Modern Boston History Class- Discussion Assignment 500 To 750 Words

Write a post (500 to 750 words) which answers one of the following questions related to the texts. Your post should contain well thought-out paragraphs and not simply lists of brief answers. I encourage you to use material from our lectures to support your conclusions. You only should use the files that i will upload as a resource the professor doesn’t accept outside resources.

Question

Throughout Boston’s history, mothers played a crucial role in the reform movement in the city. Comparing the fight for school desegregation from the 1960s on to the situation in schools today, explain how mothers held a key role in the fight for social justice.

REPORT

RACIAL IMBALANCE

IN THE

BOSTON PUBLIC SCHOOLS

BY THE

MASSACHUSETTS STATE ADVISORY

COMM

TEE

TO THE

ED STATES COMMISSION

ON CIVIL RIGHTSGOV DOCS
SUDOC/CR

:SCH

JANUARY 1

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United States Commissi

Report on racial
imbalance in the Boston p

REPORT ON

RACIAL IMBALANCE

IN THE
BOSTON PUBLIC SCHOOLS

. wj long sr property 01 tern

lontRomery Co. EuBIGs ElBrass

By the

Massachusetts State Ad

isory Committee

to the

UNITED STATES COMMISSION ON CIVIL RIGHTS

JANUARY

MASSACHUSETTS STATE ADVISORY COMMITTEE

TO THE
UNITED STATES COMMISSION ON CIVIL RIGHTS

Dean Robert F. Drinan, S.J., Chairman
Brighton

Robert E. Segal, Vice Chairman
Boston

Julius Bernstein, Secretary
Boston

Mrs. Bruce B. Benson
Amherst

The Right Reverend John M. Burgess
Boston

Professor Clark Byse
Cambridge

Noel A. Day

Roxbury

Mrs. James E. Fenn
Newton

Henry J. Mascarell

Lexington

E. T

mas Murphy
Hyannis

Paul Parks
Boston

Roger L. Putnam
East Longmeadow

Professor Victoria Schuc

South Hadley

John E. Teger
Waylan

iii

Subcommittee on Racial Imbalance in Public Schools

Paul Parks , Chairman

Noel A. Day

Staff Consultant

Elizabeth R. Cole

Regional Consultant

Frank Logue

Acknowledgments

The Massachusetts State Advisory Committee is deeply indebted to
the thirty-s

witnesses who testified at the open meeting on
March

and March

, 1964, and particularly to Dr. Charles A

Pinderhughes, Chief of Psychiatric Service at the Veterans
Administration Hospital in Boston, and the other expert witnesses;
to Paul Parks, chairman of the subcommittee on racial imbalance
in public education, for organizing the Open Meeting; to Joan Fenn
who performed much of the indispensable detail work.

Preface

THE UNITED STATES COMMISSION ON CIVIL RIGHTS

The United States Commission on Civil Rights is an independent
agency of the Federal Government created by the Civil Rights Act
of 195

• By the terms of that Act, as amended by the Civil Rights
Acts of i9

and 1964, the Commission is charged with the following
duties: investigation of individual denials of the right to vote;
study of legal developments with respect to denials of the equal
protection of the law; appraisal of the laws and policies of the
United States with respect to the equal protection of the law;
maintenance of a national clearinghouse for information respecting
denials of the equal protection of the law; and investigation of
patterns or practices of fraud or discrimination in the conduct of
Federal elections. The Commission is also required to submit
reports to the President and to the Congress at such times as the
Commission, the Congress, or the President shall deem desirable.

THE STATE ADVISORY COMMITTEES

An Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil
Rights has been established in each of the

States and the
District of Columbia pursuant to section 105(c) of the Civil Rights
Act of 19

* The memberships of these Committees are made up of
responsible persons who serve without compensation. The functions
of the Committees under their mandate from the Commission are to

advise the Commission of all information concerning legal develop

–

ments constituting a denial of equal protection of the laws under
the Constitution; advise the Commission as to the effect of the
laws and policies of the Federal Government with respect to equal
protection of the laws under the Constitution; advise the Com-
mission upon matters of mutual concern in the preparation of reports
of the Commission to the President and the Congress; and initiate
and forward advice and recommendations to the Commission upon
matters which the State Committee has studied.

vii

Contents

Page

Preface vl

Acknowledgments v

Introduction

Chapter

1. Organization and Racial Composition

of Public Schools

Chapter 2. Effect of Discrimination in
Public Housing

Chapter 3- Purposes of Public Education in
the United States

Chapter k. Consideration of Policy of the
Boston School Committee

Chapter 5» Comparison of Predominantly White

Nonwhite,and “Integrated” Schools. .

Chapter 6. Compensatory Programs

Chapter 7» Power and Duty of School Committee
to Relieve Racial Imbalance in
Schools k-3

Chapter 8. Conclusions and Recommendations … 48

Appendices

Introduction

The present study of racial imbalance in Boston public schools is
in part the outgrowth of an earlier study of housing. In March
19

, the Massachusetts State Advisory Committee held an Open
Meeting on discrimination in housing in Boston and surrounding
areas. Since educational qualifications are a prerequisite to
employment above the level of unskilled labor, and a good job that
pays well is a necessary condition to obtaining desirable housing,
it seemed logical to examine educational opportunities for Negroes
in the Boston public schools.

In Boston, as in other urban areas, public school children
ordinarily attend schools in the neighborhoods in which they live,
particularly in the elementary grades. A consequence of this fact,
which has produced controversy in Boston, as in other urban areas,
is that a great many Negro children attend schools with a predom-
inantly Negro enrollment.

The Advisory Committee decided to investigate the elements of
this controversy by:

1. obtaining public school enrollment figures for
white and Negro children;

2. seeking from the Boston School Committee and
the Superintendent’s office information relating
to educational opportunities and racial imbalance;

3. hearing expert opinions as to the effects on
children of attendance at predominantly Negro
schools;

h. hearing parents and children relate experiences
at predominantly Negro schools;

5. comparing data relating to school districts of
different racial composition;

1. Discrimination in Housing in the Boston Metropolitan Area .
Report of the Massachusetts Advisory Committee to the United
States Commission on Civil Rights, December 1963.

6. obtaining information concerning compensatory
educational programs;

7. hearing opinions as to the power and/or the duty
of the school committee to relieve racial
imbalance in schools.

The Advisory Committee invited persons known to be informed in
these areas to an Open Meeting which was held in the United States
Court House in Boston on March 20 and 21, 1964. Thirty-six wit-
nesses appeared before the Committee and three other persons
submitted written statements. After the Open Meeting, the Boston
School Committee made available the figures disclosed in the racial
census taken by the Advisory Committee on Racial Imbalance and
Education, appointed in March 1964 by the State Board of Education
and Commissioner of Education, Owen B. Kiernan.

The appointment of the “Kiernan Committee”, as it came to be
called, is a measure of the concern of educators in Massachusetts
regarding racial imbalance in the public schools. The figures
supplied in its racial census provide the first dependable infor-
mation on the racial composition of public schools in Boston. The
interim findings of the Kiernan Committee, mainly based on the field
work of educators, are entirely consistent with the findings of this
Committee.

2. The findings of the Kiernan Committee appear in the Interim
Report of the Advisory Committee on Racial Imbalance and
Education, July 1, 1964, pp. 9-12. Its conclusions are set
forth in Appendix B.

1. Organization and Racial Composition

of Public Schools

Boston public schools are classified as elementary schools, junior
high schools, high schools and special schools (for handicapped
children) . The total enrollment of all schools was 91, 800 as of
March

, 19

, composed as follows:

Grades Total White3 Negro3

Schools dumber Included Pupils Number Percent Number Percent

High 16 7-12* 20, 2kk ll,kk6 86.2 2,798

Junior
High 17 7-9* 13,

8 10, 3

78.2 2,896 21.8

Elementary

3 K-8*

7 ^2,763 73.6 15,

^ 26.

Special 2

1 1

73.0 k9

91, 800 70,703 21,097
*The overlapping grade
levels indicate that
the transition to the
junior high program
adopted some years ago
is far from complete.

3. Distribution of white and nonwhite pupils in the Public Schools
of Massachusetts. Hereafter, the Kiernan Census. The census
uses the term nonwhite, and states that the “vast prepon-
derance” are Negro. This report will use nonwhite and Negro
interchangeably, relying upon the i960 United States Census
data that 92.2 percent of the nonwhite population of Boston is
Negro. The “Kiernan Census” for Boston is set forth in
Appendix E.

There are 16 public high schools, of which 7 are city wide
and 9 serve large geographical areas. Five of the latter, the
East Boston and South Boston High Schools have no Negro pupils.
The Negro percentage in the remaining area-based high schools
ranges from 0.8l percent (Roslindale) to 35*

percent (Jamaica

Plain). In the “city wide” schools, Girls High School is 70.47
percent Negro and the Negro percentage in the remaining schools
ranges from 5*36 percent (Boys Latin) to 21.49 percent (Trade
High for Girls).

The junior high districts are smaller than those of the high
schools and contain a number of predominantly Negro schools. A
comparison of secondary schools with the highest concentration of
Negro pupils follows:

Percent
School Negro

High
Girls 70.

English (3 branches)

Jamaica Plain 35*28
J. E. Burke 28.

Junior
Lewis (including annex) 99*

Patrick T. Campbell 92.87
James P. Timilty 86.95
0. W. Holmes Jl.Oh

At the elementary school level there are greater concen-
trations of Negro pupils. The 15 elementary schools containing
more than 95 percent Negro pupils are:^-

Hyde 99.

Everett 98.8
Asa Gray 98.6
Wm. L. P. Boardman 98.5
David A. Ellis 98.4
Phillips Brooks 98.4
Henry L. Higginson 9Q0I
Ira Allen 98.

Julia Ward Howe 98.

4. Kiernan Census, p. A-4.

David A. Ellis annex 97.6
Quincy Dickerman 97 • 5
Williams 97.5
Garrison 96.8
William Bacon 96.7
Sarah J. B. Baker 95.7

The 153 elementary schools are allocated among 57 districts,
each containing 2, 3> h or 5 schools. Pupils are assigned to the
school nearest their home which has the appropriate grade. Since
the degree of imbalance in individual schools is substantially re-
flected in the school district figures, this report will hereafter
refer to elementary school districts.

A graph showing the nonwhite percentage in each of the 57
elementary school districts (Appendix A) indicates 35 districts in
the 0-10 percent range (0 to 8.7 percent), 15 districts in the
10-90 percent range (13 to 79*6 percent), and 7 districts in the
90-100 percent range (89. h to 98.8 percent). These, ranges were
employed in a recent study5 of the Chicago public schools, which
uses the following definitions:

White school – 90 percent or more white

Integrated school – at least 10 percent white
and 10 percent Negro

Negro school – 90 percent or more Negro

Since the 0-10 percent, 10-90 percent, 90-100 percent grouping has
a precedent in the Chicago report and represents a logical grouping
of the Boston elementary school districts when their nonwhite
enrollment percentages were examined, it will be employed in this
report. The use of this grouping does not constitute an endorse-
ment by this Committee of schools throughout the 10-90 percent
range as integrated schools. The chart on page 6 gives enrollment
information for the “White”, “Integrated” and “Negro” districts.

5. Report of the Board of Education, City of Chicago, by the
Advisory Panel on the Integration of the Public Schools,
March 31, 196^, p. Ik.

Enrollment Information for White, Integrated

and Negro Districts

All Pupils

Percentage of Number of Percentage of All
Districts Number ATT T\*

1 • 1 “T—v • -l

All Districts Pupils Elementary Pupils

White 35

.4 35,057 60.32

Integrated K> do. j r J- r 27. 04

Negro J_ 12.3 7,

3 12.64

57 100.0 58,117 100.00

White Pupils

Percentage of Pupils Percentage of
T)i cstT*i etc; XV QUI Ik/ v— X i n THmp of TH c?tT*i f*”fcss All Vhi+.p Pirni 1

White 34,340 97.95 80.

Integrated 8,1

.00 19.00

Negro 294 k.ok .70

,763 100.00

Negro Pupils

Percentage of Pupils Percentage of
Districts Number in Type of Districts All Negro Pupils

White 717 2.05 4.o4

Integrated 7,588 ^9.00 49.30

Negro 7,049 95.96 46.

15,354 100.00

In the definitions used here, slightly more than 25 percent of
the elementary school districts in Boston can be termed integrated.
(This compares favorably with the Chicago study in which only 9 per-
cent of the schools could be classified as integrated) . Racial
imbalance in the Boston public schools is a problem that, at least
in terms of numbers, is capable of practical solution.

The heart of Boston’s problem is found in the 7 elementary-
districts which have an average of 95 »96 percent Negro pupils.
Forty- six percent of the Negro children in the public elementary
schools –nearly one -half-

–

are enrolled in districts where 19 out
of 20 pupils are Negroes . In the next chapter, this report

–
will

summarize some expert views on the educational consequences of this
ethnic environment.

While a number of cities have found that white children are a
minority of the population in the elementary schools, this is by
no means the case in Boston, where three out of four of the children
in elementary schools are white. Sixty percent of the children
attend schools in districts whose enrollment is 97*95 percent white.
Five schools, containing 6 percent of the total elementary enroll-
ment are all-white and k out of 5 white children attend schools
that are more than 90 percent white.

While the total nonwhite population of Boston is not large
(

,^-3), in the decade 1950-60 the city experienced a sharp
increase in the nonwhite percentage of its population. In 1950
about 1 Boston resident out of 20 was nonwhite; in i960, the ratio
was about 1 to 11. This shift is the product of a substantial
decrease in the white population (130,000) and an increase in the
nonwhite population (26,000). Thus the main contribution of
suburban communities to the problem of racial imbalance is to
siphon off white families, often those most concerned with the
education of their children. The city tends increasingly to house
those families, white and Negro, having the greatest educational
needs and the least ability to pay for them in taxes.

SUMMARY

Racial concentrations in Boston’s public schools vary widely ac-
cording to the grade level of the pupil. The four schools having
the highest percentages of Negro enrollment range from

29.8 to 70.5 percent – at the high school level
71.0 to 99 »0 percent – at the junior high school

level, and
98.5 to 99*1 percent – at the elementary school level

The vast majority of public school pupils at all levels attend
schools that are more than 90 percent white in enrollment. The
size of the Negro population in Boston and the overall enrollment
pattern in the public schools offer possibilities for ending racial
imbalance that do not exist in some large cities.

2. Effect of Discrimination in Public Housing

In March. 1963> the Committee held an Open Meeting on discrimination
in housing in the Boston Metropolitan Area. In its report on the
Open Meeting, the Committee made the following statment regarding
public housing :° These patterns of limited diffusion of Negroes in
the City of Boston and in the suburbs do not occur only in private
housing. As of September 1, 1963, the Boston Housing Authority
administered 32 public housing projects consisting of 10, 556 units
in 21 Federal aided projects and 3,76l units in 11 State aided
projects,

James Bishop, Vice Chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality,
testified at the Open Meeting of the Advisory Committee that there
was

clear and substantial evidence of segregation
existing in the Boston public housing projects.

… Of the 25 public housing projects operated
by the Boston Housing Authority, seventeen have
less than 5 percent Negro families, and in six
projects totaling 2,888 family units, there are
no Negro families. Four projects. . . . are
more than 90 percent Negro and are rapidly
approaching the 100 percent mark. … In all
of the State-supported projects (3,681 units),
there are only 128 (3. 5 percent) Negro families. . .

Mr. Bishop’s opinion that “the existing segregation in Boston
public housing is the direct result of deliberate discriminatory
assignment of applicants by the Boston Housing Authority”? was

6. Discrimination in Housing in the Boston Metropolitan Area .

Report of the Massachusetts Advisory Committee to the United
States Commission on Civil Rights, Dec. 19^3, P* 10.

7« Segregation in Boston Public Housing Projects , statement of
James Bishop, Vice Chairman of Boston Core, open Meeting,
Mar. 5, 1963, p. 8.

based in part on official reports on racial occupancy of the various
projects and in part on a survey of 169 BHA tenants chosen at
random from four projects with the following nonwhite occupancy at
that time: Mission Hill (0 percent), Mission Hill Extension (87
percent), Orchard Park (2k percent) and Lenox Street (98 percent).
The study examined possible explanations for the clear pattern of
segregation in Boston public housing. While the survey did not and
could not establish BHA discrimination with affirmative evidence, it
appeared to rule out explanations other than discrimination.

A preference for segregated projects on the part of public
housing applicants is one explanation which the survey tended to
refute. Asked their current preferences, k-S percent of the white
tenants and 3 percent of the Negro tenants favored segregated
housing. Sixty-six percent of those interviewed said that at the
time of application, they had not expressed a preference for any
project.

A preference for a particular neighborhood or section of
Boston is also thought to explain racial concentrations in public
housing. This point of view can not account for the nonwhite
occupancy in Mission Hill (0.1 percent) and Mission Hill Extension
(86.6 percent) which are in the same neighborhood across the street
from one another.

A third possible explanation is that present patterns are a
residue of a former discriminatory policy. However, the newly
constructed housing for the elderly is reproducing the familiar
racial occupancy patterns. It is noteworthy that in the 10 State-
supported projects exclusive of Camden Street (99 percent nonwhite,

)

the average nonwhite occupancy was 5 percent in 1958 and 3«2 percent
in 1962.

The survey stated that the odds against producing the present
occupancy ratios by sheer chance are 1 quintillion to 1, and con-
cluded that deliberate discriminatory assignment is the sole
possible explanation of racial occupancy patterns in Boston public
housing projects.

8. The methods used in the survey, and all of the foregoing
figures, are set forth in Mr. Bishop’s report entitled
Segregation in Boston Public Housing Projects , Mar. 5, 1963.

For the purposes of this study, reports on occupancy as of
September 30, 19&3 were secured from the Boston Housing Authority
regarding the State-aided projects, and as of December 31* 19^3 >
from the United States Public Housing Administration for Federal.-
aided projects. These data are compiled in Appendix F, tables 1
and 2, respectively. Each project was then located on a map showing
school district boundaries so that the racial composition of the
project could be compared with that of the elementary school at-
tended by children in the project. This information also is given
in the tables mentioned above.

In the Boston Housing Authority’s State-aided projects>as in
its Federal-aided projects, there appears to be a deliberate
racial assignment policy, since $3.6 percent of the families in
one project, Camden Street, are Negroes and the percentage of
Negro families in the remaining 9 projects ranges from 0.1 to

5.8 percent.

The Camden Street project is located in the Dwight elementary
district and the children attend the Joseph J. Hurley School. The
Hurley School is 82.2 percent nonwhite, having 108 white and 500
Negro pupils. It would seem clear that 9Q.6 percent Negro oc-
cupancy of the Camden project substantially contributes to the
racial imbalance in the Hurley School.

Similarly, the large proportion of white families in all other
State-aided projects (96-IOO percent) helps to maintain the pre-
dominantly white character of the nearest schools. The school
districts in which these projects are located are 94 to 99 • 9 percent
white. If Negro families were distributed relatively evenly in
the State-aided pro jects, there would be less imbalance in school
populations.

The Federal-aided public housing has a higher proportion of
Negro families than the State-aided—

.2 percent compared with
3.7 percent. However, the distribution of Negro families in various
projects varies widely and those containing a high percentage of
Negro residents are found to be in school districts showing a
similar racial composition. Lenox Street and Whittier Street have,
respectively, 99*7 and 96.9 percent nonwhite families. Both
projects are located in the Hyde-Everett district. Everett School
is 98*8 percent nonwhite. Hyde School is 99 •! percent nonwhite.

The Charlestown project has 1,1^*0 units, 5 occupied by Asian
families and none by Negroes. The new Warren-Prescott School and
the older Kent School, which children from this project attend,
have no Negro pupils. East Boston, McCormack Houses and Old
Colony have no nonwhite families. East Boston is in the Iyman
district which is 0.1 percent nonwhite in enrollment. McCormack

Houses and Old Colony are in the Andrew district which is 0.3 per-
cent nonwhite. Similarly Washington and Beech Street development
with 1.1 percent nonwhite families is in Longfellow, 0.6 percent
nonwhite.

The Federal housing developments that contain both white and
nonwhite families in substantial proportions are found in school
districts with similar racial ratios, Orchard Park, Dearborn
district; South End, Rice-Fran

in district; Franklin Hill Avenue,
Paine district; Bromley Park, Lowell-Kennedy district, and Columbia
Point, Dever district.

A serious question as to the existence of de jure segregation
is raised by the foregoing parallels between predominantly nonwhite
occupancy of public housing and predominantly nonwhite elementary
schools and school districts. Were it to be determined that pre-
dominantly Negro schools resulted from the assignment of public
housing tenants on a racially homogeneous basis, a case might well
be made that official governmental action produced segregated
schools in violation of the Constitution.

