Finally, in 1972, the NAACP, Freedom House, and other black community groups filed a federal suit against the Boston School Committee, charging discrimination in school assignments, staffing, and allocation of resources, facilities, and transportation. Recent precedents in San Francisco and Detroit supported their case. In May 1974, nearly 20 years after Brown v. Board of […]

The Latino and Chinese narratives in pre-busing activism are unfortunately largely missing from historical record. However, both groups faced unique issues because of how most reforms affected English language learning programs. Soon after the Racial Imbalance Act was passed, the Boston School Committee reclassified Chinese students as white in an attempt to offset some of the […]

On February 28, 1965, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) leader James Farmer called a press conference to discuss the school crisis. His speech at this event set the tone for activism following the passage of the Racial Imbalance Act. To receive the Negroes’ support at the voting booth action must be taken on the […]

  On April 26, 1965, the Boston School Committee voted 3 to 2 without a hearing to reject grievances the NAACP had brought to them. In response, on April 28 Pastor Vernon Carter, who was pastor at All Saints Lutheran Church in the South End, began a 108-day vigil outside the Boston School Committee headquarters […]

With growing public awareness of school issues in the summer of 1963, legislation was proposed for a so-called Racial Imbalance Law by Senator Royal Bolling Sr. of Roxbury, but this first iteration died in legislature. Then, in 1964, Governor Endicott Peabody appointed a Racial Imbalance Advisory Commission, asking the committee to make a thorough, independent […]

One of the biggest obstacles parents faced was the Boston School Committee (BSC), many of whose members refused outright to recognize desegregation and often were vehemently against any measures seeking to offset de facto segregation.                 One tactic black parents and community members used was to run for […]

One of the biggest attempts at community control was the creation of Freedom Schools, initially developed for Freedom Stay-Out days to replace the schooling that student-participants were missing. The Mass Freedom movement began organizing parents in Roxbury schools, but many members began to think that the best approach might be to start schools themselves. Along […]

The success of Operation Exodus prompted many community members to promote more community control of the schools, because reform within BPS seemed unlikely. Community control meant many things, including naming neighborhood schools, greater presence of black administrators, and enlarged roles for parents in school development. One of the first battles of community control came up […]

In September 1964 Operation Exodus was created and began to bus children from Roxbury to Peter Faneuil School in Beacon Hill. Operation Exodus was a completely community-led program that self-funded the busing of students from Roxbury to schools around Boston that had open seats. Under Boston’s Open Enrollment Policy, which had been used by white […]

On April 23, 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. came to Boston and lead a March and Rally at the Boston Commons downtown. This momentous action was organized by many of the community leaders involved in education reform, including Ruth Batson and Alan Gartner. Education was a major topic of the event, as seen in the […]