Law Story: Mandatory School Busing

Image from Richmond, VA.

A story in the New York Times this morning describes new plans in Boston to modifying its 40-year-old plan for mandatory school busing, originally intended to alleviate de facto racial  segregation in public schools. When courts ordered busing in Boston, Detroit and a number of other cities in the 1970s, riots broke out. Protestors drove cars into traffic and blocked the buses. Mobs gathered, tear gas was used, police officers who opposed the busing plans stood by without acting. In 1978, Seattle was next in line to undertake busing, and I was assigned to do the related legal work for the City. My co-counsel was Paul Bernstein, whose specialty was criminal law; I would handle the civil side.

In Seattle, the City and the School District are independent entities, so there wouldn’t necessarily be any coordination between them when busing started.  The United States Department of Justice worried about that. Robert Lamb, Community Liaison Officer, called the City and the School District together and presented horror stories of what had happened in Detroit and Boston. At his suggestion, we planned for the day.

A memo went out to each City department, directing it to help within its scope of authority. Only the library stated an objection:  They could be asked to display materials about Brown v. Board of Education, for example, but they were an independent arm and agency of the City, so, respectfully, wouldn’t be told what to do. 

More responsively, the Police Department advised officers at roll-call that their duty was to keep the peace, regardless of personal opinions about busing. An emergency command center was established with senior-level commanders and dispatchers on duty to direct a police response as needed. Paul Bernstein stayed at the command center in case of any need to advise on any unusual arrest or citation issues that might arise on the street. The City notified its car-towing contractors to be ready to move any cars that tried to block passage of the buses. School and City Police public relations staff and school safety officers manned their posts. Then, right on time, the school buses began to roll.

After that—nothing happened. A minor skirmish at Roosevelt High School was personal, not race- or bus-related.  By mid-morning, the command center was shut down and anybody on overtime was sent home.

Eric rode the bus across town to the traditionally black high school, Garfield, until his graduation in 1985. When he started practicing law, he worked on a case that eventually hit the United States Supreme Court, and which departed from those cases that had allowed busing to achieve racial balance in schools. No longer could race be considered, even as a lower-tier tie-breaker, in assigning a child to a school that was over-subscribed. Demographics in Seattle and other busing cities changed around the school district lines, and today, many of the busing schools are as racially distinctive as they ever were.