3. Purposes of Public Education in the United States

During the two-day Open Meeting of the Committee, six nationally
known educators and other social scientists, in addition to the
Superintendent of Boston Public Schools and members of his staff,
and the Deputy Commissioner of Education of Massachusetts, dis-
cussed the purposes of education in our Nation and the effects of
racial isolation upon the achievement of those purposes. As stated
by Superintendent William H. Ohrenberger, the three primary pur-
poses of education are: mastery of basic knowledge and skills;
strengthening of character; and the inculcation of those
disciplines and ideals fundamental to life in our democracy. 9 The
statements of others as to the purposes of education differed some-
what in words and in detail but were similar in essence.

Dr. Vincent C. Conroy of the Harvard Graduate School of
Education declared that “public schools are established to enlarge
the freedom and expand the opportunities open to individuals”.^
Although he recognized that other aims of education might be added,
Dr. Gerald S. Lesser of Harvard University said that “our schools
function to teach academic skills, realistic self-concepts, and the
motivation to learn”.H Dr. Gertrude S. Noar, National Director
of Education of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, stated
“each ^child7is entitled to full and equal opportunity to develop
his potentialities for himself as well as his country. … It is
clear that public education is the means which our democratic
society provides to accomplish that purpose. . .”12

9. A Statement of Administrative Policy by William H. Ohrenberger,
Superintendent of Public Schools, Open Meeting, Mar. 20, 1964,
p. 2.

10. Statement of Dr. Vincent Conroy, Executive Director for the
Center for Field Studies, Graduate School of Education, Harvard
University, Open Meeting, Mar. 21, 1964, p. 6.

11. The Effects of Segregation and Desegregation in the Schools ,
Dr. Gerald S. Lesser, Director, Laboratory of Human Development,
Harvard University, Open Meeting, Mar. 21, 1964.

12. Desegregation of Education-The Time is Now, Dr. Gertrude Noar,
National Director of Education, Anti-Defamation League of B’nai
B’rith, Open Meeting, Mar. 21, 1964, p. 1.

The Hidden Curriculum

Dr. Charles Pinderhughes, Chief of Psychiatric Service at the

Veterans Administration Hospital in Boston, employed the term
“hidden curriculum” to describe some of the things that a child
learns in school outside of the formal teaching process:

There.is increasing acknowledgment of the hidden
curriculum being taught in all schools in addition
to reading, writing, arithmetic and other planned
courses. Schools in fact teach much more, including
how to get along with one’s fellow man, and how to
think about and evaluate oneself and others. Indi-
viduals within a school serve as models for
imitation and identification and each student is
pressed to conform to the kinds of attitudes,
beliefs, morals, and behavior which surround him.
The areas and styles of conforming, competing,
rebelling, and cooperating are part of the hidden
curriculum in each school. Intangibles such as
the reputation and influence of a school, of its
teachers, its pupils and the nature of the
neighborhood. . . contribute to the tone and
character of the educational program . . . informal
education, the classroom ‘atmosphere’ and ‘climate’
and the psychology and cultural traits of students
. . . may show considerable variation from school
to school even when curriculum and teacher activity
may be relatively standardized. As much attention
should be directed to the educational process
between pupils as is currently given to the
educational process between teachers and pupils.

In a community composed predominantly of a single
ethnic group, the educational process between
pupils in the neighborhood school serves as a
vehicle for conveying and perpetuating cultural
characteristics. As such, a racially imbalanced
school can either enrich or impoverish a child,
depending upon what is imparted • • .^3

13. The Adverse Effects Upon Mental Health and Educational
Process of De Facto Segregation of Negroes , by Charles A.
Pinderhughes, M.D. , Chief of Psychiatric Service, Veterans
Administration Hospital, Boston, Open Meeting, Mar. 21, 196^.
The full text of Dr. Pinderhughes* statement appears as Ap-
pendix C of this report.

The American Negro is the only minority group in
the United States without a culture of its

own.

All other groups have a religion, an internal
source of authority and group cohesion, a special
language, traditions, institutions or other roots
which are traceable to a lengthy group existence,
usually in another country. American Negroes
have none of these.

The numerous languages, family and group ties,
and all prior cultural institutions of the millions
of slaves brought to America were destroyed. An
establishment for training was developed. Laws
guaranteed the master absolute power over his
slaves and permitted unlimited physical and psy-
chological discipline to break and train slaves
to unquestioning obedience. The machinery of
the police and the courts were not available to
slaves. Laws decreed that fathers of slaves
were legally unknown. Marriage was denied any
standing in law. Children could be sold without
their mothers except in Louisiana which kept the
mother-child relationship preserved until the
child reached ten years of age. There was a
general belief that education would make slaves
dissatisfied and rebellious. Distribution of
books, including the Bible, or teaching of slaves
were prohibited by law in some States.

Thus, by means of one of the most coercive social
systems on record, the character of American
Negroes and the nature of their families and of
their groups were clearly and rigidly defined in
a closed system which supplied the training and
sanctions needed to produce recognizable per-
sonality types. Such stereotyped characteristics
were produced by this environmental pressure that
some persons, viewing the products of this system,
have gained the erroneous impression that the
characteristics were inherent in the people rather
than induced.

Ih. Ibid.

Dr. Pinderhughes stated that eight generations of slavery-
formed child-rearing practices which were the slave’s most
important training school, and produced obedient, docile slaves
whose aggressions were directed against themselves. A slave’s
education, he said, was a life and death struggle to reverse or
inhibit all assertiveness or aggression, especially in male
children. Dr. Pinderhughes noted that this learning process con-
tinued after emancipation and even after migration to the North.

Negroes forced into a low caste group in the South
have* upon migrating? unconsciously induced in Boston
relationships similar to those in the South. With
‘segregation de jure 1 stamped into and thoroughly
interwoven in the culture and into the personalities
of Southern Negroes, it was inevitable that it should
be carried northward to precipitate out as ‘de facto
segregation 1 . They formed their compounds in the
northern cities, and in these de facto segregated
communities they reproduced and passed on the only
culture they had to pass on, with the only child
rearing practices they knew, in the matrix of the
only family structure and group organization they

Dr. Pinderhughes stated that this heritage accounted for the
fact that the Northern Negro may fail to take advantage of the
opportunities open to him, such as the stated right of any child
to transfer to any school in Boston under the School Committee’s
“Open Enrollment” Plan:

Although the gate to the compound in the Northern
city is open, few find it. Many have been so
trained not to reach out or to defeat themselves
that they must persistently fail at just those
points where constructive changes are possible.
Most of them do not believe the gate is open
even when they are told and offered encouragement.
Some who believe have so renounced any capacity for
initiative or constructive assertion as to be
immobilized and apathetic.

It is for these reasons, as well as for economic
ones, that the open enrollment plan in its present
form will not work for those who need it most. It
is also unrealistic to leave the burden for change
upon Negro parents when basically the American

had known.

15. Ibid.

Negro family has been disrupted and made impotent
as a source of initiative and purposeful action. ^6

Dr. Pinderhughes indicated that the evils he believes to result

from predominantly Negro schools are educational evils and can only

be remedied by “breaking up the compound”

Neither words nor pictures nor large amounts of
intellectualized information will substantially
modify the compound without the corrective
emotional experiences of increased integration.
Unless the compound is broken up it will go on
reproducing its own kind, even as communities
of other ethnic groups keep reproducing their

own.

Education is central in all of this, certainly
slavery was an educational matter as well as a

political, economic, and moral matter, and
modification of a caste finds education at the
very heart of the process.

Racially imbalanced schools in Negro neighbor-
hoods function as a mold which produces and
perpetuates an unfavorable stamp. Schools in
communities heavily populated by other ethnic
groups also serve as vehicles for transmitting
group characteristics to individuals, but the

stamp imparted in such schools is more adaptive

and more often of positive value. VI

Dr. Pinderhughes forcefully stated his conclusions as to the

effects of predominantly Negro schools on Negro children as

follows

In this context, the, Negro ghetto and its
accompanying predominantly Negro schools can
more easily be seen as agents which have adverse
effects upon self esteem, value systems, moti-
vations, aspirations, and behavior of pupils.
Such adverse effects prevailing in many students
can seriously impair the educational processes in
a school despite the presence of excellent teachers
and adequate facilities. 1″

16. Ibid .

17. Ibid .

18. Ibid.

Dr. Pinderhughes stated in closing that the history of race
relations in our country has also damaged white Americans:

That most white persons flee as if from a plague
when Negroes move near them is a product of their
life experience and education. Increased inte-
gration in education starting at early ages will
do much to prevent the emergence of another
generation of hurt, frustrated, disillusioned,
and angry coloreds and guilty, panic-stricken,
perplexed, and angry whites. The adverse effects
of the present system upon the mental health of
Americans have too long been swept under the rug. 1^

Dr. Pinderhughes, by reason of his psychiatric training and
experience, favored racially balanced schools on grounds of mental
health; educators addressing the Committee supported racially
balanced schools on educational grounds.

In response to a question as to whether compensatory programs
in predominantly Negro schools can solve the learning problem of
the Negro child, Dr. Gertrude Noar said:

Improvement of the education of the Negro child
cannot take place sufficiently- -there cannot be
sufficient improvement unless it is accompanied
by integrated education. The child is harmed in
mind and soul by the very fact of separation,
segregation. There can be no superior separated
school or even equal separated school. There has
to be an integrated school. 20

Citing the growing concern among Negro parents, Dr. Noar
stated:

Negroes have become aware of the effect of aspiration
and expectation on learning. Negro children have not
aspired to become anything important because their
parents have not been permitted employment commensu-
rate with their individual abilities and training.
Parents do not expect their children to succeed. The
children soon become convinced that they cannot achieve
educational or vocational goals.

19. Ibid .

20. Record, Mar.
21. Id. at 29.

21, 1964, p. 23.

Dr. Dan W. Dodson, Director of the Center for Human Relations
at New York University, who has served as a consultant on problems
of racial imbalance in public school systems in Washington, D. C,
New Rochelle, N.Y., Englewood, N.J., East Orange, N.J., and Mt.
Vernon, N.Y., and who currently serves as a consultant to the New
York City Board of Education, made the following observations:

Equal education cannot be provided in an all-
Negro school. In my entire experience I have
yet to find an all-Negro or nearly all-Negro
school which measures up to the standards the
community has a right to expect of schools for
its children. We are forced to admit that
either the differences are biological- -which
only the bigots would contend- -or else admit
that they are the differences which have
accrued from social rituals through which we
have come. If they are cultural they are
capable of change and alteration. For the
white community to live with such knowledge
of these traumas without making massive
efforts to correct them can only provide
moral corruptness.

When a school is all-Negro in our culture
the entire society looks upon it as inferior.
If the whole culture conceives it as inferior,
I contend that, indeed, makes it so. Teachers
who are assigned to it consider themselves as
less fortunate than those who teach elsewhere,
morale is harder to maintain, the schools are
harder to staff. Teachers expect less of the
students, the students expect less of them-
selves, they are traumatized by the sense of
rejection which stems from the segregation,
hence academic performance cannot be achieved.
Jim Crow symbolizing what it does in our
culture, to require a Negro child to attend
such a school would be comparable to requiring
a Jewish child to attend a school with a
swastika over the door.

22. Statement of Dr. Dan Dodson, Director of the Center for Human
Relations and Community Studies, New York University, Open
Meeting, Mar. 21, 1964, p. 5.

Dr. Dodson said that in large cities the neighborhood school
had lost its relevance as an educational concept:

The neighborhood school has lost its relevance as
an educational concept in modern urban life—if,
indeed, it ever had any. The idea of the neighbor-
hood school was borrowed from the concept of the
community school. This idea was that it brought
all the children of the community to a common
experience. It was thought of as a device for
bringing in differences rather than shutting
them out. The neighborhood school has the op-
posite connotation. It is impossible to have
two schools in a community which are exactly
equal in status. One is thought of as better
than the other. Those who attend it are thought
to be more fortunate. Parents consider them-
selves proprietors of such an institution, and
fight to defend it from encroachment in a way
that smacks of tribalism. ^3

Dr. Dodson stated his belief that school boards have an af-
firmative duty to promote racial balance:

It is the responsibility of the board of
education to arrange the encounters between
children whose backgrounds are different, to
the end that they learn the skills of citizen-
ship commensurate with the era of which they
are a part. The most basic curriculum
decision a board of education makes is ‘Who is
going to school with whom? ‘ In other words
these are not simply civil rights matters, they
are educational matters.

Another expert who appeared before the Committee was Dr# John
H. Niemeyer, President of the Bank Street College of Education,
New York City. The college, a center for research and pilot edu-
cational projects, has carried on studies in elementary schools for
more than fifteen years. That experience has led, Dr. Niemeyer
said, to these conclusions:

23. Id. at 20.

2k. Id. at 6.

All that we know about children and learning
and school organization confirms our belief
that school segregation- -whether stemming
from community policy or from unplanned
residential concentrations—is an important
cause of educational deprivation affecting
majority group children as well as minority
group children. Such deprivation is morally
wrong, and in terms of society’s need for a
well-educated citizenry, inexcusably wasteful
and dangerous.

Integration, therefore, has become, in our
view, an essential task for our schools.
Further, the integration of our schools is
an obligation on society. Without it the
school fails to provide for our children
and youth a living model of a world made up
of people who are different in many ways but
who are, at the same time, equal.

Dr. Niemeyer said that the image of the neighborhood school
as the place of friendly, easy association between children,
parents and school officials has little relation to reality.

For many, perhaps for most, of the families
living in the deprived areas in our cities,
and even for large numbers of families and
children who live in more middle-class areas
which would not be labelled ghettos or slums,
the concept of the neighborhood school is a
fantasy. … Of all the arguments for the
neighborhood school none is more important
to us educators than that which states that
communication between the home and the school
depends upon the proximity of the school
building to the family residence—which all
too often is a crowded tenement. I say this
because we believe that cooperation between
home and school to support children in their
learning is of great value. The truth is,
however, that such dependence does not exist.
. . . Schools in general, state the belief

25. Statement of Dr. John H. Niemeyer, President, Bank Street
College of Education, Open Meeting, Mar. 21, 1964, pp. 2-3.

that there should be better communication between
themselves and the parents but they rarely organize
themselves or have the resources for carrying out
an effective communications system. This is
particularly true for the large urban school where
the need for integration is pressing. We know that
many private and parochial school children attend
school in areas fairly distant from their homes,
yet these schools often maintain better communication
with the parents than the public schools do. Good
communications depend not on proximity, but upon
the development of a reliable communication plan
and the ability and resources to bring it about.
We cannot justify the myth of the neighborhood
school’s parent-communication as an argument

There was clear agreement among the experts who appeared be-
fore the Committee that racial imbalance adversely affects the
purposes of education in our society.

Policy of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as to Racial

Imbalance and Public Education

Dr. Thomas J. Curtin, Deputy Commissioner of Education for the
Commonwealth, appeared at the Open Mseting on March 20 as the
official representative of the Massachusetts Department of Edu-
cation. Dr. Curtin reported to the Committee the policy of the
State Board of Education with regard to racially imbalanced schools
and the underprivileged child and the actions of the State Depart-
ment of Education in implementation of the Board’s policy.

On August 19, 1963> the State Board of Education adopted a
resolution declaring its deep concern over “the numbers of American
children who are under privileged, partly because of neighborhood
imbalance as reflected in some public schools. “^7 The Board in its
resolution urged each school committee in the Commonwealth to
intensify its efforts to identify and to meet the educational needs
of any such underprivileged children and advocated:

26. Id. at pp. h-6.

27. Statement of Dr. Thomas J. Curtin, Deputy Commissioner of
Education, Re Racial Imbalance in the Public Schools of the
Commonwealth, Open Meeting, Mar. 20, 1964, p. 1.

against integration.

That action, consistent with sound educational
practice, be taken immediately to eliminate
racial imbalance when and where it is ascertained
to exist in any school system. 2^

The State Department of Education has been energetic in
furthering the policy enunciated by the Board on August 19, 1963*
It has: 2?

Conducted a 15-week teacher training course at
Boston College entitled ‘Education and Race
Relations’, which included lectures by some
of the most distinguished authorities in the
Nation and was attended by 115 teachers from
Boston and surrounding communities; distributed
a ‘Human Relations Kit’ to every public school
system in the Commonwealth which included a
bibliography on ‘Education and Race Relations’;
one on ‘The Negro in American Life’, and a
teacher’s unit of study called ‘Discrimination-
Danger of Democracy’.

On February 27, 1964, the State Board of Education reaffirmed
its previous policy statement and voted to launch a comprehensive
study seeking practical solutions to the educational problems
created by racially imbalanced schools. It also authorized the
Commissioner of Education to initiate a racial census in the

0
school districts of the Commonwealth, after a ruling from the
Attorney General of Massachusetts that such a census was legally
permissible. Census forms were distributed pursuant to this
authorization on March 2, 1964. 3°

On March 5, 1964, the Board of Education announced the member-
ship of an Advisory Committee charged with carrying out the study
authorized on February 27. Two “Task Forces” of experienced
educators were appointed to assist the Advisory Committee. 31 As
noted above, 32 the Advisory Committee published its interim report
on July 1, 1964.

28. Ibid .

29. Id. at 2.

30. Id. at 2-3.

31. Id. at 3.

32. Introduction, note 2, supra.

The value of the racial census in any discussion of the
problems of racial imbalance or their solution can hardly be
exaggerated. Estimates of nonwhite enrollment made at the Open
Meeting by an NAACP official

arLa a member of the School Com-
mittee-^ were found to be far short of the mark. As noted above
(Chapter 1, infra ) the Superintendent’s office apparently had no
conception of the nature and extent of nonwhite enrollment prior to
the census.

33. In The Negro and the Boston Public Schools report prepared

for the Boston NAACP by Tom Atkins, Part III, 6th page, the
Negro pupil population is estimated at 14,000. The census
disclosed 21,097 “to be the Negro pupil population.

3^. Mr. Arthur Gartland estimated (R.83) the Negro pupil popu-
lation to be approximately 15 percent. The census disclosed

23 percent to be the Negro pupil population.

4. Consideration of Policy of fhe

Boston School Committee

Two members of the School Committee spoke at the Open Meeting on
March 2, 1964.

Mrs. Louise Day Hicks, a former chairman of the School Com-
mittee, strongly supported the neighborhood school policy and
compensatory programs for the “culturally deprived child”, whether
white or Negro in those schools. Mrs. Hicks declared: 35

We have heard it said that many of our schools
are predominantly Negro, but this merely reflects
the ethnic grouping of the neighborhood. We all
believe in the Boston Public School system, in
the neighborhood school; that the children go to
school in the neighborhood where they live and
with the children with whom they play. We do
not at any time have any type of discrimination
in the Boston Public School system.

Mrs. Hicks said “I heartily do not believe in segregated
schools. … I am for civil rights. … I would hope that some
day all our schools across the whole nation would be well
acquainted with every nation and every race and color and creed. “36

“But”, she added, “we are dealing with very little children. We
believe in the neighborhood school. We believe at this age children
should go to school in the neighborhood where they live, and they
shouldn’t have to go miles and miles to another school. “37 With
great consistency, Mrs. Hicks maintained her belief in the neighbor-
hood school and her view that altering boundary lines was not an
educational matter:

I honestly and firmly believe in the neighborhood
school, and that the answer to the problem of the
culturally deprived child will be through education,
not through transportation, not through changing of
boundary lines because of race, color or creed, but
rather let us give to these children what they need
most, and that need will be served through education.

35. Record p. 87.
36. Id. at 96.

37. Ibid .
38. Record pp. 87-88.

Mrs. Hicks was asked “If you feel, as you have stated in this
eloquent way, that we ought to have all people live together, do
you feel that the School Committee has no responsibility in drawing
district lines. . . not bussing. . . to try to help a little bit in
this way. . . ?”39 Her reply was unequivocal:^0

I believe that the lines should never be drawn
with regard to race, color or creed.

Mr. Arthur Gartland, also a member of the Boston School Com-
mittee, seemed to differ from Mrs. Hicks, at least as to the
immutability of the present method of assignment of pupils to public
schools. He said:^l

I hope that the School Committee will authorize
and instruct the school administration to restudy
the distribution of pupils. You will hear more
detailed information later in the day from Herbert
Gleason, you will hear more figures, which indicate
the possibility of redistribution of the pupils of
our system in such a way as to bring about a class-
room population close to the city average. At the
present time, we do have unbalanced classes, and
this is obviously a heavy load on the teachers
and correspondingly a deprivation of pupils. But
this and many other things, I think, will be con-
ceived and will be carried out for the benefit of
the minorities of our City.

Mr. Gartland’ s remarks were directed to class size rather than ethnic
distribution. On the latter matter he said he could not predict
School Committee action beyond cooperation in the ethnic count re-
quested by the Commission of Education. ^ He expressed hope that the
Advisory Committee to the State Board of Education would make re-
commendations for the reduction of ethnic imbalance. ~> An
integrated school would be beneficial in his opinion, he said,
“since the American democracy is composed of many, many diverse
elements, that the early lessons in democracy can be greatly aided
by the schools representing, so far as feasible, a microcosm of the
community, of our city.”^-

39* Id« at 97. Question asked by Professor Byse.

kO. Ibid .

111. Id. at 79.

k2. Id. at 76.

