of School Desegregation Research Guide

Archival and Manuscript Collections

Archival and manuscript collections at other institutions, books at other libraries, digitized publications, journal articles, online resources, theses and dissertations.

• About University Archives and Special Collections
• Visiting Other Libraries

Boston Public Schools parent interview transcripts, 1988-1989

Center for Law and Education:  Morgan v. Hennigan  case records, 1964-1994

Edward Blackman papers, 1958-1974

Ione Malloy papers, 1974-2006

Jack Haran: Boston Public Schools desegregation planning records, circa 1970-1986

​ James Green papers, 1964-2010

Linda Lawrence papers, 1974-1975

Massachusetts Rock Against Racism records, 1979-1987, bulk 1982 1982-1987

Mosaic records, 1980-1990

Polly Welts Kaufman Papers, 1965-2015

Robert Dentler papers, 1918-2008

​W. Arthur Garrity, Jr. chambers papers on the Boston Schools Desegregation Case, 1972-1997

Boston College

• Citywide Coordinating Council Records, 1975-1978
• Louise Bonar and Carol Wolfe Collection of Boston Education Materials 1952-1984

City of Boston Archives

• Boston Public Schools Desegregation-era Records Collection 1952-2004
• Citywide Parents Council 1975-1993
• Louise Day Hicks papers 1971-1975
• Mayor Kevin H. White records 1929-1999
• Morgan et al. v. Hennigan et al. and related cases files

Massachusetts State Archives

• Massachusetts Executive Office of Educational Affairs Administrative Files, 1972-1980

Northeastern University

• Citywide Educational Coalition records 1972-2001
• Frank Miranda papers 1964-2005
• Freedom House, Inc. records 1941-2001
• James W. Fraser (collector) photograph collection
• Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity, Inc. records 1961-2005
• Phyllis M. Ryan papers 1959-1988
• Roxbury Multi-Service Center Records 1965-2002

Suffolk University

• Congressman John Joseph Moakley papers
• Oral History Interviews

• Evaluating school busing; case study of Boston's operation Exodus by James E. Teele Call Number: LA306.B7 T43 Publication Date: 1973
• From Brown to Boston by Leon Jones Call Number: LC214.2.A1 J65 ISBN: 0810811472 Publication Date: 1979

The books listed below are available via the  Boston Public Library .

• Boston: 12 Moments that Mattered, 1872-1997
• Desegregating the Boston Public Schools
• Desegregation in Boston and Buffalo: The Influence of Local Leaders
• Desegregation: The Boston Orders and Their Origin
• From Little Rock to Boston
• The Hardest Lesson: Personal Accounts of a School Desegregation Crisis
• History in the Making: An Absorbing Look at How American History Has Changed in the Telling Over the Last 200 Years
• Life Upon These Shores: Looking at African American History, 1513-2008
• A People's History of the New Boston
• The Resegregation of Suburban Schools
• Schools on Trial
• Southie Won't Go: A Teacher's Diary of the Desegregation of South Boston High School
• Why Busing Failed: Race, Media, and the National Resistance to School Desegregation

UMass Boston does not hold copies of the following titles, but patrons may be able to request them through interlibrary loan.  See  https ://www.umb.edu/library/interlibrary_loan .

• Boston Desegregation: The First Term the 1974-1975 School Year
• Boston Desegregation: Questions and Answers
• The Boston School Integration Dispute: Social Change and Legal Maneuvers
• Community Crisis Intervention and the Boston School Desegregation Effort: Case Study of a Training Program
• Desegregation and Busing: An annotated Bibliography, with Special Reference to the Case in Boston
• From Brown to Boston. 2: Desegregation in Education, 1954-1974, Legal Cases and Indexes
• "I Respectfully Disagree with the Judge's Order:" The Boston School Desegregation Order
• The Racist Offensive Against Busing: The Lessons Against Busing: How to Fight Back
• Reminiscences of James Madison Nabrit III: Oral History 1979

The publications listed below are held at the  Boston Public Library , and the digitized items are available through the  Internet Archive . To locate additional digitized publications about desegregation through the Internet Archive, visit  archive.org  and search for related keywords such as "school desegregation," "Boston desegregation," or "busing crisis."

