Political cartoon, 1954. Image courtesy of the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia. Reproduction not permitted without prior permission, in writing, from the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library.
On Valentine’s Day, 1974, the Boston School Committee received a crushing rejection. Its appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court to repeal the Massachusetts Racial Imbalance Act was denied on two grounds: the deadline to file had expired and the Committee’s appeal had “no substantial basis.”(1)
Established in 1965, the act empowered the state Board of Education to investigate and reduce racial inequality in public schools. Perhaps the strictest racial balance legislation among the states, the act defined racial imbalance as any school in which the number of nonwhites exceeded 50% of the total population. For nearly a decade, the Boston School Committee and the state Board of Education argued bitterly over the definition of racial imbalance and the means of implementing a more integrated public school system.
In 1972, the Massachusetts Board of Education accused the Boston School Committee of repeatedly refusing to institute any measures to integrate its schools, many of which were heavily segregated according to the act’s definition. After the state suspended funding to Boston Public Schools, the School Committee launched a series of legal battles to repeal the Racial Imbalance Act and recover state funding for city schools.
The NAACP also initiated legal action in the federal court system. It charged that, by not complying with the Racial Imbalance Act, the Boston School Committee violated the Fourteenth Amendment and the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In the digital exhibit, “Busing Boston Bound: Phase I of Desegregation in Boston, Massachusetts,” Rebecca Carpenter, a graduate student in the Archives program, explores the impact of the Morgan v. Hennigan decision.
Cover of booklet, “Make Congress Stop Bussing” [sic] by Lawrence P. MacDonald, April 1976. Reproduced courtesy of the Moakley Archive & Institute at Suffolk University, Boston, Mass. Rights status is not evaluated. Written permission from the copyright holders is required for reproduction. Using documents, maps, reports, and photographs from special collections and archives including Boston City Archives, the Northeastern University Archives & Special Collections, the National Archives, Boston, the Moakley Archive and Institute at Suffolk University, and other repositories, Carpenter evaluates Phase I of desegregation. Beginning in September, 1974, the plan, which required that students in the most racially imbalanced schools be bused into schools where the number whites exceeded 50%, provoked heated and hostile reactions in some neighborhoods. The exhibit explores the motivations behind Garrity’s decision and assesses the initial plans for busing.
How did students react to Garrity’s decision to bus them away from their neighborhood schools? How did the decision, and the fear and violence it provoked in some schools, affect teachers? Learn more about the the impact busing had on public education in the next posts. For more background and details on the Racial Imbalance Act, see Connor Anderson’s digital exhibit, highlighted in the last post.
Notes
[1] Muriel Cohen, “Court Denies Balance Appeal Request.” Boston Globe (1960-1985) Feb 15 1974: 3. ProQuest. 13 Feb. 2017
“Turned Away from School,” Anti-Slavery Almanac, Boston, 1839. Similar to the black child in this image, Sarah Roberts was rejected from an all-white school in Boston in 1848.
On February 15, 1848, Sarah Roberts, a five-year-old African American girl, attempted to enter an all-white grammar school near her home. A white teacher rejected Sarah, based on the color of her skin. Sarah’s father, Benjamin F. Roberts, tried to enroll his daughter in four different schools attended by whites. All were close to their home while the schools designated for black children were located over a half mile away—a long walk for a young child, especially during the bitterly cold, snowy month.
Robert Morris, Esq., was admitted into the Massachusetts bar in 1847. Two years later, he co-defended Sarah Roberts’ right to attend a public school closer to her home than the schools designated for blacks.
The General School Committee, the group responsible for administering the city’s public schools, rejected each request that Sarah attend a white school. That December, Benjamin Roberts sued the city for damages, on grounds that his daughter was unlawfully denied admission to a public school. Robert Morris, one of the first black lawyers in the US, worked with abolitionist lawyer and politician, Charles Sumner, to represent Sarah in Roberts v. City of Boston. The two argued that Massachusetts law guaranteed equal education regardless of race and that requiring black children to attend separate schools was unconstitutional.
Read the full text of Sumner’s, “Equality Before the Law: Unconstitutionality of Separate Colored Schools in Massachusetts,” 1849 (above) courtesy of the Internet Archive.
Despite their impassioned arguments, Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw found in favor of the city. Defending the actions of the General School Committee, Shaw ruled that a segregated school system did not violate the principle of equality before the law. His decision laid a foundation for the federal doctrine, “separate but equal,” that held that racial segregation did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment.
“Boston Neighborhoods,” an exhibit created by Vini Maranan (General History, 2016) and Paul Fuller (Public History, 2015), explores the unique cultures, communities, and stereotypes surrounding six of Boston’s twelve neighborhoods. In the 1960s and 1970s, economic fluctuations, settlement patterns, and urban renewal programs in Boston reinforced ethnic associations and strengthened a separation of races in many working-class neighborhoods. The de facto segregation of neighborhoods affected the makeup of schools which had become heavily segregated. Maranan and Fuller’s exhibit uses letters and interviews of ordinary citizens to document conditions in schools by neighborhood. Their exhibit also traces neighborhood reactions to Judge W. Arthur Garrity’s ruling that de facto segregation was discriminatory. It examines a sampling of neighborhood reactions to the 1974 order that students be bused away from local schools to achieve a better integration of white and black students.