43. Id. at 82.

kk. Id. at 85-86

New Schools

Although the Boston School Committee, with the exception of Mr.
Gartland, seems to be committed to the neighborhood school policy
so far as existing schools are concerned, both Mr. Gartland and
Superintendent Ohrenberger explained that sites for new schools
were being selected to avoid racially unbalanced schools. Mr.
Gartland stated: ^

Now, significant to you who are concerned with
investigating civil rights, I think, is the fact
that the school administration, present and
erstwhile, does understand that there is an
advantage in the location of school sites in
such a way as to avoid gross imbalance. The
greatest care is being taken in the location
of both the new high school facility and in the
Humboldt Avenue School- -and the same will be said
of all other such schools and additions; the
greatest care is being taken to avoid such schools
being exclusively or predominantly Negro.

Superintendent Ohrenberger cited the following example:^

We had a choice of establishing an elementary
school in the location of the Lewis School
and develop the Lewis School as a new junior
high school, and the decision was to relocate
the new junior high school on the periphery
of the area and establish the site of the
Lewis School as an elementary school- -to
establish the new junior high school in the
periphery of the area, which would allow
them to draw not only from the Washington
Park area, but also from Roxbury, Jamaica,
and so forth.

Commenting on this statement by Superintendent Ohrenberger,
Mr. Gartland said: ^7

This illustrates the point that the school
administration and the chief administrator
who finally puts the o.k. on a location is

45. Id. at 77.

46. Id. at 80.

47. Ibid.

aware of the advisability of avoiding unbalanced
schools; and to such an extent that he can- -and
I think that he is limited—I think this is his
prime motive in site location.

The policy of avoiding racial imbalance in choosing new school
sites does not carry over into the selection of schools to which
additions are built. On this point Mr. Gartland said:^°

Now, wherever we’re building additions to schools,
which are much needed, this will obviously have
no impact on this particular problem. Such an
example would be the addition to the Grover
Cleveland School on Charles Street in Dorchester,
or the Garfield School in Brighton; but where
new schools are built, this facial balance^ is
a primary motive in site selection.

Open Enrollment

The Open Enrollment policy recently adopted by the Boston School
Committee is one exception to its neighborhood school policy. In
speaking at the Fourth Annual Education Conference before the U.S.
Commission on Civil Rights, Washington, D.C., May 3-^ 19^2, Mr.
Frederick. J. Gillis, then Superintendent of Boston Public Schools,
declared ‘.^

That act ^/Mass. Fair Education Practices Act

wasn’t necessary for Boston because since 1o35j
with the opening of the public Latin School,
we have had integration, and at the present
time any child may go to any school, in any
grade of any system, provided there is a
seat vacant for him, after the neighbors
have been accommodated, provided the course
fits his needs and provided, if transportation
is necessary, his parents will pay the carfare.

48. Id. at 81.

^•9. Record p. 135.

The Committee heard testimony as to the operation of the Open
Enrollment program from the school administration and from parents,
students, and interested citizens. One witness related her
experiences concerning the proposed transfer of a child in her home
in a statement at the Open Meeting held on March 21, 1964.50 ghe
stated that the assistant principal in her local junior high school
told her that the college preparatory course was filled. She
related that when she expressed a desire to transfer to another
district, the assistant principal promptly suggested that the child
wait for an opening which might occur if someone dropped out of the
college course. This witness gave a history of being resisted and
cross-examined at every step in her effort to obtain a transfer.
She said that there were no forms or printed instructions available
to those who wanted to transfer, either at the principal’s office
in the neighborhood school, or in the assistant superintendent’s
office. It was her impression that the day to day administration
of the Open Enrollment program managed to make it as difficult as
possible for a parent to have his child transferred out of the
school in his neighborhood.

A student told the Committee of the difficulties his mother
had had in trying to transfer his younger brother to a racially
more equally balanced school: 51

My brother wanted a transfer out of school in the
sixth grade to go to another school, more equally
balanced school, and the principal gave my mother
this big runaround for four months, until it was
too late for him to transfer, until he was not
able to transfer. He tried to get in the seventh,
and it was too late to transfer. So finally, in
the eighth grade, she told my brother and she took
him down to the Solomon Lewenberg and she asked
the principal, ‘How can I get my son into the
school? ‘ And the principal said, ‘Well, you have
to go back to your other school and get a transfer
paper from the other school, and a list of his
marks and everything. 1 When my mother told the
problem how the principal was giving the run-
around, she said, ‘I’ll take your son ‘–and she
gave him a room number; he wanted to go into the
college course, and she sent him down to the
room, and he was enrolled right there, and the
principal told my mother she’d take care of the
enrollment plan.

50. Id. at 119-124.

51. Id. at 133-134.

This is the way we were discouraged up to this
point. It was almost too late to get him into
a good school.

The school administration maintains, on the other hand, that
the Open Enrollment plan works well. The assistant superintendent
who is in charge of the program stated that it had been well pub-
licized and that administrative personnel were familiar with its
procedures. The School Committee submitted a memorandum circulated
by former Superintendent Frederick J. Gillis on March 29, 19^2,
setting forth the Open Enrollment policy in the following terms. ^2

It is the policy in Boston to have each pupil
attend the school serving his neighborhood
community unless the child’s physical, mental,
or educational needs require assignment to
specially organized classes or schools (e.g.
a Braille class, or the Horace Mann School
for the Deaf). However, it is also the
practice, at the request of the parent, to
permit a child to attend any school having
appropriate grades or courses, provided that
particular school, after enrolling the
children of its own locale, has adequate
accommodations for pupils from other districts.

Therefore, head masters and principals w£ll
accept all applicants for admission to their
schools provided space is available. Con-
tinuance of such permission is a privilege
and depends on attendance, punctuality, conduct,
and safe transportation.

Mr. Herbert P. Gleason, President of Citizens for Boston
Public Schools, testified at the Open Meeting on March 20. He
commented upon and made recommendations concerning open enrollment?’

. Superintendent’s Circular, No. 173, 1961-62.

53. Statement of Herbert P. Gleason submitted at the Open Meeting

Mar. 20, 1964. p. 6.

The present open enrollment policy can be made far
more effective. Negro parents have great difficulty
discovering where vacant seats exist , and nothing
is done to allay their fears that a child will
encounter a hostile attitude if he moves to a
white school. If the administration endorses
this policy, it should make it effective.

livery school principal should have in his office
a complete list of open seats, updated at
reasonable intervals, and every parent should be
shown this list cordially upon request. Parents
should be encouraged to talk with the principal
and teacher of the district they are considering,
and their own principal should help them make an
appointment for the purpose. As pointed out
before, the last official report mentioned 13,000
empty seats.

With firm commitments to the present “neighborhood school”
policy and “open enrollment” policy, the policy and practice of
the School Committee appear to be that if parents wish their child
to attend a school other than the school in his neighborhood, the
initiative lies entirely with them. In the preceding chapter,
Dr. Pinderhughes expressed the opinion that such a policy demands
entirely too much of the parents of a pupil attending a racially
imbalanced school. 5^

54. Chapter 3> supra, pp. 15-16.

5. Comparison of Predominantly White,

Nonwhite, and “Integrated” Schools

At the Open Meeting on March 20, 1964, the Superintendent’s office
presented and filed with the Committee statistical information
relating to the 57 elementary school districts. As noted above^5
the Committee, in this report, has adopted a broad classification
describing as white the 35 districts in which 90 percent or more of
the pupils are white; as Negro the 7 districts in which 90 percent
or more of the pupils are nonwhite, and as integrated the 15
districts in which at least 10 percent of the pupils are white and
at least 10 percent are nonwhite.

A. FACTORS TENDING TO BE DISRUPTIVE

1. Overcrowding

The Committee was unable to obtain definitive figures
on over and under utilization of classroom space.
Although some of the predominantly Negro districts
are in urban renewal areas in which substandard
housing has been demolished, there appears to be a
greater proportion of empty seats in the pre-
dominantly white than in the predominantly Negro
schools. The seven school districts with 90 or
more percent Negro enrollment (average Negro
enrollment 96.96 percent) had an average of 7*0
percent vacant seats. The seven most predom-
inantly white districts (average white enrollment

99*9 percent) had an average of 8.6 percent vacant
seats. 5°

2. Turnover

Figures were submitted as to the total number of
admissions and discharges in each elementary school
district for the period September 1963 to February
1964. The additions and discharges were added in
each district and the total as a percentage of the
number of pupils in the district is described as
the “Turnover Percentage” . 57

55* Chapter 1, supra , p. 5.
56. Seat occupancy as shown on Sept. 1963 school census.
57. Item 6A of material submitted by Superintendent’s office.

Total Admissions Pupils in Turnover
Districts or Discharges District *

Percentage

White 9,7^3 35,232 27.65

Integrated 6,935 15,807 ^3.87

Negro 4,376 7,^12 59-

* The total district figures do not
vary substantially from the figures
resulting from the census of
March 26, 196k.

3. Special Class Children in Regular Classes

The Superintendent’s office also submitted figures on
the number of children in each district attending
regular classes who should be attending special classes
Superintendent Ohrenberger said that this category-
refers to children mentally retarded to various degrees
The presence of such children is, of course, a dis-
turbing factor to the other children and tends to
lessen a teacher’s overall effectiveness. The figures
for the three categories of schools are as follows: 59

Districts Total Pupils *

White 35,232

Integrated 15, 807

Negro 7, 412

* As of September 30, 1963.

Special Class
Pupils Not in
Special Classe;

263

320

Percentage

•75

I.69

4.31

58. Letter to Father Drinan, May 7, 1964.

59. Item 6B of material submitted by Superintendent’s office.

B. WIDENING DIFFERENCES AT HIGHER GRADE LEVEI£

Figures submitted for intelligence quotients and reading
achievement levels tended to show that disparities existing in
earlier grades grew larger in higher grades. As to intelligence
ratio s, the figures showed:^

Districts Average Grade Four Average Grade Six

White 102.0 107.0

Integrated 96. 0 99-7

Negro 93.7 96.3

As to reading achievement , the tendency is more marked. The
white and Negro groups were approximately one-quarter of a year
apart in reading level in second grade and nearly one year apart in
sixth grade. The district averages are as follows

Average Reading Average Reading
Districts Level at Grade Two Level at Grade Six

White 2.55 5.93

Integrated 2.35 5-15

Negro 2.27 5.0

C. TEACHERS’ QUALIFICATIONS

Although length of teaching experience is not, in itself, a
clear indication of a teacher’s worth, the Committee analyzed the
teachers’ experience data submitted for each district. The figures
show that half of the teachers in the predominantly Negro districts
have 10 years or less experience while nearly half of those in the
predominantly white districts have 21 or more years experience. 2

60. Id. Item 6E.

61. Id. Item 6F.

62. Id. Item 6D.

Teacher Experience

Years
Total 0- 5 6-10 11-20 21

JJis uric us Teachers w t.t^_ rsl No

—w
2

White 1,069 198 18.5 137 12.8 253 23.6 511 47.8

Integrated 492 103 20.4 87 17.6 118 23.9 184 37.3

Negro 236 59 25.0 57 24.1 48 20.3 72 30.5

The educational preparation of teachers varied little from
group to group. Teachers taking Master’s courses or holding a
Master’s or Doctor’s degree represented 47*7 percent of those in the
predominantly white districts, 53 • 8 percent of those in the
“intergrated” schools, and 43. 3 percent of those in the predomi-
nantly Negro districts.

6^
Educational Preparation of Teachers – Percentages

Bachelor’s Master’s Doctor’s
Districts Equivalency Degree Courses Degree Courses Degree

White 14.6 28.1 9.3 31.7 15.3 0.7

Integrated 6.6 29.2 10.4 33-7 19-0 0.8

Negro 5.3 38.7 17.7 24.5 18.1 0.3

D. SUMMARY

In the assignment of teachers to school districts, there is no
substantial difference as to the educational qualifications of
teachers in the three categories of districts described in this
report. A difference in the experience of teachers in the three
groups is noted with the less experienced more often found to be
assigned to districts having the greater number of Negro pupils.

The available figures do not unequivocally support the view
that the predominantly Negro schools are more overcrowded than the
predominantly white schools. As to two other factors that tend to
disrupt the classroom atmosphere, the figures clearly show the

63. Id. Item 6C.

predominantly Negro schools to be at a disadvantage. First, those
districts contain a considerably higher proportion of pupils who,
in the words of the Superintendent’s office, should be attending
special classes and not regular classes, and, second, they exhibit
a much higher rate of pupil turnover.

Tests administered to Boston school pupils show that the margin
by which children in predominantly white districts score ahead of
children in predominantly Negro districts grows larger, both as to
intelligence ratios and reading achievement, as the children
progress through elementary school. This finding is consistent with
studies cited by Dr. G. S^ Lesser. In his statement at the Open
Meeting, Dr. Lesser said:

Many other studies (e.g. Ferral, 1959; Public
Education Association, 1955; Wolff, 1§62, 1963)
supply evidence that segregated schools function
on lower levels of academic achievement than do
other schools in the same educational systems.
This inferiority of academic performance in
racially imbalanced schools becomes greater and
greater as the children progress through the
school grades . Deutsch (i960), for example,
reports that it is at the first-grade level
that the smallest differences between racial groups
are observed, and that these differences in
academic functioning become more and more
marked in the later grades. By the time the
children in racially-imbalanced schools reach
the upper grades, they are no match whatever
for the children from less deprived backgrounds,
(emphasis added)

Dr. Lesser also cited studies from Washington, D.C. (Hansen,
i960) and Louisville (Stallings, i960) indicating that when pre-
viously segregated schools were integrated, the performance of
Negro and white children improved. 5 His conclusions based on
various studies were:””

1. Under segregated school conditions, Negro
children are uniformly and significantly
inferior in academic achievement to white
children.

6k. Supra note at 11.

65- P. 32 supra .
66. p. 35 supra.

The racial balancing of the schools con
tributes greatly to improving academic
achievement of Negro and usually, also
of white children.

6. Compensatory Programs

OPERATION COIMTERPOISE

Operation Counterpoise, a pilot program in the Henry L. Higginson
Elementary School District, was described to the Committee by
Deputy Superintendent Marguerite G. Sullivan. She summarized its
objectives as follows: “7

Operation Counterpoise is a preventive program
designed to catch undesirable situations in
their incipiency, to improve children’s
attitudes toward school, to inspire standards
of excellence which should be carried over
into secondary education for all and beyond
for many. It is our hope through this
program to raise the achievement of these
pupils closer to their potentials which
have for too long been submerged by
parental lack of values.

To carry out the program the school department assigned master
teachers, who are responsible for the program in their respective
schools, to each school in the Higginson district. Emphasis is
placed upon reading and arithmetic skills.

Action for Boston Community Development (ABCD), a nonprofit
agency sponsored by the Ford Foundation, has assisted with plans
and financial support for parts of the project, notably in the
assignment of two reading teachers and a school adjustment
counselor for the district. Mr. Joseph S. Slavet, executive
director of ABCD, told the Committee that the reading program has
been in operation only since March 3, 1964, and that the school
adjustment counselor program began field operations January 20.””

67. Operation Counterpoise , Henry L. Higginson Pilot Program,
statement of Deputy Superintendent Marguerite Sullivan, p. 6,
Open Meeting, Mar. 20, 1964.

68. Statement of Joseph S. Slavet, p. 6, Open Meeting, Mar. 21,1964.

A third ABCD-supported program, a pre-kindergarten program for 3i
to 4|- year olds, was due to begin in April 1964. The purpose of
this new program, which stresses parent-teacher contacts, is to
build home support and understanding for the child’s formal learning
experience at the earliest possible age.°9

Mr. Slavet stressed that all of these are experimental, pilot
projects that reach and will continue to reach only a small portion
of the residents of the areas and of the children in their
schools : 70

To be properly evaluated some individuals must
benefit only from one or two programs, some
must benefit from an array of them and others
must not be within their scope.

Within this context it is true that members
of minority groups will benefit. But it is
also true that those benefited will be
relatively few. . .

The Superintendent’s office supplied figures indicating that
the cost of a developmental reading program including two reading
teachers, books, and educational materials would be $13,324 per
district, or $253^156 for ^he “19 culturally deprived” districts
and $759^468 citywide. The cost of a school adjustment counselor
in the “nineteen elementary disadvantaged areas” was placed at
$179,000.7!

Mrs. Barbara Elam, speaking for Higginson District parents at
the Open Meeting on March 21, 1964, stated that it was her opinion
that “Operation Counterpoise” was established as a result of
complaints by Negro parents. Beginning as a small group of mothers
that met with the principal of the Higginson school on January 24,
1963 to express its concern over vandalism in the school, teachers
leaving, overcrowded classrooms, and lack of communication with
parents, the group rallied the support of many parents, and that of
the KAACP.72 The pressure thus generated, she believed, led to
Operation Counterpoise.

69] Id. at 4.

70. Id. at 2.

71* Figures from the Superintendent’s Office Sept. 12, 1963.
72. History of Operation Counterpoise , statement of Mrs. Barbara

Elam, pp. 3-4, Open Meeting, Mar. 21, 1964.

Deputy Superintendent Sullivan gave a different account of the
origin of the program. A former principal at the Hyde School in
Roxbury, Miss Sullivan testified that she was “appalled” with the
change in the community when she returned to it in September 1962
as assistant superintendent in charge of elementary education in
that section of the city. She said further: 73

I was appalled at the change in the community,
I was appalled at the number of in-migrants.
I was appalled at the need for motivation;
and I came into the office and sat down with
Dr. Ohrenberger, who was then Deputy Super-
intendent , and said ‘We have to do something,
and we pulled together the things which we
had been doing and wrote it as one package.
It was tried at the Higginson School because
I saw six teachers leaving the district, I
saw the principal transferred, and I knew
that it was mandatory that they have a well-
structured and well-directed program.

Mrs. Elam and her group have misgivings concerning Operation
Counterpoise, believing it to reflect a failure of the school
authorities to appreciate that Negro children, like other racial
groups, include all kinds of children –those of high ability, the
average, the late bloomers, and others who lag behind for many
reasons. 7^- Mrs. Elam stated that no provision had been made by the
School Committee for average or above-average students in the pre-
dominantly Negro districts. 75 Miss Sullivan contends that
Operation Counterpoise is designed to assist all students in the
district, whether of high, average or low ability.

Teacher Training In Human Relations

One of the requests put to the School Committee by the NAACP on
August 15, 1963j lwa- s f°r in-service training programs for principals
and teachers in the area of human relations. In its reply to the
School Committee on September 12, the Board of Superintendents
announced that plans for “an in-service program that will make a
valuable contribution to the solution of problems which face our
teachers in the instruction of the culturally disadvantaged” were
being made for approval of the School Committee and implementation

73. Record, p. 9k.

“jk. Statement of Mrs. Elam, p. 7.

75. Id. at 5.

with the beginning of the new year. A nine-lecture series entitled
“Education in Disadvantaged Urban Areas” was announced in the
Winter 1963-64 issue of the Boston Public Schools Review.

A more extensive source of human relations training for
teachers is the 15-lecture series offered by the Massachusetts
Department of Education called “Education and Race Relations”.

Private Tutoring Programs

Mr. Joseph Murray, Program Director of Norfolk House Center, a
member agency of the Roxbury Federation of Neighborhood Centers,
appeared before the Committee at the Open Meeting on March 20 to
explain the work the centers are doing with the Negro children of
Roxbury. He stated that although the basic purposes of the centers
are broad, they have been getting more and more into the field of
education in recent years. They now have more than 200 children
enrolled in tutoring programs which were set up in response to the
need expressed by parents and children alike. After the program
got underway, they also received many referrals from the local
public schools which could not provide individual tutoring. The
centers, Mr. Murray said, do not think education is the area of
their greatest competence; in his opinion, meeting the educational
needs of children is the job of the Boston School Department.

In addition to the tutoring program, the centers, through their
Youth Employment program, have arranged for the education of
illiterates in a volunteer program, and college guidance and
financial assistance to Roxbury youth. 77

76. The Massachusetts Department of Education makes tapes of these
lectures available upon receipt of the appropriate number of
blank reels. The Deputy Commissioner of Education informed
a representative of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights that
the Departments of Education for the States of Pennsylvania
and New York had ordered the entire series.

77. Statement of Joseph Murray, OpenMeeting, Mar. 20, 1964.

The Boston School Department took a step in the right di-
rection in starting “Operation Counterpoise”, Mr. Murray said, but
more steps are needed, such as in the area of de facto segregation.
As to the latter, Mr. Murray stated

We feel that the School Department of Boston
is not responsible for creating a situation
in which de facto segregation exists, but
unless they admit that it exists and do
something about it, they will be guilty of
fostering the situation. Just because the
de facto segregated schools are not sustained
by direct action of the Boston School Com-
mittee, this is no excuse for the Committee
not to arrest and reverse de facto segregation
in this system. Almost any part of the
operation of a public school system is a form
of direct action of the School Committee and
of the City itself.