• Analysis of the Impact of Implementation of the School Desegregation Plan on Population Flows in Boston
• Boston School Desegregation Project
• Report No. 2 to the United States District Court, District of Massachusetts on Boston School Desegregation
• Report No. 3 to the United States District Court, District of Massachusetts on Boston School Desegregation
• Report No. 4 to the United States District Court, District of Massachusetts on Boston School Desegregation
• Report No. 5 to the United States District Court, District of Massachusetts on Boston School Desegregation
• School Desegregation Plan
• Student Desegregation Plan Submitted by the School Committee of the City of Boston, January 27, 1975
• United Facilities Plan: Summary and Recommendations (Part 1)

This list provides a sampling of journal articles that are available through the Healey Library. For more articles please search through the Healey's Databases & Indexes .

• Chancy, Joette and Brenda Franklin " Report from Boston: The Struggle for Desegregation ," Black School 7, no. 4 (Dec. 1975): 19-27.
• Durham, Joseph T. "S ense and Nonsense About Busing ." The Journal of Negro Education 42.3 (1973): 322-35
• Hannon, James T. " The Influence of Catholic Schools on the Desegregation of Public School Systems: A Case Study of White Flight in Boston ." Population Research and Policy Review 3.3 (1984): 219-37 
• Hornburger, Jane M. " Deep Are the Roots: Busing in Boston ." The Journal of Negro Education 45.3 (1976): 235-45.
• Jones, Leon. " Brown Revisited: From Topeka, Kansas to Boston, Massachusetts ." Phylon (1960-) 37.4 (1976): 343-58.
• Lewyn, Michael E. " The Courts vs. The Cities ." The Urban Lawyer 25.2 (1993): 453-61.
• McAndrews, Lawrence J. " Missing the Bus: Gerald Ford and School Desegregation ." Presidential Studies Quarterly 27.4 (1997): 791-804.
• Nutter, Kathleen Banks. " Militant Mothers": Boston, Busing, and the Bicentennial of 1976 ." Historical Journal of Massachusetts 38.2 (2010): 53-XI 
• Olzak, Susan, Shanahan Suzanne, and West Elizabeth. " School Desegregation, Interracial Exposure, and Antibusing Activity in Contemporary Urban America ." American Journal of Sociology 100.1 (1994): 196-241.
• Richer, Matthew. " Busing's Boston Massacre ." Policy Review.92 (1998): 42-7. 
• Rossell, Christine H. " School Desegregation and Community Social Change ." Law and Contemporary Problems 42.3 (1978): 133-83.
• Schofield, Janet Ward. " Inside Desegregated Schools: Understanding How and Why They Influence Students ." American Journal of Education 109.3 (2001): 383-90.
• Theoharis, J. F. " We Saved the City": Black Struggles for Educational Equality in Boston, 1960-1976 ." Radical History Review 81.1 (2001): 61-93 
• Useem, Bert. " Models of the Boston Anti-Busing Movement: Polity/Mobilization and Relative Deprivation ." The Sociological Quarterly 22.2 (1981): 263-74. 

Search or browse all of the Healey Library's newspaper databases .

• Boston Globe (full run) 1872-present This link opens in a new window Text-only articles. No images. Search the full run of the Boston Globe from one place. Access is from 1872-present.
• New York Times (1851 - 2020) (Proquest) This link opens in a new window Text-only articles. No images. The New York Times offers full page and article images with searchable full text back to the first issue in 1851. It does not include the current years three years. The collection includes digital reproductions providing access to every page from every available issue. Printing : Use Print to fit option
• The Boston Busing/Desegregation Project , a project of the Union of Minority Neighborhoods
• Digital Commonwealth : Search for the subject term "Busing for Integration"
• Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Movement 1954-1985;" "The Story of a Movement - School Desegregation in Boston; " produced by PBS as part of its American Experience series
• Long Road to Justice: The African American Experience in the Massachusetts' Courts; "Education: Morgan v. Hennigan;" produced by the Massachusetts Historical Society
• Mosaic records and publication, 1980-1990: Digitized Materials
• Stark and Subtle Divisions: A Collaborative History of Segregation in Boston
• W. Arthur Garrity, Jr. chambers papers on the Boston Schools Desegregation Case: Digitized Materials