Learn more about about the implementation of “Phase I” to desegregate Boston Public Schools by busing students away from neighborhoods in the next post.
Last spring, I had the privilege of taking a practicum class that challenged me and strengthened me as a public historian. “Making a History of Columbia Point: A Participatory Exhibition” was the graduate class I always hoped grad school would provide for me. As a class, we were responsible for creating a participatory pop-up exhibit, working with the local community around University of Massachusetts Boston—a community who lived, worked, and loved Columbia Point. I’ll admit, it was intimidating at the start, but the class left a lasting impression on me.
The syllabus portrayed a project that seemed simple enough; however, once we were completely submerged in research, class meetings, and archival visits, I felt that I had bitten off more than I could chew. There were five students working on the project with me and we all came to the project with different backgrounds, interests, work ethics, and experience. Nevertheless, we all dove in together. We spent the beginning of the semester researching a wide range of aspects about Columbia Point’s history, like its geography, housing complexes, school systems, and community activists, just to name a few. We examined oral interviews of residents, read papers from the Boston Housing Authority, collected newspaper clippings, and finally managed to develop a solid foundation from which we created the exhibit.
Creating an exhibition always seemed easy enough. I felt after working in museums that it mostly followed the same pattern; do research, go through the collection and pull necessary artifacts, write labels, install, and enjoy. I will never again see exhibit creation in the same way again. After doing our initial research, we were tasked with creating a timeline of important moments in Columbia Point’s history, generating a collection, and locating sites on an interactive map. Judith Marshall, another student in class, and I were chosen as the collections team, which I was really excited about until I realized we had no pre-established collection. How were we supposed to curate artifacts when they did not exist? Judith and I worked tirelessly to locate articles, photographs, and objects that would lend themselves to conversations of Columbia Point’s history. We hoped that the people who came to our event would want to tell us their impression of these items, but also share with us stories of their own. My mind slowly shifted from seeing objects as the center of exhibits to seeing the social stories and memories that stemmed from objects as the focal points. I had never thought about exhibits in that way before, and my perception of what public historians do changed once again.
Our pop-up exhibit took place on May 9, 2015. We had spent weeks creating a timeline, a map, and a collection. We also met and choose participatory elements we wanted to implement alongside our labels to create a way for our visitors to contribute to our findings. The timeline was meant to be altered, so we had post-it notes around the edges and invited visitors to add events—both historical and personal—to our pre-planned events. The collection was definitely not complete. Judith and I found 14 items that we thought represented Columbia Point’s history well, but we knew people could bring us objects we would have never found on our own. We invited our visitors to bring photographs, documents, and items that they wanted to share. Our map worked in the same way. As a class we choose 6 places that we felt were important to the history, but hoped the community would contribute locations as well.
Judith Marshall (right) and I (left) next to our label, inviting visitors to contribute to the exhibit’s collection.
The participatory element of our exhibit was extraordinary, not only for us but for our visitors as well. Museums and exhibits never seem like places that allow you to manipulate labels, and collections, and displays, but for one day the visitors were allowed too, and they took full advantage. It was a slow start, since no one wanted to be the first to contribute, but by the end of our day, different colored post-it notes covered our timeline, over 100 items had been added to our collection, and so many more locations found their way onto the map. The stress I felt early in the semester was a distant memory. I was in my zone. Hearing people talk about the events we researched, meeting people we read about in books, and sharing our own insights with people who lived through these events were moments I will never have again. The class may have been hard, but the feeling of knowing you are on the right path professionally was a well-deserved award at the end of the semester.
After the class ended, I had a hard time thinking of what our work would mean to other people. Would people know this event happened? Would people want to add more things to our collection? Would people see the work we had already done? I approached our instructor a little after the semester ended to see if there was anything more I could do. Thankfully people in the historical field are always looking to help graduate students, and I lucked into working with the University Archives and Special Collections at UMASS Boston to process our collection. Those 100 photographs we collected and all the information we knew about them now had a chance to be available online. I worked all summer long to scan in photos and log information into the school’s database. I was able to see our project from a different level, and it inspired me to take more archival classes and add an archival certificate to my degree.
A class that seemed intimidating, felt impossible, and challenged me became so much more. I know now I want to be a public historian. I want the stresses and challenges of the research, and the delight and excitement in uncovering new artifacts. I want the conversations with the public, and the chance to hear from the community. I also want to explore all aspects of public history, and take more classes out of my comfort zone. I can only hope everyone feels this way when they take their 625 Practicum.
![Cover of booklet, "Make Congress Stop Bussing," [sic], by Lawrence P. MacDonald, April 1976. Reproduced courtesy of the John Joseph Moakley Archive & Institute at Suffolk University, Boston, Mass. Rights status is not evaluated. Written permission from the copyright holders is required for reproduction.](https://s3.amazonaws.com/omeka-net/15912/archive/files/8b9e102ad51a11c06beb341683ab2d4c.JPG?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI3ATG3OSQLO5HGKA&Expires=1487047546&Signature=IhPdiry%2F8qNYtz8gTzOFSqxyHts%3D)