Mr. Murray was asked how the settlement houses had happened to
get into guidance. He responded that “the children themselves came
to us when they found they were flunking in school. . .”79 School
guidance counselors did not appear to be giving the individual
assistance needed: 80

So he settlement workerjtook it upon himself
to try to offer school guidance, to get tutors,
to try to get people to work very closely with
these children, and a lot of them were able to
graduate from high school with his support.
And this started him on the whole program of
trying to raise money for scholarships, and
there are about 12 boys going to a number of
colleges being financed in part or totally
by the money he raised in the Roxbury area.
A lot of people who have contributed are people
who have come up through the ranks themselves,
who were born and raised in Windsor Street and
Warren Street and other places. It is a kind
of an 1 Operation Bootstraps ‘

78. Id. at 3.

79. Record, Mar. 20, 196^, p. 105

80. Id. at 106.

Dr. Prentis Moore, a minister at the Eliot Congregational
Church in Roxbury, reported on another volunteer program, the
Roxbury Basic Reading Program for children in elementary school.
This program began in January 1963 and has been in continuous
operation ever since. The volunteer tutors are undergraduate and
graduate students from nearby colleges.

The program, which has cost less than $5,000, has received
financial support from the Reading Reform Foundation, the Eliot
Church, the Roxbury Community Council, the Northern Students, and
several individuals. It is carried out in three centers, the
Harriet Tubman House, the Eliot Congregational Church, and the
St. John Mission Hill Center.”1

Two novel aspects of the Roxbury Basic Reading Program are the
inclusion of a training program for the tutors in methods of
teaching and of testing and retesting the children to measure
progress. Miss Nancy C. Curtis, a graduate student with a major
in Special Education at Harvard, directed the training and testing.
One hundred and twenty children took the pretest in February 1963*
The average child scored at the 37th percentile, definitely below
the national median of 50. Fifty-four percent scored below the 50th
percentile and only 32 percent above. By June the children who were
retested showed marked improvement; 84 percent scored over the 50th
percentile and only 17 percent below. The children who scored
highest on the California Test of Mental Maturity showed the greatest
gain in reading:

90 and below was 4.7 months; for IQ 91-109, 8
months and for IQ 110 up the gain was 10.4 months.
It should be emphasized that many reading clinics
will not accept children with IQ below 90* Yet
these children in the Basic Reading Program
gained 4.7 months in reading. ^

Dr. Moore looks upon the program as a means of revitalizing
interest in education in the Roxbury community where many residents,
by reason of poor education themselves, are ill-prepared to demand
improvements in the education of their children. The achievements
of the small scale voluntary programs described to the Committee
tend to bear out the experts ‘ views as to the critical effect of the
learning environment upon academic performance.

81. Progress Report, Roxbury Basic Reading Program, statement of
Dr. Prentis Moore at Open Meeting, Mar. 21, 1964, and booklet
on program submitted.

82. Id. at p. 5.

The average gain for children

7. Power and Duty of School Committee

to Relieve Racial Imbalance in Schools

The particular responsibility of this Committee as an advisory group
to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is to study and collect
information concerning developments in Massachusetts which may con-
stitute a denial of equal protection of the laws under the
Constitution. The Committee, therefore, sought guidance as to the
present state of the law from Father William J. Kenealy, former
dean of Boston College Law School, a member of the bar of the
District of Columbia and Massachusetts, and a lecturer and writer
in this area of constitutional law for many years.

Father Kenealy reminded the Committee that: ^3

The Supreme Court in the 195^ School Segregation
Cases and ever since has clearly and rigidly
held that any segregation created by a State
constitution, State statute, city ordinance,
rules, and regulations of school boards, or
any other official acts of government is
unconstitutional, and has ordered the de-
segregation of such segregated schools.

Before considering de facto segregation, which he defined as
a concentration of one ethnic group in the public schools not owing
to any official action of government, Father Kenealy spoke of
another kind of de jure segregation which would probably come under
the Supreme Court 1 s condemnation of segregation in the 195^
decision. The area of de jure segregation Father Kenealy referred
to is a major concentration of Negroes in public schools resulting
from the action of an arm of government other than the school
board.

Father Kenealy continued:

83. Record, Mar. 21, p. 76.

84. Id. pp. 77-78.

Suppose there was a zoning ordinance, the kind
that was outlawed in Buchanan v. Warley, that
created residential segregation by force of
State law which, in turn, created the racial
imbalance of the school. I think I would call
that a state of de jure segregation.

So, too, if you could prove, as a matter of
fact, that the same segregation of housing
occurred as a result of constant enforcement
of the restrictive covenants . . . outlawed
in Shelley v. Kraemer ; but as long as that
situation persisted, that would be de jure
segregation.

So, too … if any housing authority by
its official policy created the same
condition, it would seem to me that this
would be de jure segregation. ^

As to de facto segregation, Father Kenealy said: ^

To my mind there are two very important
legal questions involved:

One: Is there any constitutional require-
ment for the State or its school committee
to take positive action to desegregate the
schools which are simply de facto segregated?

Second question: Is it constitutionally
permissible for the school boards to take
positive action to desegregate schools
which are simply de facte segregated?

He stated two publicly voiced opinions of the Boston School

85. In ch. 2, supra, it was suggested that the tenant assignment
policies of the Boston Housing Authority raise the issue of
de ; ire segregation in Boston.

86. Record, p. 80.

87. Ibid.

One, we are a committee of education, not of
integration. We will talk to the NAACP or
other persons interested in any educational
matter. We will not talk to them on a question
of integration. The supposition that a major
concentration of Negroes is de facto segre-
gation is simply not an educational matter.

I think in some other State a similar board
said, ‘We are a Board of Education, not a
Board of Transportation. 1

Secondly, the opinion was expressed at least
by one member of the School Committee at a
public hearing at which I was present, that
the ikth Amendment, the equal protection
clause, forbids the State to take any official
action based upon race.

Going back to his own questions, Father Kenealy stated that his
study of decisions of lower State and Federal courts left him un-
certain as to whether the Supreme Court will eventually decide that
a school board must act–at least where de facto segregation is
extreme* As to its power to act, Father Kenealy expressed no
doubt: 58

I have the utmost confidence that when the
second question reaches the Supreme Court
of the United States, namely, is it
permissible for school boards, in the
exercise of their discretion, to obtain
better education, to use a racial action,
to take race into consideration, to
desegregate the de facto segregation group,
I personally have no doubt whatever that
the Supreme Court will say, ‘It is per-
missible, of course, for the same basic
sociological reason that we decided in
the school segregation cases in 195^. 1

Father Kenealy discussed a New York State Court decision to
support his view because New York State has a statute similar to a
provision in the Massachusetts laws which declares that no child
shall be excluded from a public school of any town on account of
race, color, or religion. 9

86\ Id. at 81.

89. Ann. Laws Mass. ch. 151C, sec. 2, (1956).

In the New York case, Balaban v. Rubin, white parents contended
they had been excluded from the school their children would other-
wise have attended because the school board, to achieve racial
balance in a new school, had included the area in which they lived
in the attendance zone for the new school. Although the trial court
upheld the contention of the white parents, the decision was re-
versed by the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court on
March 10, 1964, on the ground that the use of race as a factor to
achieve racial balance in a new school district did not violate
either the New York State education law or the Federal Constitution,
On May “J, 1964 this decision was affirmed by the New York Court of
Appeals. 90 On October 20, 1964, the United States Supreme Court
refused to review the decision of the highest court in New York
State. 91

Emphasizing that the New York statute in question is sub-
stantially identical with Massachusetts’ and for that reason should
allay the School Committee’s fears, Father Kenealy said:^^

I think the case indicates . . . that the evil
caused by extreme racial balance is an edu-
cational evil, and, therefore, the School Board,
in its responsibility and obligations to provide
the best education for all the children, both
Negro and white, can limit the educational evil,
which it cannot do, obviously, without taking
into consideration racial matters.

Father Kenealy thus concludes that a board of education has
the legal power to correct racial imbalance although it may not
have the legal duty to do so. When asked to comment upon the moral
duty to correct racial imbalance, Father Kenealy said: 93

90. Balaban v. Rubin . 242 N.Y.S. 2d 973 (1963), rev . N.Y. Supt.
Ct. App. Div., Mar. 10, 1964, aff ‘d. N.Y. Ct. of Appeals,
Civ. No. 129, May 7, 1964.

91. 33 U.S.L. Week 3l40, Oct. 20, 1964.

92. Record, Mar. 21, p. 86.

93. Id. at p. 87.

… as far as the moral obligation is concerned,
to my mind, the prime obligation of the School
Committee is to spend their energies in devising
reasonable means for constructing the best edu-
cation they have for both Negroes and whites.

I personally think that white children are hurt,
too, by this segregation of Negroes.

Negro children are hurt, humiliated, made less
fit to grow up with integrated society.

White children become hurt, too, by an absorption
of arrogance, superiority.

Schools teach by action as well as by precept;
by example, as well as by word.

And don’t tell me that little small school
children- -Negroes or white- -who recognize, say,
all around them separation, make fine distinctions
between de facto segregation and de jure segregation.
The psychological harm is there, anyway.

While Father Kenealy would not assert that the Boston School
Committee has a present legal duty to take action to correct racial
imbalance, he is of the firm opinion that the committee has the
legal power—and the moral duty—to do so.

8. Conclusions and Recommendations

CONCLUSIONS

1. The percentage of Negroes in the population of Boston rose
from 5 percent in 1950 to 9 percent in i960. This increase is
due not only to a growth in the Negro population but to the
continuing movement of white families to the suburbs.

2. Within the city of Boston, the Negro population is
strongly concentrated in Roxbury, North Dorchester, and the South
End. In these contiguous neighborhoods live half of all the
Negroes in Massachusetts, and all but 1,500 of the more than
63,000 Negroes (i960) in Boston; in short, Boston’s Negro popu-
lation is residentially segregated within the city.

3. The concentration of Negroes within the city of Boston
is as marked in public housing as in private housing. For
example, at the end of 1963* 97*7 percent of the units in the
Mission Hill project were occupied by whites, while in the Mission
Hill Extension’ project directly across the street, 90.6 percent
of the units were occupied by nonwhites. This pattern has per-
sisted although discrimination in public housing has been unlawful
since 1950.

h. Due to the residential patterns in both public housing
and private housing Negro children in the Boston Public School
system are by and large concentrated in predominantly Negro
schools.

5. School district lines have remained substantially
unchanged since 1900 when Negroes constituted a very small part
of the population of Boston.

6. The extreme racial segregation in Boston’s public housing
projects tends to produce predominantly Negro public schools and
raises the possibility that some of the racial imbalance in the
public schools is the product of governmental activity and there-
fore unlawful as de jure segregation.

7. To the extent that Negro children in Boston are concen-
trated in predominantly Negro schools as a result of private
residential patterns and not as a result of official policies, the
result may be described as “racial imbalance”, “segregation in the
schools”, or “de facto segregation”.

8. The experience of Negroes in the United States, from the
destruction of their familial and cultural ties in the days of
slavery to the demoralizing surroundings of the Negro ghetto and
the predominantly Negro school, tends to transmit to each generation
of Negro children a lack of self-esteem and a low level of
aspiration, which are perpetuated and reinforced by the segregated
environment of the public school and the practice of learning from
one’s peers instead of from one’s teacher.

9. Negro children attending predominantly Negro schools
constitute an increasing percentage of the public school population,
partly due to the movement of some white families to the suburbs
and partly due to the preference of other white families for private
schools. Negro pupils as a percentage of the total pupils at
different levels of public schools are allocated as follows:

School Total Pupils Negro Pupils Percentages

High 20,2kk 2,798 13.0

Junior High 13,258 2,896 21.8

Elementary 58,117 15, 35^ 26.4

10. The neighborhood school policy of the Boston School Com-
mittee has different application at different levels of the public
schools. It does not apply to 7 of the 16 Boston high schools; it
applies within large district lines to the junior high schools; and

it applies within smaller district lines to the elementary schools,

with the following results as to racial imbalance:

90$ or more 90$> or more Integrated
School Total White Negro Number Percent

High 16 7 0 9 56

Junior High 17 10 2 5 29

Elementary 153 9^ 17 k2 27

11. In evaluating the neighborhood school policy we adopt
Superintendent Ohrenberger 1 s statement that primary purposes of
education are developing in every child:

a. a mastery of basic knowledge and skills

b. the strengthening of his character to choose
what is good, and

c. the inculcation of those disciplines and ideals
fundamental to life in our democracy.

12. Many of the goals of education, particularly those
relating to character formation and the acquisitjon of ideals, are
shaped by the physical, social, and ethnic environment of the
schoolroom as well as by formal instruction. The present neigh-
borhood school policy clearly has an adverse effect upon the
achievement of these goals.

13. The committee appointed by the State Board of Education
and the Commissioner of Education has concluded that racial
imbalance is harmful to Negro and white children, fails to prepare
them for the future and results in a gap in the quality of edu-
cational facilities. With the aid of that committee’s racial
census our Committee has determined that the following disad-
vantages occur in predominantly Negro districts

Nature of
District

Pupil turnover
as percent of
enrollment

Special Class (Retarded)
Children attending
regular class – Percent9/63-2M

Predominantly white
(90-100 percent white)

27.65 • 75

Integrated
(at least 10 percent
white and 10 percent
Negro

)

43.87 1.64

Predominantly Negro
(90-100 percent Negro)

59.03 4.31

Teacher Experience

Nature of Years

District 0 – 5 6 – 10 11 – 20 21 or more

White 18.5 12.8 23.6 47.8

Integrated 20. k 17.6 23.9 37.3

Negro 25.O 24.1 20.3 30.8

lh. The critical importance of the learning environment was
demonstrated in the testimony of representatives of voluntary
organizations in Boston and elsewhere which indicates that
“educationally deprived” Negro children can make rapid progress
when they are taught in a suitable environment.

15. An environment conducive to learning cannot be produced
merely by competent teaching, by new buildings, or by racial
balance; it requires an understanding of the Negro child, his
history and his current environment on the part of everyone
involved in the educational process.

16. The School Committee’s Open Enrollment program, used by
very few children during the past school year, appears to be
serving only the children of highly motivated, extremely
persistent parents.

17. The School Committee’s Operation Counterpoise program
seeks to meet the need for a mastery of basic knowledge and skills,
but substantially ignores the environmental factors that affect
character development and the inculcation of basic democratic
ideals.

18. The school authorities appear to take account of racial
balance in the selection of new school sites, although their
policy is generally understood to be that expressed by a former
chairman of the school committee who stated that “school district
lines should never be drawn with regard to race, color or creed.”

19. The policy of the Board of Education of the Commonwealth
on racial imbalance was set forth in a statement on August 19,
1963; which said in part:

The Board urges further that action consistent
with sound educational practice be taken imme-
diately to eliminate racial imbalance when or
where it is ascertained to exist in any school
system.

This has not been adopted as the policy of the Boston School
Committee.

20. The evidence of the witnesses at the Open Meeting
indicates that children attending racially imbalanced schools
are aware of their segregated environment and, from that
environment, draw conclusions about their place in American life
which are likely to be unaffected by distinctions such as those
between de jure and de facto segregation.

21. The three-fold purposes of education cited by Superin-
tendent Ohrenberger can be meaningfully pursued only by carrying
out a clear resolve on the part of the School Committee, its
superintendents, principals, teachers and staff- -and on the part
of Boston’s political and civic leaders and neighborhood
residents –to achieve both racial integration and a high level of
academic performance in Boston public schools.

RECOMMENDATIONS

1. That the United States Commission on Civil Rights submit this
report to the President and the Congress, the United States Com-
missioner of Education and the Attorney General of the United
States.

2. That the Commission on Civil Rights invite the attention
of the United States Commissioner of Education to the facts herein
reported as evidence of a lack of equal educational opportunity by
reason of race within the meaning of Sec. h02 of the Civil Rights
Act of 1964 for the many Negro public school children of Boston
confined to predominantly Negro schools.

3. That the Commission on Civil Rights advise appropriate

officials of the Federal Government that racial discrimination in
public housing contributes to segregation in Boston public schools.

k. That the Commission recommend to the President and the
Congress that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 be amended so as to
make available to school systems undertaking to correct racial
imbalance in public schools the same Federal aids available to
school systems seeking to abandon segregation previously required
by law, including technical assistance in coping with special
educational problems occasioned by the correction of racial im-
balance, and institute training and Federal grants to enable
teachers and guidance counselors to improve their understanding
of minority group children and the relation of their heritage
and environment to the learning process and the development of
their latent individual abilities.

Appendices

1 2 2 2 23 5 5 56 6 66 6 78 9 99 99 9

%of Non-Whites 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 22 2 2 5 5 7 8 8 83 0 5 7 98 0 1 91 2 89 9 99 0 66 78 8

in District— .1.2333.4.45.55.5.6.8.0.0.1.45.8.8.0.12.8.1.8.2.1.2.7.0.7.8.6.0.1.4.2.8.6.3.0.1.5.6.4.4.5^.92.8

00 0 0 0 28 0 0 7 7 74 55 95 03 8 3 320 2 2 83 8 7 2 2 0 5 31 2 1 0 67 28 1 1 0 32 8 29 2 16 54 6

APPENDIX B – Interim Findings of the Advisory Committee on
Racial Imbalance and Education, Commonwealth
of Massachusetts, July 1, 1964

This Advisory Committee concludes that sound education is affected
adversely by racial imbalance in the following ways:

1. Racial imbalance damages the self-confidence and
motivation of Negro children.

2. Racial imbalance reinforces the prejudices of
children regardless of their color.

3. Racial imbalance does not prepare the child for
integrated life in a multi-racial community,
nation, and world.

4. Racial imbalance impairs the opportunities of
many Negro children to prepare for the vocational
requirements of our technological society.

5. Racial imbalance often results in a gap in the
quality of educational facilities among schools.

6. Racial imbalance in the public school represents
a serious conflict with the American creed of
equal opportunity.

APPENDIX C

The Adverse Effects Upon Mental Health and

Educational Process of “De Facto Segregation
”

of Negroes

By Charles A. Pinderhughes, M.D.

In the Annual Report of the Superintendent I96I-62, Dr.
Frederick J. Gillis^ states that Boston is classified as one
the lk great cities in America and that:

These ‘great cities’ have unique problems which
differentiate them from all other communities.
In these cities people are always on the move-
either moving in or out of the core city. As
his socioeconomic level is elevated, a person
is prompted to move to a suburb. When this
happens his place is taken by culturally deprived
immigrants, handicapped with a second-class
education, or worse still, by illiteracy. The
rural backgrounds of these people, and their hard
labor qualifications, make them unsuited for the
skilled labor market which urban industrialization
and automation demand. These people contribute
to the pool of unemployables and go on welfare.

In these slum areas (the sociologists, euphemisti-
cally, prefer to designate them as underprivileged,
gray, or depressed areas) there is a high incidence
of pupil dropout. In the school year of i960 there
were 3^000 children in the United States between
the ages of sixteen and twenty-four who, for
various reasons, left school. Of the 1,679*000
who were graduated in June of 1961 a very small
percentage-actually only 7 percent-were nonwhite.

9k. Dr. Frederick J. Gillis, Superintendent of the Boston
Public Schools, I96O-63.

The subcultural patterns of the people living
in these depressed areas serve only to encourage
a rot of moral fiber. The common birthright of
their children is squalor, disease, and crime.
These boys and girls are the potential nonreaders,
juvenile delinquents, unwed teenage mothers, and
the dropouts. They leave school and the street
claims them. ‘Social Dynamite’, Conant calls them,
and the terrifying implications germane to the
continuance and yearly growth of this social
problem are obvious to any thinking person.

If the pronouncement that we must educate the
whole child was ever wanting in validity, it has
full emphasis in the slum areas of the great
cities. Here we need dedicated teachers in the
strictest sense of the word, and here the require-
ment for Federal aid is already approaching the
critical point, because it costs so much more
per student to educate an underprivileged pupil
then it does to educate a boy or girl from a
middieclass home.

The slum per se stamps the individual who lives
in it as a second-class citizen- -an inadequate
person with zero for his aspirational goal. The
family group lives in too few rooms to permit
any sort of privacy, and this lack is one of the
most demoralizing forces in the lives of those
who are subjected to this type of living. Money
is always in short supply, the furniture is poor,
beds are inadequate, food very often takes second
place to the purchase of intoxicating liquors,
and clothing and the way of wearing one’s hair
is apt to be bizarre. In this home books are not
read; sometimes not even a newspaper is available.
Self-expression and comprehension are below average,
and inward stress and tensions of all kinds are
present. The environmental pattern here predicates
endless talk, fighting, child bearing, and moving
from place to place to escape payment of rent.

When the boy or girl comes to the public school
from this kind of home, where the culture is
several cuts below average, the school, more
than ever, must adjust to the needs of this
child. If anyone in the world needs love and
kindness, sympathetic understanding, and
personal guidance, it is the boy or girl who
lives in this type of neighborhood. His teacher
needs to be better than average and she must be
able to communicate with this child, and to
overlook many things which he may do- -which in
his culture may not be taboo. He requires much
individual help in order that he may establish
a reading ability commensurate with his chrono-
logical age. He needs ‘field trips’ to the
museums, to the library, to places of business,
to any and every place that will contribute to
giving him a sense of belonging and to raising
his aspirational goals. If the school fails
this boy, he will become a dropout and, more
often than not, a juvenile delinquent with a
strong likelihood that his delinquency will be
aggravated in adult life.