Stark & Subtle Divisions  was designed by graduate students in the History and American Studies departments at University of Massachusetts Boston. This collection  showcases letters, photographs, legal documents, artifacts, and interviews that explore de facto segregation in Boston and the federally-mandated desegregation of Boston public schools.

UMass Boston does not hold copies of the following titles, but patrons may be able to request them through interlibrary loan. See  https ://www.umb.edu/library/interlibrary_loan .

• Publication Date: 1977
• Publication Date: 1975
• Publication Date: 2015

Documentary:

• 57 minutes, 2005
• Created by: WGBH. Hosted by Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., Thomas Payzant, Gary Orfeld, and Melissa Colon
• 7 minutes, 2015
• Creators: David Knight and Stephen Shane
• Episode 13, 55 minutes, 1987
• Creator and Executive Producer: Henry Hampton
• 27 minutes, 2016
• Creator: Charlie Manclark
• 55 minutes, 2013
• Produced by Mercer Media Relations for the Union of Minority Neighborhoods (UMN) in collaboration with BNN.

Made for television:

• Adaption of J. Anthony Lukas' Common Ground
• 1 hour, 37 minutes
• Director: Mike Newell
• 1 hour, 55 minutes
• << Previous: Overview of School Desegregation Research Guide
• Next: About University Archives and Special Collections >>
• Last Updated: Aug 9, 2024 2:00 PM
• URL: https://umb.libguides.com/desegregation

Sharing teaching and learning resources from the National Archives

Education Updates

Forty years ago: Desegregation in Boston Public Schools

Boston, Massachusetts, has long been a crucible for social, cultural, and political change. But Boston is also a city of contradictions.

Forty years ago, a group of parents filed a formal complaint in the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts.  The case beings with this simple sentence: “This is a class action brought by black children attending the Boston public schools and their parents.”

Tallulah Morgan et al. v. James W. Hennigan et al. , United States District Court Civil Action Case File No. 72-911-G—known as the Boston schools desegregation case—occupies 54 large storage boxes in the National Archives at Boston.  The case was presented over a period of two years, and on June 21, 1974, Federal Judge W. Arthur Garrity ruled that the School Committee of the City of Boston had “intentionally brought about and maintained racial segregation” in the Boston public schools.

The response to the implementation was protest, at times violent, but eventually the Boston Public Schools would change.

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During the summer of 2014, a group of educators from across the country—elementary through college—spent a week at the National Archives at Boston and Chicago studying issues of civil rights.

They scanned documents like the above letter from Mrs. Sumner Bernstein . She wrote to Boston Public Schools Superintendent Leary explaining how, though she initially “went along with the plan,” she became angry and fearful after her daughter’s experiences at her new school (10/22/1974, from the Records of District Courts of the United States). All of the newly digitized documents are available online by entering “Primarily Teaching 2014” in the documents search box .

They also used these newly digitized primary sources to create online teaching activities related to education equality:

• What does it mean? Boston School Desegregation
• Formulating Questions About A Primary Source from Morgan v. Hennigan
• Different Perspectives: Boston School Desegregation
• An Introduction to Morgan v. Hennigan  
• Civil Rights in Education: Legal Complaints in Morgan v. Hennigan  
• Who were the stakeholders in the desegregation of Boston Public Schools?
• Minority groups during desegregation of Boston Public Schools
• Evaluating Police Protection during Boston Schools Desegregation 
• Alleged Segregation in Chicago Public Schools in 1960s
• School Experience in Chicago, 1950–1961

You can create your own activities on this subject with the tools available on DocsTeach !

