The Busing Battleground

On September 12, 1974, African American and white children were bused across the city of Boston in compliance with a federal court order mandating the desegregation of the public schools. The cross-town busing was met with shocking violence, much of it directed at children: angry white protestors threw rocks at school buses carrying Black children and hurled racial epithets at the students as they walked into their new schools. The chaos and racial unrest would escalate and continue for years. As The Busing Battleground shows, the court’s desegregation decision came after decades of struggle by the Black community to secure equal access to a decent education for their children. In telling this story, the film illustrates how civil rights battles had to be fought in the North as well as the South and reckons with the class dimensions of the desegregation saga, exploring how the neighborhoods most impacted by the court’s order were the poorest in the city.