While some of the ills described can be cured or, at least,
have their symptoms reduced by vigorous urban renewal and com-
pensatory education programs, there remains a core of problems
which relate to a fact omitted from Dr. Gillis ‘ report . Many of
the persons referred to are Negroes, living in a relatively sharply
delineated area in high concentration. How this fact poses special
problems requiring special solutions can better be understood by
examining the general development and course of what has been
called de facto segregation.

With the emergence of Civil Rights for Negroes as the most
important current domestic issue, public school classrooms have
become a focal point for discussion in communities where con-
siderable racial imbalance exists. In areas which are heavily
populated by a single ethnic group, the enrollment of some schools
may be predominantly or completely of one group. To such a con-
dition the term’de facto segregation ‘ has been applied. There is
a growing realization that an education, which provides contact
with and understanding of but a single ethnic group is unrealistic
and maladaptive in a world where many diverse groups share the same

communities and are interdependent.

There is increasing acknowledgment of the hidden curriculum
being taught in all schools in addition to reading, writing,
arithmetic and other planned courses. Schools, in fact, teach
much more, including how to get along with one’s fellow man, and
how to think about and evaluate oneself and others. Individuals
within a school serve as models for imitation and identification
and each student is pressed to conform to the kinds of attitudes,
beliefs, mores, and behavior which surround him. The areas and
styles of comforming, competing, rebelling, and cooperating are
part of the hidden curriculum in each school. Such myths, legends,
and observations as support this curriculum are also included.

A part of the hidden curriculum includes an education and
training toward conformity not only to the mores within the school
but to those mores existing in the community at large. Nowhere is
this more clearly evident than in the guidance and counseling areas.
Since one of the goals of education is to provide opportunity for
the student to find a place for himself in the wider social family
into which he goes, counseling is of critical importance. The
counselor must realistically assist students toward the realization
of their potentials on one hand and toward such opportunities as
exist on the other. A Negro child and a white child of equivalent
equipment and potential, when realistically counseled toward
existing opportunities, have been counseled toward different
occupations in which there were differing rewards. The school
system thus functions as an intimate part of a larger social system
and often assists in perpetuating its ills. We might ask whether
counselors should have “unrealistically” encouraged Negro children
to prepare for areas in which there is aptitude, whether or not
there is opportunity. This might have constituted a disservice
to individual students. On the other hand, the absence of
“qualified” Negroes at present is in part relatable to our
educational system which prepares the students for the outside
world, including the values and mores which exist there.

The importance of intangibles such as the reputation and
influence of a school, of its teachers, of its pupils, and the
nature of its neighborhood have been recognized for somewhat
longer. (Supreme Court decisions on the quality of education have
been based upon such factors in 1950 and 195^« ) Such factors
provide a basic matrix which contributes to the tone and character
of the educational program as well as to comparative ratings and
to public opinions. Rumors, true or false, concerning inferiority
of schools, of teachers, or of pupils have devastating effects
and further demoralize teachers, pupils, and parents.

The spotlight upon schools has been directed less upon the
formal curricula and more upon the informal education, the class-
room “atmosphere” and “climate”, and upon the psychology and
cultural traits of students, all of which may show considerable
variation from school to school even when curriculum and teacher
activity may be relatively standardized. As much attention should
be directed to the educational process between pupils as is cur-
rently given to the educational process between teachers and pupils.

Peer-learning in school is never stressed and needs to be
examined in areas of racial imbalance. While there is always a
relationship between peer-learning and teacher-to-pupil learning,
the extent to which the relationship is complementary or supple-
mentary or frankly antagonistic is of prime importance. Given the
same teacher and curriculum, a larger group, emotionally disturbed
students, disrupting students, and lack of group cohesion cause a
shift in educational process from teacher-to-pupil learning toward
peer-learning. Similar factors may promote a peer-learning
situation which is frankly antagonistic to the teacher-to-pupil
learning. Dr. Gillis clearly describes such situations.

What do the pupils learn from one another in the unplanned
informal curriculum? Certainly teachers are not teaching students
to drop out and to misuse their educational opportunities. Pupils
learn such things from other pupils. Other students serve as models
to be imitated, as models with which to identify.

In a community composed predominantly of a single ethnic group
the education process between pupils in the neighborhood school
serves as a vehicle for conveying and perpetuating cultural char-
acteristics. As such, a racially imbalanced school can either
enrich or impoverish a child, depending upon what is imparted.

Of all the ethnic groups in Boston, only one group, the Negro,
has presented a strong complaint that it receives an inferior
education as a direct result of a heavy concentration of its own
group in the neighborhood schools. How can it be explained that a
harmful effect can result in one group which does not result in
the others?

The differences between communities of American Negroes and
communities of all other ethnic groups are extensive, but usually
overlooked. The American Negro is the only minority group in the
United otates without a culture of its own. All other groups have
a religion, an internal source of authority and group cohesion,
a special language, traditions, institutions or other roots which
are traceable to a lengthy group existence, usually in another
country. American Negroes have none of these.

The numerous languages, family and group ties, and all prior
cultural institutions of the millions of slaves brought to America
were destroyed. An establishment for training was developed. Laws
guaranteed the master absolute power over his slaves and permitted
unlimited physical and psychological discipline to break and train
slaves to unquestioning obedience. The machinery of the police and
the courts were not available to slaves. Owners tried and executed
sentences upon their slaves. Laws decreed that fathers of slaves
were legally unknown. Marriage was denied any standing in law.
Children could be sold without their mothers except in Louisiana
which kept the mother-child relationship preserved until the child
reached ten years of age. There was a general belief that edu-
cation would make slaves dissatisfied and rebellious. Distribution
of books, including the Bible, or teaching of slaves were pro-
hibited by law in some States.

Thus, by means of one of the most coercive social systems on
record, the character of American Negroes, and the nature of their
families and of their groups were clearly and rigidly defined in a
closed system which supplied the training and sanctions needed to
produce recognizable personality types. Such stereotyped char-
acteristics were produced by this environmental pressure that some
persons, viewing the products of this system, have gained the
erroneous impression that the characteristics were inherent in the
people rather than induced.

For eight generations of slaves in a closed family-like
system, every vital concern focused upon the master as an omni-
potent father whose establishment molded the character and behavior
of his slaves. The child rearing practices of the slave mothers
constituted his most important training school, and produced
obedient, docile, slaves whose aggressions were directed primarily
against themselves. In time, child rearing practices became
stereotyped into life and death struggles to inhibit and reverse
all assertiveness or aggression, especially in male children.

After emancipation from slavery, segregation practices kept
the Negro captive in his compound and continued his training to
his dependent and low caste servant role.

With the migration of large numbers to the North, no rigid,
formal segregation supported by law was needed. The Negroes from
the South were well trained to support and perpetuate the system.
They had been taught a way of relating to the world in which white
people were central, and they could not see that the Northern
white person differed inside from the ones known in the past.

Even as large immigrating groups of English, West Indian
Negroes, Irish, Jews, Puerto Ricans, French, Chinese, Italians,
Africans, Indians, or Germans carry with them many central and
residual elements of their prior cultures, so also large numbers
of American Negroes migrating from the South to Boston have carried
with them old patterns originated in the South. A person who feels
inferior, criticized, or discriminated against commonly behaves in
such a way as to induce from others criticism, discrimination, and
treatment as an inferior person. Negroes forced into a low caste
group in the South have, upon migrating, unconsciously induced in
Boston relationships similar to those in the South. With
“segregation de jure ” stamped into and thoroughly interwoven in
the culture and into the personalities of Southern Negroes, it was
inevitable that it should be carried northward to precipitate out
as “de facto segregation”. They formed their compounds in the
Northern cities, and in these de facto segregated communities they
reproduced and passed on the only culture they had to pass on, with
the only child rearing practices they knew, in the matrix of the
only family structure and group organization they had known. Over
many years a culture had been developed in the compound which kept
the people there functioning in the same old ways. The patterns
and codes reached every member and sank deeply into many person-
alities. Older ones cannot be persuaded to change- -they have been
trained too long and too well.

Although the gate to the compound in the Northern city is
open, few find it. Many have been so trained not to reach out,
or to so defeat themselves that they must persistently fail at
just those points where constructive changes are possible. Most
of them do not believe the gate is open even when they are told
and offered encouragement. Some who believe have so renounced
any capacity for initiative or constructive assertion as to be
immobilized and apathetic.

It is for these reasons, as well as for economic ones, that
the open enrollment plan in its present form will not work for
those who need it most. It is also unrealistic to leave the burden
for change upon Negro parents when basically the American Negro
family has been disrupted and made impotent as a source of
initiative and purposeful action.

The essence of the problem we face is not race and not color.
American people, by a coercive slavery system and by miscegenation,
grossly altered American Negroes into a group whose characteristics
were so shaped as to prevent participation in the American life as
defined by the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. What used to
be a slave group containing stock from several races has been
perpetuated as a low caste servant and labor group, for the most

part isolated in its compound. The color primarily helps us to
identify the low caste and to know whom we should not touch. When
a Caucasian and a Negro can together produce a child who is con-
sidered to be a Negro in race, we are dealing with sociological
rather than logical thinking. Such thinking is one of the many
residuals of slave culture days. It ensures that the low caste
elements remain clearly defined no matter how intermixed and un-
recognizable they become. It also contains the implicit censure
that whosoever touches one becomes one. To be born in the compound
is to feel inferior, to behave as if one is inferior, and, in some
instances, to be trained to be inferior.

Neither words nor pictures nor large amounts of intellec-
tual!zed information will substantially modify the compound without
the corrective emotional experiences of increased integration.
Unless the compound is broken up it will go on reproducing its own
kind, even as communities of other ethnic groups keep reproducing
their own.

Education is central in all of this. Certainly slavery was
an educational matter as well as a political, economic, and moral
matter. Perpetuation of a caste is also an educational matter,
and modification of a caste finds education at the very heart of
the process.

Racially imbalanced schools in Negro neighborhoods function
as a mold which produces and perpetuates an unfavorable stamp.
Schools in communities heavily populated by other ethnic groups
also serve as vehicles for transmitting group characteristics to
individuals, but the stamp imparted in such schools is more
adaptive and more often of positive value.

In this context, the Negio ghetto and its accompanying pre-
dominantly Negro schools can more easily be seen as agents which
have adverse effects upon self-esteem, value systems, motivations,
aspirations, and behavior of pupils. Such adverse effects pre-
vailing in many students can seriously impair the educational
processes in a school despite the presence of excellent teachers
and adequate facilities.

In our generation and those before, segregation of and
separation of Negroes were not only taught to us, but were even
practiced and encouraged by our Federal government until 20 years
ago.

That most white persons flee as if from a plague when Negroes
move near them is a product of their life experience and education.
Increased integration in education starting at early ages will do

much to prevent the emergence of another generation of hurt,
frustrated, disillusioned, and angry coloreds and guilty, panic-
stricken, perplexed, and angry whites. The adverse effects of
the present system upon the mental health of Americans have too
long been swept under the rug.

With the growing awareness of these circumstances, there has
developed an intense search for practical remedies. Such creative
innovations as develop under the stimulus of this problem will
undoubtedly enrich our educational programs and will promote the
welfare of all groups.

APPENDIX D – Resolution Adopted by the Board of Education of
the City of Chicago on August 28, 1963,
Establishing the Advisory Panel on Integration
of the Public Schools

WHEREAS, Without design on the part of the Board of Education
or the school administration, there are schools under the juris-
diction of the Board which are attended entirely or predominantly
by Negroes; and

WHEREAS, there exists public controversy as to the racial
composition of such schools, and the psychological, emotional and
social influences that may be brought to bear on the pupils in
such schools and any harmful effects thereof on educational
processes; and

WHEREAS, some experts in the fields of education and the
social sciences believe that certain educational, psychological,
and emotional problems arise out of attendance of children at
entirely or predominantly Negro schools; be it

RESOLVED, That this Board hereby reaffirms its policy to
provide the best possible educational opportunity for all of the
pupils in the school system so that every child may achieve his
maximum development, and to recognize and work toward the maximum
resolution of every problem or inequity that may exist in the
system, including the elimination of any inequities that may pre-
vail as a result of certain schools in the system being attended
entirely or predominantly by Negroes, and to attempt to solve any
educational, psychological, and emotional problems that might
prevail in the public school system to the maximum extent of its
financial, human, and other resources, be it further

RESOLVED, That the Board forthwith invite

Philip M. Hauser Lester W. Nelson
Sterling M. McMurrin James M. Nabrit, Jr.

William R. Ode11

as a panel to analyze and study the school system in particular
regard to schools attended entirely or predominantly by Negroes,
define any problems that result therefrom, and formulate and
report to this Board as soon as may be conveniently possible a
plan by which any educational, psychological, and emotional
problems or inequities in the school system that prevail may best
be eliminated; be it further

RESOLVED, That on the submission of such report, which shall
be no later than December 31, 1963, unless an extension is
requested by the panel, this Board shall promptly take such action
as it may determine is appropriate or required to work toward a
resolution of any problems and any inequities found to exist.

APPENDIX E

Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Education

DISTRIBUTION OF WHITE AND NON-WHITE PUPILS
IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF MASSACHUSETTS

We recommend that the following procedures be used In taking this Censu?:

1. The Census will include Kindergarten through Grade 12.

2. Each school building of the district is to be reported on a separate line.

3. The grades Included in each school building shall be noted in the Grades column.

4. As few school personnel should be used in the census count as possible; however,

complete and accurate information Is essential.

5. No pupil and no parent of any pupil shall be asked his race or ancestry.

6. No record Is to be kept of this Information as It relates to an individual; totals only
for individual schools are to be reported.

Ci.y. Town ., Regional District
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

NAME OF SCHOOL GRADES WHITE NON-WHITE TOTAL

Hi jrh sr.hnol a 7-12 17.1ti,6 2,798 20, 2ii4

Junior High Schools 7-9 * 10,362 2,896 13,258

Elementary Schools. K-fi * 1+2,763 58,117

Special Schools 132 181

rrrnnd Tnt.nl a 70
f
7CH 21,097 91,8QO

* Special Class

To be returned on or before April 1, 1964

/y\

Signature of Superintendent

Date y

Co.-.irnonwcaUh of Messcshssetts Department of Education

DISTRIBUTION OF WHITE AND NON-WHITE PUPILS
ih THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF MASSACHUSETTS

V/e recommend that the following procedures be used in taking this Census?:

1. The Census will include Kindergarten through Grade 12.

2. Each school buildi-ng of the district is to be reported on a separate line.

3. The grades included in ecch school building shall be noted in the Grcdes column.

4. As few school personnel should be used in the census count as possible; however,

complete and accurate information is essential.

5. No pupil and no parent of any pupil shall be asked his race or ancestry.

6. No record is to be kept of this information as it relates to an individual; totals only
for individual schools are to be reported.

City. Town or Regional District BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS SPECIAL SCHOOLS

NA*£ Ui dwnUUC GRADES WHITE NON-WHITE TOTAL

a? 1 ? 9h

M. Gertrude Godvin School 50 37
Do

i
1
I
1

j Signature of Superintendent

To be returned on or before April I, 1984 /”‘/Uft^^’-2 G . / / v~ /'”
‘
U

Date y

Uinitroawc: Ccpartment of Education

DISTEtZLTSGN OF BHITE ANT N0N-WKIT2 PUPILS
riSE PS&LEG SCHOOLS OS >i.-*£5.-*o..t

We recommend that the following procedures be used In taking this Census:

1. The Census will include Kinderqcrten through Grade 12.

2. Each school building of the district is to be reported on a separate line.

3. The grades included in each school building shall be noted in the Graces column.

4. As few school personnel should be used in the census count as possible; however,
complete and accurate information is essential.
5. No pupil and no parent of any pupil shall be asked his race or ancestry.
6. No record is to be kept of this information as it relates to an individual; totals only
for individual schools are to be reported.

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS ELI3KEHTARY SCHOOLS
City, Town cr Regional i>:st:ic

MAttE 0? SCHOOL GRADES WHITE NON-V/HITE TOTAL

Washington Allston District

Andrew Jackson School
I

K-6 30U h 308

Win, H. Taft School -K-6 333 11 Vsk

Washington Allston School K-6 ??7 3 P30

C omnonwe al th Pro i e ct K 3 60

Vers dell Phillins-Wm. Blackstone E i strict

Peter Paneuil School K-8 110 /o 116

William E. Endicott District

Sarab frrftfiiTSr.rnofl Sr.hnol PT-A i.Ac: 1 ,033

William SI. End 1! nrvht: School TT-Jj 336

Ro^er Clan School K-6 !i67 1 ]i68

William E. Pus sell School K. 72:8 81 , 668

William Lloyd Garrison District

William Lloyd Garrison School K-6 36 1-096 1,132
Williams School K-2 135 11*2

JUL MXiA
Signature of Superintendent

To be returned on or before April 1, 1S64
71

/C'(-

Commonwealth of Massachusetts Depurtmcnt of Education

DISTRIBUTION OF WHITE AND NQN-WKSTE PUPILS
IN Til F. PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF MASSACHUSETTS

We recommend that the following procedures be used In taking this Census?:

1. The Census will include Kindergarten through Grade 12.
2. Each school building of the district is to be reported on a separate line.

3. The grades included in each school building shall be noted in the Grcdes column.

ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS
City, Town or Regional District BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

NAME OF SCHOOL. GRADES WHITE NON-WHITE TOTAL

A /*> r\ “C* v* o v\ I/O tv> T}A O f ^ fn 1 C G — x FeUiJCX-Ln JJ1 3 1/TIOT/

O L 1 CJ.-± -L O O J_J • 1 1 CA -v ^ , / W v-> L iWW _1_ K-8 251 Kkflr i ‘ i w 729

67 i 32 199

John J. Williams School K-6 119 115

RQbfiT’t
I_
‘”^f;rit; i up st t*t ct

Robert Treat Paine School K-6 381. 115 Ll96

Audubon School K-5 235 Lj.6 251

. * H > _ :* V • l> vJ 1/ u y -‘_ O L’ A .’_ v»> L/

W^Hi ‘ °° .- , v 1 v. j J , iwl I’J’J, 1 , Tf-6 371. 3 377

William Bradford School K-3 3kS 38 383

Pauline A. Shaw School K-6 368 18 386

Roger Volcott School I. -6 338 29 367

Theodore Lyr.an District

Theodore Lyman School 286 0 236

James Otis School K-6 360 0 360

Dante Alighieri School 1-3 210 1 211

Thomas Gardner District

David L. Barrett School
Soecial
Class —^_ » 66

James J. Storrow School K-3 91 0 91

Thomas Gardner School K-6 U89 21 5ic

Warren District

Warren-Prescott School K-6 718 0 718

Oliver Holden School K-2 0

To be returned on or before April 1, 1954 72

0, Signature of Superintendent ^

D«te /

Commonwoollb of Massachusetts Department of Education

DISTRIBUTION OF WHITE AND NON-WHITE PUPILS
IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF MASSACHUSETTS
We recommend that the following procedures be used In taking this Censu?:
1. The Census will include Kindergarten through Grade 12.
2. Each school building of the district is to be reported on a separate line.

3. The grades Included in each school building shall be noted in the Grcdes column.

6. No record is to be kept of this information as It relates to an individual; totals only
for Individual schools are to be reported.

City, Town or Regional District BOSTON. MASSACHUSETTS SEE?-13MTARY SCHOOLS

NAME OF SCHOOL GRADES WHITE_ NON-WHITE TOTAL

Minot District

Thomas J» Kenny School K-6 263 0 263

I’inot School K-6 207 2 2C9

Ellen H. Richards School K-6 30^ 1 306

uiiocru oiuart o crioo± TC-AA-o 0~\ 7 csu Ol 7

Norcross School 2-6 366 7 373

G-eorge F« Hoar School Wx2 11

If-

LL LLLXj

Robert Gould. Shaw School K-6 218 1 219

Sonhia W. Ripley School K-6 h.06 0 Il06

Paul A. Dever District

K-h 776 Ii

Phillips Brooks District

Phillips Brooks School K-6 11 62? 636

Quincy Dickerman School K-6 12 klk 24-86

Prince District

Prince School K-8 237 126 363

Charles C. Perkins School K-6 * Uh 259 303
Martin Milmore School K-6 13k 37 171

* Special Class
Signature of Superintendent

To be returned on or before April 1. 1964 AU’^-dC /

(J Date

Common Health of Massachusetts Department of Education

DfSTRlBLTION OF WHITE AND NON-WHITE PUPILS
IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF MASSACHUSETTS

We recommend that the following procedures be used in taking this Censur-

1. The Census will include Kindergarten through Grade 12.
2. Each school building of the district is to be reported on a separate line.

3. The grades included in each school building shall be noted in the Grades column.

4. As few school personnel should be used in the census count as possible; however,
complete and accurate information is essential.