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This document was featured on the Today’s Document Tumblr Blog , with daily featured documents from today in history from the holdings of the U.S. National Archives.

The National Archives usually makes access happen for federal records, since those make up our holdings. But we have an interesting connection to Boston’s city records regarding school desegregation as well! Starting in the mid-1980s, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC)—the grant-making arm of the National Archives—awarded grants to the City of Boston to help establish and develop a citywide archives and records management program. In 2003 and 2005, the NHPRC awarded two grants to the City of Boston for its Public Schools Desegregation-Era Records Project to arrange, describe, and publish a Web-based finding aid. Read more about the project on the NHPRC’s blog .

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Busing & Beyond: School Desegregation in Boston

The story of busing and desegregation in Boston begins much earlier than most people imagine. In 1847, a young black girl named Sarah Roberts sued the city of Boston for having to walk past five schools in order to attend an inferior black-only school in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of the city. The courts found against her in the landmark Roberts v. Boston case, but it turned the tide of public opinion sufficiently to have the state legislature outlaw school assignment by race in 1855. Massachusetts thus became one of the first states with legally mandated school integration, long before the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision.

However, the schools of the City of Boston gradually resegregated during the mid 1930s through the early 1970s. The reasons for this are many, but center on the city itself becoming far more racially segregated by neighborhood due to redlining (racially biased mortgage lending), discriminatory homeowners insurance practices, and, most notably, the construction of public housing that was allocated by race in the post-World-War-II era. Community and judicial efforts to push the City of Boston to voluntarily desegregate its schools failed, and in 1974, a federal judge imposed court-ordered desegregation via busing between neighborhoods in the landmark Morgan v. Hennigan decision. The court-ordered busing was implemented during the 1974-1975 school year, and assigned many students to schools in neighborhoods far from where they lived in an effort to racially balance school assignment. There was a hostile backlash by many white residents of Boston, and many city residents of all races had questions about the busing method for implementing desegregation as well as the efficacy of desegregation. The topic remains an issue in Boston, where despite the 1974 decision and continuing efforts to integrate its schools, many schools remain racially imbalanced today.

• Kerry Dunne, Weston Public Schools, Massachusetts

Time Period

• Postwar United States (1945 to early 1970s)
• African Americans

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To give feedback, contact us at [email protected] . You can also view resources for National History Day .

Legal Panel Discusses Strategies to Promote School Desegregation and Educational Equity 70 Years After Brown v. Board of Education

• May 23, 2024
• Isabelle Anzabi
• Stanford Center for Racial Justice
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Earlier this month, “ The Unfinished Legacy of Brown v. Board of Education at 70 ” conference brought together educators, leading scholars, and legal experts to discuss the current state of racial and economic segregation in American schools, marking 70 years since the landmark Supreme Court ruling. The conference was hosted by the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford and the Stanford Institute for Advancing Just Societies and co-sponsored by the Stanford Center for Racial Justice , Stanford Graduate School of Business, Stanford Graduate School of Education, and Stanford Law School. 

Throughout the legal panel, “What can the courts do? Legal strategies to promote school desegregation and educational equity,” speakers urged for the integration and increased funding of schools, arguing that state governments should do more in the absence of greater federal involvement. Furthermore, panelists warned about the trend of public charter schools contributing to increased levels of racial segregation in schools across the U.S.

Moderator Ralph Richard Banks , a professor at Stanford Law School and the Faculty Director at the Stanford Center for Racial Justice, began the discussion with some stage setting remarks. “[ Brown ’s] cultural significance cannot be overstated,” he said. Brown was not “really about separation at all, it was about degradation, that was the core . . . Separate education is inherently unequal,” said Banks.

