Boston Against Busing: Race, Class, and Ethnicity in the 1960s and 1970s

In the 1970s the flashpoint of race relations for many white Americans was court-ordered busing to achieve school desegregation. Busing sparked protests in almost every city in which it was implemented, but perhaps the most volatile reaction occured in Boston, a city known for its high culture, superior education, and liberal populace. In no other city, north or south, did school desegregation prompt such intense and protracted protest.

In Boston Against Busing Ronald Formisano explores the sources of white opposition to school desegregation. He sees white resistance as an example of reactionary populism, a social movement mixing both populist and conservative elements. Racism was a key facor, Formisano argues, but racial prejudice alone cannot explain the movement. Vigilantism and terrorism were directed as much against moderate whites as against blacks, and class resentment, ethnic rivalries, and the defense of neighborhood turf played powerful roles in the protest.

Whereas previous accounts of Boston's opposition to busing have focused on the working-class neighborhoods of South Boston and Charlestown, Formisano examines a broader spectrum of resistance, especially in middle-class West Roxbury. Different neighborhoods had differing responses to the crisis, he says. He draws on letters from a cross section of Boston's citizens to the federal judge who presided over the case, W. Arthur Garrity, Jr., letters that detail the gamut of opinion among the opponents of court-ordered busing.

Formisano also points out the connections between the student and black activists of the 1960s and the Boston antibusers fo the 1970s. The Boston protesters, although hostile to the civil rights and student movements, often borrowed their tactics and even their slogans, singing "We Shall Overcome" and chanting "Hell, no, we won't go" as they marched, demonstrated, and often clashed with police.

Since the 1970s Boston schools have become even more segregated by race and class. In evaluating the ultimate failure of desegregation in Boston, Formisano explicitly identifies where public policy went wrong and why. In doing so, he provides an insightful account of one of the most significant grass-roots movements of the 1970s and offers a valuable contribution to understanding the ongoing social problem that school desegregation tried to address.

This work offers a convincing and dispassionate assessment of an emotionally charged subject: court-ordered school desegregation in Boston and, most particularly, the white backlash associated with it. Calling the conflict a "war that nobody won," Formisano ( The Transformation of Political Culture: Massachusetts Parties, 1780s-1840s ) examines the social and economic roots of what he terms "reactionary populism," concluding that more than simple racism underlay it. Class was an important issue, as evidenced by the frustration of city residents dictated to by legislators and members of the media whose own children attended schools in the "lily white suburbs," beyond the reach of the controversial desegregation plan. He describes the variety of white responses to the court order, for example, South Boston's collective hard-core resistance in marches and clashes with police and West Roxbury's more individualist (white flight) and legalist approach. Here, too, are the public characters, such as Boston School Councillor Louise Hicks, and the street theater of protest, such as a mothers' prayer march led by Hicks counting her rosary beads.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Sailing in the wake of Common Ground , J. Anthony Lukas's prize-winning study of Boston's busing crisis ( LJ 8/85), Formisano focuses upon the white antibusers who, he believes, were more diverse in motivation and tactics than the rock-throwing mobs on television. Using interviews, press accounts, and the enormous secondary literature, he argues, as have Lukas and others, that race and class were knotted together in this "war nobody won." Formisano writes with empathy for the antibusers yet doesn't dismiss their racism; he finds little to praise between both sides' principals and concludes that school desegregation must confront "suburban residential apartheid." Lukas's journalistic tour de force is still the book to read on busing in Boston, but this, the most accessible scholarly work, may be the book to study. It is recommended for most academic and many public libraries.
- Robert F. Nardini, North Chichester, N.H.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.