5. No pupil and no parent of any pupil shall be asked his race or ancestry.
6. No record is to be kept of this information as it relates to an individual; totals only
for individual schools are to be reported.

City, Town or Regional District

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS’ ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS

NAME OF SCHOOL GRADES WHITE NON-WHITE TOTAL

Longfellow District

Longfellow School K-6 670 7 677

Phineas 3ates School K-6 1A8 2 kzo

Mozart School K-6 361 0 361

Theodore Parker School K-3 * 89 1 90

L^vsl 1 TV «! f.-p-i r>”fc

John F. Kennedy School K-6 h& 173 628
Wyman School K-3 * 206 57 263

Martin District

Maurice J. Tobin School K-8 325 383 708

Farra^ut School K-6 13U 165 299

Ira Allen School K-2 k 195 199

Mary Hemenway District

Mary Hemenway School K-6 3k2 0 3te

Rochambeau School K-6 359 2 361

Patrick O’Kearn School K-6 kll 7 lp.8

Mather District

Benjamin Gushing School K-3 252 2 25It

Mather School 1-6 * 785 8 793

Edward Southworth School K-3 501 6 507

Michelan.n-elo-Eliot-Kancock Distri ct

Michelangelo School 5 21 0 21

Eliot School K-6 * ..323 . 323

» Special Class

To be returned on or before April 1, 1964

Signature of Superintendent

Due /7k

Common wealth of Massachusetts Department of Education

DISTRIBUTION OF WHITE AND NON-WHITE PUPILS
IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF MASSACHUSETTS

We recommend thot the following procedures be used In taking this Censu?:

1. The Census will include Kindergarten through Grade 12.
2. Each school building of the district is to be reported on a separate line.

3. The grades included in each school building shell be noted in the Grades column.

6. No record Is to be kept of this information as it relates to an individual; totals only
for individual schools are to be reported.

City, Town or Regional District 3QST0N , MASSACHUSETTS ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS

NAME OF SCHOOL GRADES WHITE NON-WHITE TOTAL

James J. Chit ti ok District

James J. Chittick School K-6 621; 1 625

Lowell -Mason School K-3 102 3 105

Jefferson District

Jefferson School K-6 383 130 513

Charles Bulfinch School K-6 29k 128 1+22

John A. Andrew District

John A. Andrew School U–6 305 2 307

John 3. O’Reilly School K-3 337 0 337

Michael J. Perkins School bill 1 hiS

John Marshall District

John Marshall School K-6 773 0 773

Champlain School K-6 380 32 1*12

Lucy Stone School K-6 366 16 382

Florence Nightingale School K,2-6 183 102 285

John WinthroD District

John Winthrop School K-6 1U3 319 k&2

Benedict Fenwick School K-6 299 188 1+87

Nathaniel Hawthorne School K-6 166 133 299

Julia Ward Kowe District

Julia Ward Kowe School K-6 8 i;02 l+lO

Sarah J. Baker School K-6 31 686 717
i^ewis Annex
Business Education Annex k,5

—

-n,
* 5-2

—

To be returned on or before April 1, 1964
75

s?\ Signature of Superintendent

Date /

Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Education

DISTRIBUTION OF SHITE AND NON-WHITE PUPILS
IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF MASSACHUSETTS

We recommend thct the following procedures be used in taking this Census:

1. The Census will include Kindergarten through Grade 12.

2. Each school building o( the district is to be reported on a separate line.

3. The grades Included in each school building shall be noted in the Grades column.
4. As few school personnel should be used in the census count as possible; however,
complete and accurate information is essential.

5. No pupil end no parent of any pupil shall be asked his race or ancestry.

6. No record is to be kept of this information as It relates to an individual; totals only
for individual schools are to be reported.

ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS
City. Town or Regional District BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

NAME OF SCHOOL GRADES WHITE NON-WHITE TOTAL

Henry Grew District

Henry Grew School K-6 0

William S. Channing School K-6 385 2 387

Hemenway School K-6 182 1 183

Henry L. Hirrinson District

David A. Ellis School K-6 10 631 6i£L

David A. Ellis Annex h 152

Henry L. Higginson School K-6 6 314 320

Wm. L.P. Boardman School K-ii 3 19k 197

Hur-h O’Brien District

Ralnh-Ualdo—Siae r s on Scho o3 K-h nn
Samuel W. Mason School K-6 2^0 101 Kl

Hyde-Everett District

Hyde School
Ttt

3 32U 327

Everett School 3-6 3 256 259

Asa Gray School iH h 285 289
James A. Garfield District

James A. Garfield School K-6 281 266

Mary Lyon School K-6 228 k 232

Oak Square School K-3 116 0 116

Thomas A. Edison Annex !i-6 156 3 159

Wins hip School K-6 257 k 261

To b* returned on or before April 1, 1964
76

. Signature ol Superintendent

Commonwoahh of Massachusetts Department of Education

DISTRIBUTION OF WHITE AND NON-WHITE PUPILS
IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF MASSACHUSETTS
We recommend that the following procedures be used In taking this Censu?:

1. The Census will Include Kindergarten through Grade 12.

2. Each school building of the district is to be reported on a separate line.
3. The grades included in each school building shall be noted in the Grades column.
4. As few school personnel should be used in the census count as possible; however,
complete and accurate information is essential.
5. No pupil and no parent of any pupil shall be asked his race or ancestry.

6. No record Is to be kept of this information as It relates to an individual; totals only
for Individual schools are to be reported.

ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS
City. Town or Regional District BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
NAME OF SCHOOL GRADES WHITE NON-WHITE TOTAL

Enierson District

Patrick J. Kennedy School K-6 369 o 369

A.—z> o

K-6 ^0
Frank V. Thompson School K-6 310-L. \J 0 310

John G. Whittier School K-6 292 18 310

— 1 07 o 1 07

pi a.nc 1 s rartcman ui s .r 1 ct.

Francis Parkinan School K-8 .> —’ ^ 11

Edwin P. Seaver School K-6 2^3 2 2^5

Henry Abrahams School K-3 179 leir

Hart-Gaston-Perry District

Thomas W- Fort School lt-6 2^ 97
Gaston School 188 89 277

Oliver Hazard Perry School K-6 307 3 310

Benjamin Dean School K-6 269 0 269

Joseph Tuckerman School K-5 313 7 320

Harvard School K-6 273 0 273

Kent School K-3 223 0 223

Bunker Hill School K-6 236- 0 236

£4

To be returned on or before April 1, 1964
77

Sy\ Signature’of Superintendent

Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Education
DISTRIBUTION OF WHITE AND NON-WHITE PUPILS
IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF MASSACHUSETTS

We recommend that the following procedures be used in taking this Census:

1. The Census will include Kindergarten through Grade 12.
2. Each school building of the district is to be reported on a separate line.
3. The grades included in each school building shall be noted in the Grades column.
4. As few school personnel should be used in the census count as possible; however,

complete and accurate Information is essential.

City, Town or Regional District BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS

NAME OF SCHOOL GRADES WHITE NON-WHITE TOTAL

Dudley District

Dndl py School 1-6 eft 299 350

William Bacon School K-5 9 26? 276

Dwip$it District

.TocinTih .T TTi i t»”1 fiv ^r*hnol K-6 i oft ^on

iToshus Rstfts School K-j 121 1 7?

Edmund P. Tileston District

Edmund P. Tileston School K-6 336 5 3kl

Charles Lop;ue School K& 3-6 3k92i±Z 352

MflT’+’.Vifl A RnlrAr> SchrmT
JLoJL Li 1UJ2

Edward Everett District

Edward Everett School K-6 569 7 576

John L. Motley School K-6 3k3 3 314-6

Elihu Greenwood District

Elihu Greenwood School K-6 608 ] 609

Faimount School K-6 3B1 U—
Franklin D. Roosevelt School K-6 0 hh3
Amos Webster School K-3 96 i 22
Weld School K-2 68 0 68

Ellis Mendell District

Ellis Mendell School K-6 389

Margaret Fuller School K-6 309 10 31 Q

Theodore Roosevelt School 1-6 36 185

To be returned on or before April 1, 1964

Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Education

DISTRIBUTION OF WIITE AND NON-WHITE PUPILS
IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF MASSACHUSETTS

We recommend that the following procedures be used In taking this Censu?:
1. The Census will include Kindergarten through Grade 12.
2. Each school building of the district is to be reported on a separate line.

3. The grades Included in each school building shall be noted In the Grades column.

4. As few school personnel should be used In the census count as possible; however,

complete and accurate information is essential.
5. No pupil and no parent of any pupil shall be asked his race or ancestry.
6. No record is to be kept of this information as it relates to an individual; totals only
for individual schools are to be reported.

City, Town or Regional District BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS SL&^NTARY SCHOOLS

NAME OF SCHOOL GRADES WHITE NON-WHITE TOTAL

Charymsn ^istri ct

Chapman School K-6 312 0 312

Hugh Roe O’Donnell School K-Il 3li2 o 3l±2

Charles Sumner District

Charles Sumner School K-6 o W18

George H. Conley School K-6 2

John D. Philbrick School K-6 ?23 o P23

“Washington Irving Annex K-S 229 6 235

Christopher Gibson School K-6 252 ll78 730

Atherton School K-3 68 203 271

Dearborn District

Dearborn School li.-8* 373 572
Dearborn Annex 79 172 251

Aaron Davis School K-3 103 263 366

Albert Palmer School K-2 52 161 ?13

Dillav/ay District

Dill away School K-6* 38 300 338

Nathan Kale School 3^ 31l9 38; i

Abby V.r . May School K-3 22 160 182

Donald McKay-Samuel Adams Distric t

Donald McKay School K-8 ill? 2 iii 9
/ Samuel Adams School K-6 322 2 32k

•^Special Class

To be returned on or before April 1, 1964
Signature of Superintendent
79

s\ signature 01 supeof Superintendent

Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Education
DISTRIBUTION OF WHITE AND NON-WHITE PUPILS
IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF MASSACHUSETTS

We recommend that the following procedures be used In taking this Censu.«=:

1. The Census will Include Kindergarten through Grade 12.
2. Each school building of the district is to be reported on a separate line.
3. The grades Included in each school building shall be noted in the Grades column.

4. As few school personnel should be used In the census count as possible; however,
complete and accurate information Is essential.

5. No pupil and no parent of any pupil shall be asked his race or ancestry.

6. No record is to be kept of this Information as it relates to an Individual; totals only
for individual schools are to be reported.

ELEMENTARY SCHOOLSCity, Town or Regional District BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

NAME OF SCHOOL GRADES WHITE NON-WHITE TOTAL

Abraham Lincoln-Quincy District

Abraham Lincoln School K-8 162 2^0 kl?
Quincy School K-6 12 148 160

Asassiz District

Agassiz School K and3-6 311 6 317

Old Agassiz School K-3 21 K 0 pi z

Bowditch School K-6 373 16 339

Mary 33. Curley Annex K-3 IkS 3 11×8

Joseph P. Manning School K-6 171 0 171

Beethoven District

Beethoven School K-6 1×23 6 li.29

Randall G. Morris School K-6 39k 0 39k

Joyce Kilmer School K-6 1+56 0 U-53

Bennett Dis trict

Alexander Hamilton School K-6 315 5 320
Harriet Baldwin School K-6 325 339

Bi.rrelow District

Bigelow School K-6 a 553 9 562

Choate Burnham School K-6 237 0 237

Blackinton-John Cheverus District
John Cheverus School K-8 282 0 232′

Curtis Guild School K-8 376 0 376
Manas sah E. Bradley School K-6 361 6 367

* Special Class

To be returned on or before April 1, 1964 3q

Signature of Superintendent^^

Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Education

DISTRIBUTION OF WITE AND NON-WHITE PUPILS
IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF MASSACHUSETTS

We recommend that the following procedures be used In taking this Census:
1. The Census will Include Kindergarten through Grade 12.
2. Each school building of the district is to be reported on a separate line.
3. The grades included in each school building shall be noted in the Grades column.

4. As few school personnel should be used in the census count os possible; however,

complete and accurate Information is essential.
5. No pupil and no parent of any pupil shall be asked his race or ancestry.
6. No record is to be kept of this information as it relates to an individual; totals only
for individual schools are to be reported.

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS JR. HIGH SCHOOLS
City, Town or Regional District

NAME OF SCHOOL GRADES WHITE NON-WHITE Total

Clarence R. Edwards Jr. High. 7_QI ~7 562

Grover Cleveland Jr. High. 7_QI -7 noC.C. 1, 002

James. P. Timilty Jr. High. •7 Q 93

Joseoh H. Barnes Jr. High. 7-9 610 0 o.i.u

.Lewis Jr. Hi eft 7-9
566

Mary E. Curley Jr. High 7 O(-y OpU 1,079

>’ichelanp:elo Jr. High 7-9 19)| 0

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. High 7_Q ±7c Ji7TU./JL

rat/i i^K r • iTuvxii oi . nx^ii 7-Q J. > J- cSJ i nxu

Pflf,rir,]f T. Crnnptmn jr. High 7-9 ^6
786

nooero ltouxg. on.aw jr. rix^ti 7 _Q[ -9 7Cf O1 DC. _3 1 j j

Solomon Lewenberg Jr. High 7-9 1,019 132 1,151

Thomas A. Sdison Jr. Hifch 7-9 13

Washington Trvin<* ,Tr. Hifh 7-9 971 9 980

William Barton Rogers Jr. Hicch 7-9 9^6

William Howard Taft Jr. Hifft 7-9 503 556

V/oodrow Wilson Jr. Hifft 7-9 1.016 ^6 1,052

Totals 10,362 2>§96 ^ 13,258

4 Signature of Superintendent ff
To be returned on or before April 1, 1S64 81

Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Education

DISTRIBUTION OF RHITE AND SON-WRITE PUPILS
IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF MASSACHUSETTS

V/e reco-jr.end that the following procedures be used In taking this Census:

1. Tr.e Census will Include Kindergarten through Grade 12.

2. Ecch school building of the district is to be reported on a separate line.

3. The grades included in ecch school building shall be noted in the Grades column.

4. As few school personnel should be used in the census count as possible; however,
ccrr.plete and accurate information is essential.

5 No pupil and no parent of any pupil shall be aslced his race or cncestry.

6. No record is to be kept of this information as to relates to an individual; totals only
for individual schools are to be reported.

City, Town or Regional District

NAME OF SCHOOL GRADES WHITE NON-WHITE Xbtal

Rns*rtn 7,p.f,ir. Sr,’r,oo?. r -12 i Aon iu } 192:5

7_”! P 1 1 9 ^ loo
– z ^ –

~o^~^~ T -• nhp”f ca1 Hi^h School 9-12 _ . _

i**»nflfi P^E*1 School O — 1 p 73*1 P07
9^8- _ –

Rftsl-.ftn T»T»nfJfl fftrh School Arm«x 9-1? 1 20 IS

Ri».fg>l t..nn wo-Vi School 1IWI p

Charles Town High School 1 U – 1

PQY*fh? AT
‘

:-7^
‘

,

‘~’,o Pf-hf^oD 10-1 2
m 1.91ii 22J. _i±35

East. Bostr.r-Hi.gr School 9-1 P 1 1 PI Q „
1121

ft«cn«>i Wg* (Avn T,nn1fl Paat.r.) 10-3.2 1 P8 2^2

aaag . a Lgm Biiiaiin Biflgj ; i nm 180 113″ 293
_v ttj ~v ^oo<;p"p1 t: 131 rip - ) 9 359 68

1 ,27
——o-—>«»— o**
Girls Hish School 9-12 235 561 796

Hyde Park Hif?h School 10-12 156k 39

Tsn-o-
9-1? 106^ LTL 1516

‘”I 1 1 n^*0 * m ET^ School 10-12 lh.65 12 1–

South Boston High School 9-12 1393 0 1393

9-12? 168 214

Totals 171^6 2798 2021^

^7S K~fT\

To be returned on or before April 1, 1964 52

/7\ Siin»ture of Superintendent ST

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BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY

3 9999 05903
64^ 6

GO.

Historical Journal of Massachusetts • Fall 201052

South Boston, September 12, 19

75

Police wearing their riot helmets line the street in south Boston as women, led by
anti-busing advocate

Louise Day Hicks

(black coat), march to protest the busing
of students. Source: PBS, “Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Movement,
1954-85,” Teacher’s Resources at www.pbs.org.

53

“Militant Mothers”:
Boston, Busing, and the Bicentennial of 1976

KATHLEEN BANKS NUTTER

Abstract: By early 1975, the anti-busing organization known
as ROAR (Restore Our Alienated Rights) expanded its base of
protest from opposing, at times quite violently, the court-ordered
desegregation of the Boston public school system. Arguing that
“the issue of forced busing is a women’s issue,” ROAR — whose
membership was predominantly female — expanded its focus and
began to specifically target the flourishing women’s liberation
movement in Boston. The group disrupted various public forums,
including Bicentennial events. Throughout, ROAR militants were
politicized, as were countless other women in the 1970s. Historian
Kathleen Banks Nutter was a teenager living in Boston at the time
and personally effected by the events she analyzes in this article.

* * * * *

Historical Journal of Massachusetts, Vol. 38 (2), Fall 2010
© Institute for Massachusetts Studies, Westfield State University

On Saturday, January 11, 1975, the Governor’s Commission on the
Status of Women convened at Boston’s City Hall, awaiting the arrival of
Governor Michael Dukakis who was to sign the proclamation declaring
“Massachusetts International Women’s Year.” But Dukakis never arrived.
Instead, according to the Boston Globe, “an angry mob of about 150 anti-

Historical Journal of Massachusetts • Fall 201054

busing mothers converged at City Hall,” and the governor hastily canceled
his appearance. There was a lengthy and raucous exchange between those
associated with the Commission on the Status of Women and the so-
called anti-busing mothers. Trying to restore order, Commission Chair
Ann Blackman told the Globe, “Frankly, I do not want any embarrassing
things going on when the governor arrives. Please, you’re our guests here
and you’re disrupting this meeting.” To this, Elvira (aka Pixie) Palladino
of East Boston replied, “No, you’re our guests. This City Hall belongs to
us and we are here because we want freedom for our children.”1

By early 1975 the anti-busing organization known as ROAR (Restore
Our Alienated Rights) sought to expand its base of protest from strictly
opposing, at times quite violently, the court-ordered desegregation of the
Boston public school system. Arguing that, in their words, “the issue
of forced busing is a women’s issue,” the predominately female ROAR
specifically targeted the flourishing women’s liberation movement in
Boston. It ultimately disrupted public forums such as one organized by the
governor’s office to kick off the International Women’s Year as well as the
Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) rallies held in Boston later that spring.1
At the same time, in anticipation of the nation’s 200th birthday in 1976,
ROAR also shifted its attention to the Bicentennial during the spring of
1975, turning the celebratory rhetoric on its head by claiming the right to
fight those who, in the minds of many white Bostonians, would deny them
their most basic rights as parents.

ROAR women were politicized, as were countless other women in the
1970s. But, the women of ROAR used confrontational tactics honed by
anti-war and women’s liberation activists in the 1960s, much of which had
been first inspired by the black Civil Rights movement, to make their case
for segregation in a most virulently racist and class-specific way. Self-
proclaimed “conservatives,” the ROAR women used radical strategies
to maintain what they saw as “traditional” maternal values. It is this
potentially disruptive nexus of politics and strategy, shaped by the race,
class, and gender concerns of the time that suggests the need for a deeper
reexamination of this period.

Much has been written about the tumultuous — and ultimately failed
— effort to desegregate the Boston public schools.2 Most accounts
emphasize the vital role that social class played in what amounted to a
violent racial confrontation between poor blacks and poor whites. As the
historian Ronald Formisano has argued, “Antibusing in Boston, especially
its organized active expressions, can be seen as a case of reactionary

55

populism, a type of grassroots social movement that has flared frequently
in American history.”3

Such an argument certainly helps us understand the anti-busing
movement’s frequent use of Bicentennial rhetoric, but it does not address
the important part that white women played in this movement. Although
the concerted efforts of African American women to improve their
children’s education through desegregation and the ways in which they
then organized to assist in the implementation of busing as the court-
ordered remedy have been documented, the activism of white women
opposed to desegregation has not yet been fully explored.4 Nor has the
impact of gender ideology within this “reactionary populism” been
adequately examined. Gender was very much entwined with ideologies
of race, ethnicity, and class — all of which came together in the Boston
anti-busing movement in the mid-1970s.

“Conservative” women have been, until fairly recently, more neglected
by historians than their more “progressive” sisters.5 The historian Kim E.
Nielsen has recently suggested that we need to be even more nuanced
in our consideration of conservative women. Nielsen persuasively argues
that:

In the context of right-wing women’s history, we must rethink
right-wing women’s movements in all of their political aspects
. . . It means recognizing that gender is present in right-wing
movements not only in the bodies of its members. Gender is at
the core of right-wing ideologies, formations, and negotiations
of power — even when women are physically absent.6

In other words, the roles of both men and women in conservative
movements, such as the Boston anti-busing movement, were shaped by
traditionally restrictive notions of “appropriate” gender-specific concerns.
Furthermore, as the sociologist Abby L. Ferber has pointed out, “Movement
tactics, behaviors, displays, and activities can all take gendered forms.”7
Certainly, when white working-class ethnic women took to the streets to
protest school desegregation they did so, they themselves proclaimed, as
mothers. Such a focus adds an additional dimension to the examination
of “forced busing” in Boston, but one that I believe helps to enrich our
understanding of race, class, and gender in post-industrial America.