Kimberly Robinson , a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law and Director of the Education Rights Institute and the Center for the Study of Race and Law, then presented on current efforts to desegregate schools at the federal level. Robinson posed two framing questions, the first of which was focused on what federal courts can do. She suggested that there’s some reason to be optimistic, including the Supreme Court’s recent decision to decline to hear Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School Board , effectively upholding a race-neutral high school admissions policy. Additionally, over 200 school districts still remain under court-ordered desegregation orders.

Robinson’s second framing question asked a tougher question: “How do we define the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education , what is it that we are trying to finish, and how can we look to the future to do that?” On the legacy of Brown , Robinson explained the plight of low-quality schools across our nation: “Yes, school integration must be made a part of that definition, but we still have a lot of work to do to improve the quality of schools for all of our students.” She recommended a shift to education federalism, which Robinson refers to as “a balance of power over education that emphasizes state and local authority over education and a circumscribed federal role.” She argued that Congress should guarantee a federal right to a high quality education, something that the Supreme Court has refused to do .

Robert Kim , the Executive Director of Education Law Center, discussed his observations from his experience working on the Latino Action Network v. New Jersey case, which is currently the only state-wide school desegregation case in the country. He said that there is a critical relationship between school funding, poverty, and race in New Jersey, where “Black and Latino students attend districts that are spending significantly less per pupil than what is needed [and] the lack of quality of education due to inequitable funding is exacerbated by racial segregation.” For this reason, Kim argued that we need to address segregation as well as funding gaps, but posed a challenging question: What is acceptable desegregation?

During the final presentation, Myron Orfield , a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School and Director of the Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity, talked about the need to move to state courts for school segregation cases, explaining that “the state courts can act” and have greater tools at their disposal to do so (e.g. broader jurisprudence and education clauses to support school segregation claims that are not necessarily available at the federal level). Orfield also discussed charter schools, suggesting that their “business model is single-race [schools]” that have an incentive to target particular racial groups by being “ culturally-focused. ” He further argued that charter schools by and large underperformed when compared to traditional public schools, though a recent study found that on average charter school students had reading and math gains that outpaced their traditional public school counterparts with variation by location and configuration.

Banks then transitioned the panel to a moderated discussion and asked how we should orient ourselves with regards to the movement for school choice, specifically charter schools and vouchers. Orfield was critical of the misalignment between what charter schools promised and the reality of their intense segregation and expressed concern with the growing trend of privatizing public schools. Kim focused on vouchers, stating that “vouchers are the number one education policy and developing concern that we should all be thinking and grappling with moving forward.” He highlighted the dramatic rise of voucher programs over the last decade and predicted we would see great change in private education and increases in segregation in the coming years. Panelists all agreed that states should do more to ensure that charter schools and voucher programs do not have segregative effects when implemented.

The panelists were then asked for their recommendations on how to overcome the decentralized and localized features of the U.S. school system. Robinson praised the intent of local control policies, saying they are “designed to encourage experimentation, excellence, and tailoring education to the needs of students,” but pointed out that unfortunately, these policies have not served their intended purpose. Robinson returned to the need for education federalism and for the federal government to make education a fundamental right under the U.S. Constitution. On the other hand, Kim advocated that state governments should enact more interdistrict policies to increase economic integration across districts.

There was also consensus for an invigorated public consciousness, pressure, and push for integrated schools. Currently, 70% of Americans believe that more should be done to integrate schools throughout the nation. “We have to help the public understand the benefits of public schools,” said Robinson. “Funding is still unequal—with less funding going to schools with higher concentrations of children of color and children in poverty, [yet] states have the power to determine their school integration policies.” When asked by an audience member whether it is more effective to win over the public’s hearts or minds on this issue, Robinson spoke to the financial incentive of integration: “The data is robust that we are paying exponentially for a broken system.”

In his final remarks, Banks connected the enlightening discussion with a call to action: “This is the end of the panel, but not the end of this conversation because this is a conversation that is wildly important to the nation. We have by no measure lived up to the promise of Brown , and our ability to do so will really influence the fate of our nation.”

Isabelle Anzabi (BA ’24) is an intern at the Stanford Center for Racial Justice interested in technology policy and increasing access to justice.

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