When Judge W. Arthur Garrity handed down the Morgan v. Hennigan
decision on June 21, 1974, racial tension had been building in the city
of Boston for over a decade. After the Brown v. Board of Education of

“MILITANT MOTHERS”: BOSTON, BUSING, AND THE BICENTENNIAL OF 1976

Historical Journal of Massachusetts • Fall 201056

Topeka, Kansas decision in 1954, which deemed “separate but equal”
unconstitutional in the nation’s schools, all eyes turned South . . . but in
Northern cities such as Boston, black parents also recognized the damage
done to their children through segregated, inferior schooling. By the
early 1960s, local black community activists began pushing the all-white
Boston School Committee to address the situation. They encountered stiff
opposition. Led by Louise Day Hicks, the Committee refused to admit
that the Boston school system was either segregated or inferior, citing
instead the “voluntary” residential patterns
that shaped the racial composition of the city’s
schools. Black parents responded by staging
one-day school boycotts as local NAACP
leaders repeatedly sought a hearing before the
School Committee.

In 1965, after a white Unitarian minister
from Boston, James Reeb, was beaten to
death by white Southern segregationists
during the historic March to Selma, a stunned
Massachusetts state legislature passed the
Racial Imbalance Act (RIA), which sought
to impose sanctions, including the loss of
state funding, on schools with a student body
more than 50 percent nonwhite.8 But, like any
law, the newly enacted RIA had to be enforced. In Boston, this was not
the case and over the next few years, the city’s schools grew even more
racially imbalanced. According to the political scientist D. Garth Taylor,
in Boston “black enrollment in predominantly minority schools was 77
percent in 1968 and 82 percent in 1972, making it more segregated than
any major city south of Washington DC.”9 Nonetheless, the Boston School
Committee steadfastly refused to enforce this law, despite the loss of
millions of dollars in much-needed state education aid. This remained the
situation until Boston was ordered to desegregate its schools by a federal
district court judge.

In his June 1974 decision, Judge Garrity ordered the schools to achieve
racial balance by busing students, pairing schools that had a majority of
white students with those schools nearby that had a majority of black
students. Thus, the predominately African American neighborhood of
Roxbury and the primarily white Irish American enclave of South Boston
came to be paired. Furthermore, Phase I of the process was to start with the

Louise Day Hicks

57

upcoming school year, scheduled to commence in less than three months,
while Phase II would complete the process the following year.

Two recent Supreme Court decisions validated Garrity’s ruling. In 1971,
the Court ruled in the case of Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenberg Board
of Education that when faced with pre-existing residential segregation
patterns, busing was the only recourse in desegregating city schools. In
the 1973 case of Keyes v. Denver, Colorado School District No. 1, the
Supreme Court “ruled for the first time that the Brown decision applied
to Northern cities as well.”10 As school and city officials scrambled to,
literally, set the wheels in motion, and the black community organized to
facilitate the transition, many in Boston’s white community, especially the
economically depressed neighborhood of South Boston, also organized.

Many white working-class Bostonians viewed busing as a liberal,
white middle-class attack on the sanctity of their turf and their rights

“MILITANT MOTHERS”: BOSTON, BUSING, AND THE BICENTENNIAL OF 1976

Paired Districts in Boston’s Desegregation Plan
Source: Morgan v. Kerrigan, 401 F. Supp. 216 (1975), p. 253, as
reprinted in Taylor, Desegregation in Boston and Buffalo, p. 71.

Historical Journal of Massachusetts • Fall 201058

as parents, and they claimed that they were victims and their children
mere pawns. But in doing so, they “racialized” their discontent and their
growing alienation from government, much as those identifying with
President Richard Nixon’s “Silent Majority” had been doing since the late
1960s.11 By the 1970s, that Silent Majority found its voice. Critics of right-
wing movements have argued that white racism was a touchstone within
a budding conservative movement that would give rise to the Reagan
Revolution of the 1980s and come into full bloom with the Contract with
America in 1994.

According to political scientist Jeanne F. Theoharis, however, excusing
the virulent racism of many whites in Boston during the first two years
of court-ordered busing as “reactionary populism” is overly simplistic
and flawed. Theoharis argues that those scholars who “elide white ethnic
working-class alienation and political powerlessness with opposition to
desegregation, [thus are] naturalizing racism as a response for politically
alienated working-class whites.”12

Indeed, ROAR frequently claimed it was the media, especially the
Boston Globe, which portrayed all whites from South Boston as racists.13
ROAR consistently claimed its agenda was based upon parental and
community control. It also apppears that much of its racism was heightened
by the generalized discontent with liberalism. In actuality, ROAR was
formed several months before Garrity’s June 1974 order under the name of
“The Save Boston Committee.”

The Committee, organized by Hicks, then a Boston city councilor,
first met in February of 1974 to organize efforts to repeal the RIA. The
previous fall, the state legislature had passed a law that required the
consent of a child’s parents before that student could be bused away
from the closest school. Such a law would have made enforcement of the
RIA even more difficult, and Governor Francis Sargent vetoed it. Busing
opponents did not give up; they continued to advocate, in Hicks’s words,
for “the custodial rights of parents over their children.”14 Several state
legislators from Boston opposed busing, including Raymond Flynn, the
state representative from South Boston, and that neighborhood’s state
senator, William Bulger.

To facilitate their much-needed attendance, Hicks scheduled the
Committee’s weekly meetings at City Hall on Fridays, when both houses
of the Massachusetts General Court were in recess. Into mid-March,
“attendance was by invitation only, and was limited to the longtime anti-
busing activists . . . along with people who were effectively organizing
neighborhood anti-busing organizations.”15 Those people were primarily

59

women such as Rita Graul, also Hicks’s administrative assistant, Virginia
Sheehy, and Pat Ranese, all from South Boston. Representing East Boston
was Pixie Palladino, and from Hyde Park came Fran Johnnene.

By mid-March, the Save Boston Committee went public, announcing
as its chair Thomas O’Connell, a Hyde Park father of seven. O’Connell
informed the press that while the assorted neighborhood groups would
come together for one mass march on April 3, 1974, marchers from each
neighborhood represented would be identifiable by colored armbands.
According to the Boston Globe, the colors were “drawn by lot . . . South
Boston, to no one’s disappointment, drew green. Orange went to East
Boston, blue to West Roxbury and Roslindale, purple to Hyde Park, red
to Dorchester.”16

The urban educational specialist J. Brian Sheehan has argued that
“the stress on neighborhoods grew out of the feeling many white
homeowners had that they were being pushed from the city.” The
solidarity of ethnically distinct enclaves that political scientist Emmett H.
Buell, Jr., labels “defended neighborhoods” was also deeply rooted in the
recognition that “even a common cause could not overcome traditional
neighborhood parochialism.”17 Although grassroots concerns would
eventually undermine unity and challenge leadership, solidarity was the
order of the day on April 3. Armbands in place, the estimated 20,000-plus
marchers proceeded from City Hall Plaza to the State House to make clear
their opposition to the RIA. School Committee Chair John J. Kerrigan
“had ribbons tied all over his left arm,” while Louise Day Hicks made
clear her desire to transcend her South Boston powerbase by wearing, as a
New York Times reporter noted, “an arm band of many colors.”18 Despite
the impressive turnout of busing foes on the eve of the sixth anniversary
of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., the Massachusetts state
legislature did not repeal the RIA. Thus, there appeared no way to stop
what many on both sides of the issue assumed would be some form of
court-ordered busing in Boston. School desegregation in the city that
often touted itself as “the cradle of liberty” seemed inevitable. Shortly
after Judge Garrity’s order came down on June 21, 1974, the Save Boston
Committee chose a new name, one more befitting perhaps its increasingly
aggressive stance against busing.

A month before the Garrity ruling, an old friend drove Hicks to visit
yet another friend, Marjorie Walsh, the principal of Roxbury’s Maurice
J. Tobin School. While in the car, Hicks and her friend, also a teacher,
discussed a new “more dynamic name” for the Save Boston Committee.
The Boston Globe reported that:

“MILITANT MOTHERS”: BOSTON, BUSING, AND THE BICENTENNIAL OF 1976

Historical Journal of Massachusetts • Fall 201060

We said we had to be strong, to show courage, that our voice
had not been heard,” Mrs. Hicks later would recall. “In the
back seat of the car I noticed a stuffed lion, a child’s toy, and
I said, ‘Maybe we could roar.’” Roar! They thought about it
a moment. It sounded right. It could be an acronym. They
tried words to form the acronym, eventually coming up with
“Restore Our Alienated Rights,” a name the committee adopted
several weeks later.19

Initially led by Hicks, ROAR was at first a rather loose, semi-secret
organization of both men and women opposed to “forced” busing.20 They
were inspired in part by the actions of those who brought revolutionary

May 2, 19

73

Louise Day Hicks (lower right) at a large gathering of demonstrators outside the
State House in Boston to protest busing of school children and to repeal the state’s
racial imbalance law. Source: PBS, “Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights
Movement, 1954-85,” Teacher’s Resources at www.pbs.org.

61

politics to the streets of Boston in the 1770s. Now, two centuries later,
they were willing to take to the streets to make their grievances heard.
Throughout, women — as well as a rather traditional gender ideology —
played an active role. Thus, while women held a majority of the leadership
positions, both within the neighborhood chapters of ROAR and the city-
wide executive board, and in the rank-and-file, they did so explicitly as
mothers.

On the eve of the first day of school, Boston Mayor Kevin H. White
also acknowledged his female constituents’ maternal role. In a televised
address on the night of Monday, September 11, White said, “I have
listened to mothers and I have heard the anguish in their voices — voices
explaining inconvenience and hardship that parents and children both will
be forced to endure.”21 That anguish would be voiced even more loudly by
the women with the start of the school year the next morning.

When the buses rolled on September 12, 1974, all involved knew this
would be no ordinary school year in Boston. Many white parents opted to
send their children elsewhere, to parochial schools if they could afford it,
or out of town if they could arrange such.22 Some just kept their children
at home, out of concern for their safety or in support of the boycott called
by ROAR. Absenteeism was especially acute in the middle- and high-
school grades, averaging 50 percent of those enrolled for the first six
months of the school year. Of the 1,300 students enrolled at South Boston
High School, only 124 attended the first day, 56 of whom were African
American students bused from Roxbury.

An even smaller fraction — less than a tenth of those assigned —
of white South Boston students got on the bus to start the school year
at Roxbury High. There, the 44 white students were welcomed by
neighborhood parents and volunteers from Freedom House, an African
American community-organizing center.23 It was a very different scene
across town at South Boston High, where violence was a constant
throughout the fall. Local and national media outlets covered the frequent
stoning of the buses that brought black students from Roxbury to South
Boston High; the angry white crowds, men and women who stood outside,
yelling racist epithets; the gauntlet that black students had to pass through
each day; and the graffiti-scrawled walls reading “Never!” and “Niggers
Go Home!”24

The violence reached a crescendo on December 11, when a black
student stabbed a white student at South Boston High. The day before,
as South Boston High English teacher Ione Malloy noted in her journal,
“There was a milk-and-food fight in the cafeteria at lunchtime. Two black

“MILITANT MOTHERS”: BOSTON, BUSING, AND THE BICENTENNIAL OF 1976

Historical Journal of Massachusetts • Fall 201062

students and one white student were suspended.”25 That day, there was also
a riot at Walpole State Prison, hence the usual contingent of state troopers
was not on duty at the high school the following day when seventeen-year-
old senior Michael Faith of South Boston stepped in to try to break up a
fight and was stabbed by James White, an African American student from
Roxbury. Tension had been mounting at the school for weeks and now
pandemonium ensued as “a voice on the loudspeaker ordered the white
students to leave the building.”

Many of the white students joined the ever-present mob outside that
swelled to a thousand or more as the news of the incident spread. White
South Boston mothers who the day before might have been taking part in
the frequent “mothers’ prayer vigils” were this day, according to the New
York Times, yelling “a stream of racial invective and jibes at the police.”26
As school officials scrambled to get the black students out of the building
safely and onto the buses, police cruisers and other cars were overturned
in the street in front of the high school, and windows were shattered. As
the mood became increasingly angrier, Louise Day Hicks stood atop the
high school steps and tried to calm the crowd. Looking “distraught,” as
the Boston Globe would later remark, she took the bullhorn offered her by
State Senator William Bulger who stood at her side.

Her chestnut-brown hair, usually so meticulously coiffed, was
dull and windblown . . . Her face . . . was ashen without makeup
and deeply lined with worry. In more than a decade of leading
the antibusing movement, she was without peer in speaking
to angry crowds; no one could equal her remarkable ability to
focus the seething anger and frustration of these people, her
people. But Louise Day Hicks had never faced a challenge like
this before.27

Hicks assured the crowd that “Mikey,” the injured student, was stable,
but she was booed when she announced that the high school would be
closed for the rest of the week. Hicks implored the crowd to step aside
so the 125 black students, who had been herded into three classrooms in
the rear of the building, could board the buses and “go back to Roxbury.”
The crowd roared back, “Bus ‘em back to Africa.” Hicks then pleaded,
“Do it for me. I’m asking you because I’ve been with you all the way. We
have nothing to gain by keeping them here. Please help me!” According
to the Globe, a “burly man” yelled back, “Shut up, Louise.” Ione Malloy
remarked in her journal that Hicks “looked scared.” 28 More than thirty

63

years later, Barbara Faith, sister of the stabbing victim and then a twenty-
year-old “transitional aide” at South Boston High recalled that:

the day that Michael got stabbed, I think it shocked [Hicks],
how much hate was engendered, and a lot of it had to do with
this building up of all the ‘never, never, never’ thing. He got
stabbed, and there was a riot, and she stood up on those front
stairs asking people to go home. It’s like, “Hello! Barn doors
open, baby; you started this! People are not going to go home
quietly.” And there were riots. It was horrible.29

Indeed, the alleged remarks of Pixie Palladino as reported by the Globe
seem to fit the tenor of the scene on the steps of South Boston High — and
reflect the beginnings of a brief and eventually divisive power shift within
ROAR. Alerted by phone of the situation, Palladino left her East Boston
home and joined the South Boston melee, yelling at police, according to
the Globe, “the worst Italian curse you can make.” She went on to say,
“I’ve had it. How much more can people take? This has been happening
too long and it’s not going to stop until they stop sending those kids over
here.”30

Finally, four very tense hours after the stabbing, decoy buses left the
front of the building as the 125 black students were rushed onto other
buses out the back. With the high school now closed until the new year,
hardly anyone in this troubled city expected the situation to improve.

ROAR was a visible presence that December day as it had been
throughout the fall. But as 1975 began, the organization shifted its focus
from the streets to public venues seemingly unrelated to the “busing crisis.”
Such was the case when 150 ROAR members decided to attend what was
supposed to be the ceremonial signing of a state proclamation declaring
1975 as “International Women’s Year.” The women told the Boston Globe
that they were there for this meeting of the Massachusetts Commission
on the Status of Women because “We’re women too.” Wearing what had
become ROAR’s trademark blue and gold tam o’shanter and sporting
buttons reading “STOP FORCED BUSING,” many of the women also
carried small American flags.

According to the Globe, “For the next hour and a half, there was a
noisy and hostile confrontation between the mothers of South Boston,
Charlestown, and Hyde Park and the generally affluent and suburban
women who sit on the commission.”31 Interestingly, although the liberal
Boston paper referred to the white working-class Boston women as

“MILITANT MOTHERS”: BOSTON, BUSING, AND THE BICENTENNIAL OF 1976

Historical Journal of Massachusetts • Fall 201064

The Soiling of Old Glory
Stanley Forman

Boston Herald American

The photograph depicts a white teenager, Joseph Rakes, about to assault black
lawyer and civil-rights activist Ted Landsmark with a flagpole. It was taken in
Boston on April 5, 1976, during a protest against court-ordered desegregation
busing. It appeared in newspapers across the country and won the 1977 Pulitzer
Prize for Spot Photography. Source: PBS, “Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil
Rights Movement, 1954-85,” Teacher’s Resources at www.pbs.org.

65

September 16, 1974

African American students are bused back to the Roxbury section from South
Boston under a heavy police escort. Source: PBS, “Eyes on the Prize: America’s
Civil Rights Movement, 1954-85,” Teacher’s Resources at www.pbs.org.

“MILITANT MOTHERS”: BOSTON, BUSING, AND THE BICENTENNIAL OF 1976

Historical Journal of Massachusetts • Fall 201066

“mothers,” it did not so designate the “suburban women,” — many of
whom were most likely mothers as well. While some of the ROAR women
appeared to harbor hostility, others simply asked for a forum. The Globe
quotes one woman as saying, “We want someone to listen to us.”

Perhaps the Globe declined to emphasize the motherhood of suburban
women because it was clear that political and class differences were in
play. After pleading to be heard, one ROAR woman asked, “Why can’t
poor white kids be bused to your suburban schools?” Yet another woman,
who according to the Globe, “burst into tears, pointed her finger at the 40
or so commission members sitting on the other side of the room,” said,
“Until the very end, we’ll fight.”32

Three months later, the women of ROAR were still willing to fight, this
time at a state ERA rally held in Boston’s historic Faneuil Hall. When the
ROAR women descended upon the April 9 rally, they did so, according
to Pixie Palladino, because the pro-ERA forces had “failed to recognize
the busing controversy as a ‘women’s issue.’”33 Co-opting the language of
the modern women’s movement was potentially a shrewd way to mask the
otherwise overt racism that was at the core of ROAR’s ideology. At the
same time, it also allowed conservative ROAR women to make a public
statement against feminism as they sought to maintain traditional gender
roles they viewed as under assault.

This new, more confrontational approach as represented by Palladino
was part of the shift in ROAR leadership that had begun after the stabbing
at South Boston High in December 1974. The shouting down of Louise
Day Hicks was a sign of things to come. Revered by many and recognized
as the “Mother Superior” of anti-busing in Boston, Hicks was solidly
middle class, the daughter of a respected judge who still lived in the South
Boston manse in which she had grown up, and was herself an attorney.34
A tall woman, Hicks was known for her flowery hats and her soft voice, in
which she often expressed concern for all “the boys and girls” in Boston’s
school system. As School Committee Chair, Hicks had steadfastly refused
to implement the Racial Imbalance Act throughout the 1960s. Now, as a
city council member, the fifty-eight-year-old grandmother maintained her
polite-but-determined stance against desegregation and, as already noted,
had been a co-founder of ROAR in the spring of 1974. Dismissed by many,
then and since, as a political opportunist who was merely pandering to
the white racism of her South Boston constituency, Hicks was more
complicated than that.35

Hicks’s style of quiet-but-dogged resistance to desegregation through
busing, however, was in the process of being eclipsed in the spring of

67

1975. The shift is best represented by the increased public profile of Pixie
Palladino. In his examination of the fight over busing in Boston, Common
Ground, J. Anthony Lukas describes Palladino as “a tough-talking, street
savvy daughter of an Italian shoemaker from East Boston, accused of
punching Ted Kennedy in the stomach at a rally and cursing a Catholic
monsignor, who even after her election to the School Committee [in the fall
of 1975] was heard muttering about ‘jungle bunnies’ and ‘pickaninnies.’”36
The forty-two-year-old mother of two was hardly “muttering” as she led
the 50 or so ROAR women into the April 9 ERA rally.

According to the Boston Globe, the “catcalls, chanting and singing”
[“Southie is My Home Town”] of the ROAR women “forced Kitty
Dukakis, wife of Governor Michael Dukakis, to leave the building.”37
Carrying signs that read “Feminists Do Not Represent [the] American
Majority” and “Busing Stinks,” the ROAR women loudly chanted “STOP
ERA” when anyone attempted to speak.

Yet another sign some ROAR women held read, “Retire Women
Legislators Who Support the Equal Rights Amendment” — somewhat
ironic given that during her one term in Congress (1971-1973), Louise Day
Hicks had supported passage of the ERA.38 But now, in the spring of 1975,
these militant mothers were better represented by the vocal Palladino who
led the “catcalls.” Even the venerable Florence Luscomb, who had fought
for women’s suffrage in the 1910s and many another progressive causes
in the decades since, was “shouted down” when she tried to remind the
ROAR women that they were in “Faneuil Hall, the Cradle of Liberty.”39

Evoking Bicentennial rhetoric, especially in Boston, was quite common
in 1975; ROAR was hardly alone in using the occasion to advance its
agenda. By then, however, ROAR goals were expanding beyond fighting
desegregation and crystallizing into a deepening discontent with liberal
politics in general. The elite members of the Boston 200 organizing
committee must have been gnashing their teeth that the “busing crisis”
coincided with what was to be a lengthy and multi-faceted celebration
of 1776 in the “Cradle of Liberty.”40 How many tourist dollars were lost
remains unclear but surely many out-of-towners opted to forego a trip to
the racially charged, frequently violent Boston of the mid-1970s. Those
tourists who dared to attend the 205th anniversary of the Boston Massacre
would have seen ROAR out in full force.

On March 5, 1975, an estimated 400 ROAR members gathered at City
Hall, in the city council chamber that Louise Day Hicks allowed them to
use for their weekly Wednesday night meetings. The ROAR contingent
then marched a few blocks to the Old State House where a reviewing stand

“MILITANT MOTHERS”: BOSTON, BUSING, AND THE BICENTENNIAL OF 1976

Historical Journal of Massachusetts • Fall 201068

was in place for the annual re-enactment of the Colonial confrontation in
which British troops fired on a crowd of demonstrators, killing five. Now,
205 years later, ROAR marched as in a funeral procession, some carrying a
coffin in which a young woman lay, representing, according to the attached
placard, “Miss Liberty, b. 1776 – d. 1974.” Others carried signs that read:
“Have You Ever Seen the Words Forced Busing in the Constitution?,”
“Boston Mourns Its Lost Freedom,” and the more ominous, “If You Think
This Is a Massacre, Just Wait!”41 Upon reaching the reviewing stand, the
assembled ROAR men and women sang “The Star Spangled Banner,”
“America,” and “Southie is My Home Town,” the self-proclaimed ROAR
anthem (set to the tune of the “Colonel Bogey March”). They then chanted
“Garrity Killed Liberty” until reenactment sponsors asked them to stop so
that the evening’s true “entertainment” could begin.42

A month later, ROAR was also a presence at City Hall Plaza for
Boston’s Patriots’ Day celebration, marking that day in April 1775 when
the American Revolutionary War officially began in nearby Concord and
Lexington. The 15,000 spectators in attendance were treated to a concert
from multiple marching bands and orchestras from around the country, all
2,000 musicians led by Boston Pops Orchestra conductor Arthur Fiedler.
But if anyone cared to look up from the Plaza they would have seen,
according to the Boston Globe, ROAR’s “initials . . . prominently displayed
in the windows of City Hall’s fifth floor offices. And on the balcony
of the office of City Councilwoman Louise Day Hicks . . . a man held
ROAR’s red, green and, white flag throughout the celebration.”43 ROAR
was not present to celebrate America’s Bicentennial. As one South Boston
woman asked the journalist J. Anthony Lukas, “How can we celebrate our
country’s history when we are being denied the very rights we fought for
in the Revolution?” But when Lukas asked if they were revolutionaries,
several ROAR women responded, “No, no . . . we’re conservatives . . . We
want to go back to the old way.”44

There would be no going back. The city of Boston was forever
changed, even scarred by the violent and ultimately unsuccessful battle to
desegregate its schools.45 Certainly, for many women — ethnic American
and working-class, formerly involved in little more than their churches
and their families, their participation in ROAR changed them even as they
claimed to be seeking a return to the past. As one woman commented at
the time, “I know it’s changed me for good. In the beginning, we’d never
have been in politics, we were very shy. Now courtrooms don’t bother
us.”46

69

Writing in the fall of 1976 for one of Boston’s alternative news
weeklies, The Real Paper, author Kathleen Kilgore referred to the anti-
busing women she interviewed as “militant mothers” who were motivated
by maternal concerns regarding the safety of their children. Kilgore, like
the women of ROAR, downplayed the racism that was the heart and soul
of the organization. Although these “militant mothers” often too glibly
denied the racist implications of their struggle, it was true that other
issues concerned them as well. ROAR leader Virginia Sheehy claimed
emphatically that ROAR’s struggle was class-based. Kilgore quotes
Sheehy as saying, “if busing went away tomorrow, I know we’d go on to
something else. The whole thing about class — and busing is really a class
issue — about who gets what in this country, that would still be there.”47

Like many of the ROAR women, Sheehy had long been involved in the
Home and School Association, Boston’s equivalent of the PTA. Unlike
many of them, Sheehy had been a community activist even before busing,
working with the Sierra Club in its attempt to halt the expansion of Logan
Airport. In that effort, Sheehy told The Real Paper that she had worked
alongside black women from the Columbia Point section who were equally
concerned about the effects of airport expansion on their neighborhood.
But, said Sheehy, such “links” were a thing of the past. “Busing has torn
the fabric that linked us.” On the more positive side, she felt that busing
had generated a much-needed skepticism among working-class white
Bostonians regarding two long-standing pillars of their community,
the Catholic church and the Democratic party. “It has brought us out of
ourselves. It woke us up to where the real power lies.”48

Yet another “militant mother” profiled by Kilgore was Agnes Smith,
a former public school teacher and mother of two. Smith resigned from
ROAR’s executive board to serve as the unpaid principal of Liberty
Academy in her Dorchester neighborhood, one of the several alternative
private schools opened by white parents opposed to busing. Kilgore
reported that Smith felt the more confrontational tactics employed by
ROAR had been “overdone,” but that what she was now doing, “giving
children a decent education when they wouldn’t be getting one otherwise
is a lot more important, even if it never makes the six o’clock news.”49 So,
too had Roslindale mothers Terry Libby and Joan Philips moved from
ROAR demonstrations to reviewing textbooks for questionable content
and speaking on such matters to interested parents’ groups in the Boston
suburbs. But Kathleen Kilgore did not see the women she interviewed as
feminists — far from it. She concludes her Real Paper piece by noting
that:

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Historical Journal of Massachusetts • Fall 201070

The ROAR women I talked to seem to spend little time worrying
about their own personal motivations, or whether they are
doing the right thing — as women in the women’s liberation
movement do. The women in the anti-busing movement are
not rejecting their own values — instead, they believe they are
reaffirming them, fighting for what their parents, their schools
and their church have taught them.50

Indeed, countless white women, from South Boston to Hyde Park, from
East Boston to Charlestown, took to the streets — as mothers who saw
themselves protecting the interests of their families. They learned how to
write letters to political officials, draft petitions, set up their own schools,
engage in confrontational demonstrations, make court appearances with
relative ease, and swear at police and elected officials with even greater
confidence. Using tactics honed by progressive movements for social
change, these conservative women made their stand.

After its founding in 1974, ROAR established a more formal
organizational structure and even attempted to build a national movement.
By 1976, though, many of the parochial concerns Buell notes beset defended
neighborhoods had reared their heads. ROAR was riven with factional in-
fighting and began to fade away the following year.51 Nonetheless, ROAR
left its mark on those who participated in it. The militant mothers of ROAR
found their voice, an outlet for their conservatism, and a frequently racist
channel for their anger, fears, and frustrations.

It can be argued that by 1977 — when Louise Day Hicks lost her
seat on the Boston City Council and Pixie Palladino lost her School
Committee post to its first African American member, John O’Bryant
— the crisis had passed. That was hardly the case. Over the next several
decades, other issues emerged that energized a growing conservative
movement, including abortion, sex education in schools, immigration,
and homosexuality. Each was viewed as a threat to a perceived traditional
way of American life. Under the mantle of “motherhood,” conservative
women have often led such cultural battles. That they do so employing
the tactics of the feminists they so criticize is deeply ironic. The emerging
American conservative movement was transformed during the 1970s
and gained momentum because of the actions and apparent “success” of
groups such as ROAR. The “Silent Majority” found its voice, contributing
to the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, the election of a Republican
majority in Congress, and slowing the pace of liberal reform.

71“MILITANT MOTHERS”: BOSTON, BUSING, AND THE BICENTENNIAL OF 1976

The historian Ronald Formisano has summed up the struggle to
desegregate the Boston schools as “a war nobody won.”52 The Boston
public school system experienced an ever-shrinking white-student
population — 60 percent of all students enrolled in Boston schools were
white in 1974; by 1999 just 15 percent were. It also faced threats of lawsuits
brought by white parents claiming their children were victims of reverse
discrimination. Thus, in July of 1999, the Boston School Committee voted
to end race-based school assignments. Two months later, Judge W. Arthur
Garrity, the man who put the wheels in motion twenty-five years earlier,
died of cancer in his Wellesley home.53

Many of the “militant mothers” have since died as well, Louise Day
Hicks in 2003, Elvira “Pixie” Palladino in 2006, and scores of the rank-
and-file, dedicated to stopping “forced busing” in Boston. Each had
used tactics borrowed from feminism, but in the defense of traditional
conservative values. Many of these women were transformed into skilled
activists. In turn, these “militant mothers” energized modern American
conservatism in a profound way.

HJM

Notes

1 Maria Karagianis, “Women protest busing, Gov. Dukakis stays away,” Boston
Sunday Globe, Jan. 12, 1975, pp. 1, 8.

2 The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was a proposed amendment to the U.S.
Constitution that was intended to guarantee that equal rights under any federal,
state, or local law would not be denied on account of sex. The ERA was originally
written by Alice Paul and first introduced into the U.S. Congress in 1923. In 1972,
it passed both houses of Congress but failed to gain ratification by more than 35
states before its June 30, 1982, deadline. On July 21, 2009 Representative Carolyn
B. Maloney, Democrat from New York, reintroduced the ERA in the U.S. House
of Representatives.

3 The classic scholarly examination remains Ronald P. Formisano, Boston
Against Busing: Race, Class, and Ethnicity in the 1960s and 1970s (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina, 1991); see also: Thomas M. Begley, “The
Organization of Anti-Busing Protest in Boston, 1973-1976” (Ph.D. diss,
Cornell University, 1981); Emmett H. Buell, Jr., with Richard A. Brisbin, Jr.,
School Desegregation and Defended Neighborhoods: The Boston Controversy
(Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company, 1982); J. Michael Ross and William

Historical Journal of Massachusetts • Fall 201072

M. Berg, “I Respectfully Disagree with the Judge’s Order”: The Boston School
Desegregation Controversy (Washington, DC: University Press of America,
1981); J. Brian Sheehan, The Boston School Integration Dispute: Social Change
and Legal Maneuvers (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984); Jack
Tager, Boston Riots: Three Centuries of Social Violence (Boston: Northeastern
University Press, 2001), Chapters 9 and 10; D. Garth Taylor, Public Opinion &
Collective Action: The Boston Desegregation Conflict (Chicago: The University
of Chicago Press, 1986); and Steven J. L. Taylor, Desegregation in Boston and
Buffalo: The Influence of Local Leaders (Albany: State University of New York
Press, 1998). Journalistic accounts abound as well; here, the standard-bearer is
J. Anthony Lukas, Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three
American Families (New York: Vintage Books, 1986); see also: Jon Hillson,
The Battle of Boston: Busing and the Struggle for School Desegregation (New
York: Pathfinder Press, 1977); Alan Lupo, Liberty’s Chosen Home: The Politics
of Violence in Boston (Boston: Beacon Press, 1988, first published 1977). Two
memoirs have also enriched my understanding of this time and place: Michael
Patrick MacDonald’s haunting account of growing up in South Boston, All Souls:
A Family Story from Southie (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999) and Ione Malloy,
Southie Won’t Go: A Teacher’s Diary of the Desegregation of South Boston High
School (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986).

4 Formisano, Boston Against Busing, p. 3.
5 Polly Welts Kaufman, “Building a Constituency for School Desegregation:

African-American Women in Boston, 1962-1972,” Teachers College Record, Vol.
92, 4 (Summer 1991): pp. 619-631; Jeanne F. Theoharis, “‘We Saved the City’:
Black Struggles for Educational Equality in Boston, 1960-1976,” Radical History
Review Vol. 81 (2001): pp. 61-93.

6 See, for example: Kathleen Blee, Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender in the
1920s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991) and her more recent work,
Inside Organized Racism: Women in the Hate Movement (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 2002); Donald T. Critchlow, Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots
Conservatism: A Woman’s Crusade (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2005); Rebecca E. Klatch, Women of the New Right (Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 1987) and, more recently, A Generation Divided: The New Left,
the New Right, and the 1960s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999);
Kim E. Nielsen, Un-American Womanhood: Antiradicalism, Anti-feminism, and
the First Red Scare (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2001).

7 Kim E. Nielsen, “Doing the ‘Right” Right,” Journal of Women’s History Vol.
16, 3 (2004): p. 171.

8 Abby L. Ferber, “Introduction,” in Home-Grown Hate: Gender and Organized
Racism, Abby L. Ferber, ed. (New York: Routledge, 2004), p. 11.

9 Formisano, Boston Against Busing, pp. 35-36.
10 Taylor, Public Opinion & Collective Action, p. 41.
11 Taylor, Public Opinion & Collective Action, p. 41.

73

12 There is a growing body of scholarship regarding the rise of modern
conservatism; see, for example: Rick Perlman, Nixonland: The Rise of a President
and the Fracturing of America (New York: Scribners, 2008); Bruce J. Schulman
and Julian E. Zelizer, eds., Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in
the 1970s (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008).

13 Theoharis, “’We Saved the City,’” p. 63.
14 See, for example, the Oral History Interview of Joanne Sweeney, OH-049.

John Joseph Moakley Archive Oral History Project, John Joseph Moakely Archive
and Institute, Suffolk University.

15 Taylor, Public Opinion & Collective Action, p. 77.
16 Richard Knox, Thomas Oliphant, and Ray Richard, “The First Year,” Boston

Sunday Globe, May 25, 1975, sec. A, p. 7; see also: Sheehan, The Boston School
Integration Dispute, pp. 185-186.

17 Knox, Oliphant, and Richard, “The First Year,” sec. A, p. 7.
18 Sheehan, The Boston School Integration Dispute, p. 186; Buell, School

Desegregation and Defended Neighborhoods, p. 135.
19 John Kifner, “Busing Opponents Protest in Boston,” New York Times, April

4, 1974, p. 37.
20 Knox, Oliphant, and Richard, “The First Year,” sec. A, p. 8.
21 Hillson, The Battle of Boston, p. 29.
22 John Kifner, “Boston Is Tense on Eve of Busing,” New York Times, Sept. 12,

1974, p. 41.
23 In his testimony before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights hearings held

in Boston in June 1975, Father John Boles, Director of Education, Archdiocese
of Boston, said that overall enrollment in the city’s Catholic schools actually
declined in 1974-75 as compared to 1973-74. Boles also made reference to the
proclamation of his superior, Humberto Cardinal Medeiros, in February 1974, that
he would not allow increased enrollment in Boston’s Catholic schools as a way
to escape busing. See: United States Commission on Civil Rights, Hearing Held
in Boston, Massachusetts, June 16-20, 1975, p. 210. While the official policy of
the Catholic church was in support of desegregation, D. Garth Taylor argues that,
“early attempts at moral leadership by Cardinal Medeiros and the Catholic church
hierarchy did not prevail. Anti-busing leaders found a receptive home for their
rhetoric in the Catholic doctrine of ‘parent’s control over children’s education’ —
at least as this doctrine was interpreted by the average parishioner.” See: Taylor,
Public Opinion & Collective Action, p. 103. Also worth noting, as does Taylor
(p. 100), in this predominately Catholic city (70 percent in 1980), “At the time of
Judge Garrity’s ruling, for instance, the mayor and all members of the city council
were Catholic.” So, too, the judge.

24 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, School Desegregation in Boston: A Staff
Report prepared for the hearing of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in Boston,
Massachusetts, June 1975 (Washington, DC, 1975), p. 18; Sheehan, The Boston
School Integration Dispute, p. 189; Buell, School Desegregation and Defended

“MILITANT MOTHERS”: BOSTON, BUSING, AND THE BICENTENNIAL OF 1976

Historical Journal of Massachusetts • Fall 201074

Neighborhoods, p. 108; Freedom House Institute on Schools and Education,
Boston Desegregation: The First Term, 1974-75 School Year (Roxbury, MA,
1975), John Joseph Moakley Papers, John Joseph Moakley Archives and Institute,
Suffolk University, Boston, MA.

25 Formisano, Boston Against Busing, p. 141; in an interesting comparison of
methods of protest in Northern Ireland and South Boston, the scholar Jack Santino
refers to South Boston anti-busing demonstrations as “street theater,” also arguing
that there is a continuum from graffiti to mural.” See Santino, “Public protest and
Popular Style: Resistance from the Right in Northern Ireland and South Boston,”
American Anthropologist Vol. 101, 3 (Sept., 1999): pp. 515-528, quotes, p. 524,
p. 522. Perhaps the explosion of racist graffiti explains, in part, why in 1975 the
Boston Mayor’s Office of Culture Affairs coordinated a murals project in South
Boston with the theme “pride of Southie,” stressing “notable historical events and
landmarks of the district.” See: Mark Favermann, “Community Mural projects of
1975 and 1977 at Boston, Mass., USA,” Leonardo Vol. 11, 4 (Autumn 1978): p.
298.

26 Malloy, Southie Won’t Go, pp. 50-51. See also: Formisano, Boston Against
Busing, pp. 81-82; Sheehan, The Boston School Integration Dispute, pp. 194-
196;

27 John Kifner, “South Boston Schools Shut in Clashes Over Stabbing,” New
York Times, Dec. 11, 1974, p. 28.

28 Knox, Oliphant, and Richard, “The First Year,” sec. A, p. 19.
29 Knox, Oliphant, and Richard, “The First Year,” sec. A, p. 19; Malloy, Southie

Won’t Go, p. 53.
30 Oral History Interview of Barbara Faith, OH-063. John Joseph Moakley Oral

History Project, John Joseph Moakley Archive and Institute, Suffolk University,
Boston, MA.

31 Gary MacMillan, “Crowd got blood it was looking for, but it was its own,”
Boston Globe, Dec. 12, 1974, p. 28.

32 Karagianis, “Women protest busing, Gov. Dukakis stays away,” p. 1.
33 Ibid., p. 8.
34 Jean Dietz and Robert J. Anglin, “Equal rights rally disrupted by busing foes,”

Boston Globe, April 10, 1975, p. 1.
35 Formisano, Boston Against Busing, p. 2.
36 For Hicks as “political opportunist,” in addition to Formisano, Lukas, and

Lupo, see also: George V. Higgins, Style Versus Substance: Boston, Kevin White,
and the Politics of Illusion (New York: MacMillan Publishing Co., 1984).

37 Lukas, Common Ground, p. 137.
38 Dietz and Anglin, “Equal rights rally disrupted by busing foes,” p. 1.
39 Joan Kuriansky, Louise Day Hicks, Democratic Representative from

Massachusetts (Ralph Nadar Congress Project, 1972), p. 18.
40 Dietz and Anglin, “Equal rights rally disrupted by busing foes,” p. 1.
41 “The Bicentennial Begins in Boston,” advertisement in the New York Times,

75

Mar. 23, 1975, p. 364; see also: Christopher Capozzola, “’It Makes You Want
to Believe in the Country’: Celebrating the American Bicentennial in an Age
of Limits.” In Beth Bailey and David Farber, eds., America in the Seventies
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004), pp 29-49.

42 James Ayers, “Busing foes take their protest to reply of Boston Massacre,”
Boston Globe, Mar. 6, 1975, p. 6.

43 J. Anthony Lukas, “Who Owns 1776?” The New York Times Sunday Magazine,
May 18, 1975, p. 39.

44 Ron Hutson and Viola Osgood, “Crowds jam Plaza for Boston’s celebration,”
Boston Sunday Globe, April 20, 1975, p. 50.

45 Lukas, “Who Owns 1776?” p. 40.
46 According to Ronald Formisano, “In 1973 roughly 60 percent of the students

in the public schools had been white. By 1980 the percentage had dropped to
35, by 1987 [two years after Judge Garrity ended his direct supervision of the
Boston school system] it was 26 percent.” See Formisano, Boston Against Busing,
pp. 210-211. Since then, the percentage of white students enrolled in the Boston
public schools has declined even further; in 2005 it stood at 14 percent according
to the Boston Globe online accessed June 1, 2010. NB: According to the U.S.
Census Bureau, in 2006 the percentage of Bostonians who were white was 56
percent of the city’s total population.

47 Kathleen Kilgore, “Militant Mothers: The Politicization of ROAR Women,”
The Real Paper, Nov. 13, 1976, sec. 4, p. 6.

48 Kilgore, “Militant Mothers,” sec. 4, p. 5.
49 Kilgore, “Militant Mothers,” sec. 4, p. 5.
50 Kilgore, “Militant Mothers,” sec. 4, p. 6.
51 Kilgore, “Militant Mothers,” sec. 4, p. 6; see also: Formisano, Boston Against

Busing, pp. 146-150.
52 Tager, Boston Riots, p. 219. ROAR would hold its first “national” convention

— in Boston, of course — in May of 1975. See convention pamphlet, Fran
Johnnene Papers, City of Boston Archives and Records Management, West
Roxbury, MA.

53 Formisano, Boston Against Busing, p. 203.
54 “A Change of Course in Boston,” New York Times, July 17, 1999, p. A12;

Carey Goldberg, “Judge W. Arthur Garrity Is Dead at 79,” New York Times, Sept.
18, 1999, p. A15.

“MILITANT MOTHERS”: BOSTON, BUSING, AND THE BICENTENNIAL OF 1976

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