busing, decline of detroit and it's schools

i searched but didn't find a specific thread addressing this issue, sorry if it's a repeat

i was born and raised in detroit, went to clark elementary until the day that the great social, economic, and racial equalizer of busing came into play, they wanted to ship me by bus 30 minutes away to a school, when i lived 1/2 a block on chatsworth from clark, and i was only in the first grade....

so i then went to st. clare parochial school until my parents were able to flee the city in 1976, selling their home on chatsworth for less than they purchased it only 7 years prior.... moving to the promised land of grosse pointe....

busing in itself is what destroyed the city, probably, and with understandable opposition, without it today you would probably have enclaves of viable school "district" areas in detroit, be them predominantly white, hispanic, or black, and its not argueable that most of the resulting poor and underfunded school districts would be predominantly black, but at minimal there would be within the city, areas where people with minimal means, could move and benefit from a viable schools

now, as the result of busing, the entire basic detroit school system is less desireable......

busing killed detroit......

declining, but it should be decline

Couldn't agree more. Busing killed Detroit. It was the stupidest idea ever conceived, not just in Detroit but also anywhere else.

Agreed, it was a dumb idea. We lived right near one of the best elementary schools, Edison, moved there on purpose, and when busing started, we didn't know where they would send the kid, so we opted out.

There is a long list of things that killed Detroit, but up until now I did not include busing, so I will have to add it. Of course if you think busing killed Detroit you should check out the busing history in South Boston during the early 70's.

Everybody hates Chris was a show about a kid being bussed to an all white school in another neighborhood. Did that kill new york?

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Originally Posted by sam

There is a long list of things that killed Detroit, but up until now I did not include busing, so I will have to add it. Of course if you think busing killed Detroit you should check out the busing history in South Boston during the early 70's.

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Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families, by J. Anthony Lukas

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Originally Posted by DetroitPlanner

Everybody hates Chris was a show about a kid being bussed to an all white school in another neighborhood. Did that kill new york?

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Exactly. I call b.s. -- there are plenty of places where busing was implemented far more than it was in metro Detroit that are thriving today. Why are Detroiters [[and former Detroiters) so myopic?

Let's just put it this way. The floodgates really opened as neighborhoods integrated in the 60s. Those incipient rumors about the schools going down started and provided additional impetus. The uprising of 1967 caused the exodus to extend to employers, and then busing hit. So it wasn't just busing, but it sure didn't help.

Flee Detroit... really? Sigh....

My parents "fled"[[?) Inkster and moved to the northwest side in 1978-79. I got bussed to Gompers Elementary [[although I lived closer to Edison). My first encounters with poor/low-income Whites [[Yikes!) Those classmates didn't know what to do with a pre-buppy smart nerdy Black girl. Oh yeah: Graduated from Renaissance High and got a full academic scholarship to college.

What's killing Detroit? Poor decisions by [[some) of everybody with any kind of association with the city. Bussing may not have been the best decision, but it certainly wasn't the worst.

i only reason from my experience, i remember our street on Chatsworth, sure it was homongenous white, everything the left hates, but it was awesome, i remember being safe, i remember being happy, riding around the blocks with no fear, playing at clark playgrounds.....

many of the residents of that street my parents are still in contact with, i attended UofM with one of the girls on the street I grew up with.... ALL left right around 1975-1976.... most to Grosse Pointe.....

i had a half a block safe walk to clark, why would anyone, black, white, green, EVER accept being bused 1/2 hour away from your family when the you were 1/2 a block away from the same school.....?????

im not saying that it would be 100% different today without it, but for sure, there would be many "pockets" of school districts in Detroit that would have remained desireable

they chose to divide and bus to the lowest common denominator and all suffered......

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Originally Posted by FoxyScholar10

Flee Detroit... really? Sigh....

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really? what do you think happened in the 70's??? my god, wake up.........

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Originally Posted by English

Exactly. I call b.s. -- there are plenty of places where busing was implemented far more than it was in metro Detroit that are thriving today. Why are Detroiters [[and former Detroiters) so myopic?

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what a great example, liberal hollywood version of busing, along with the humor of chris rock....... wish it was that easy.......

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Originally Posted by Goose

really? what do you think happened in the 70's??? my god, wake up.........

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Sigh.... I do not dispute the activities. I side-eye the use of the word "flee", although it appears to be an accurate description. It's the loaded sentiment of the term "flee" that is irksome, as it is still used today. Loaded with a victim mentality. Is "escape" a better word?

I suppose the more productive way to look at it is this: one should be grateful one had/has the resources to "flee". Just go and don't let the door hit ya where the Good Lord split ya. Alrighty then.

Back on topic: bussing [[or busing--the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary uses either word): good or bad for Detroit?

As has been pointed out many, many times in various threads, Detroit started declining in the 50's. That was long before there was any busing, so something more than that was going on. What is true is that if you still had neighborhood schools, then some neighborhoods might have decent schools, instead of everyone having poor ones, and some neighborhoods might have held up better than they actually have.

What is also true is that busing didn't actually accomplish its purpose, since the schools didn't really end up desegregated, nor did they improve. If Bradley v. Milliken had been decided differently, there might have been some point to it, but once the remedy was confined to the city limits, it was pretty clear busing wasn't going to accomplish anything. Nor did busing cause the riots, or the election of CAY. So I wouldn't defend it, but I don't really think you can hang too much on it either.

While I do remember the whole BUSING DEAL, And the bitching my parents and others did back then . I was not affected.I personally would not like the fact that my kids would have to attend school out of their neighborhood for no other reason then an experiment.That said.
I was reminded of the busing deal when my school district shut down a few schools.I did think about the time when busing was around, Yet this time it wasn't the happy blend it all together time, It was do to money problrms and lack of kids.
My Father left Detroit in '55, My Step Dad '57, as for busing killing Detroit, Well the nails were in the coffin when busing came around.There is no answer to why Detroit became the place it has and I know it will never be the same, busing, racism, et all and what not.

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Originally Posted by reddog289

There is no answer to why Detroit became the place it has and I know it will never be the same, busing, racism, et all and what not.

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Well, there is an answer, but no one wants to talk about it.

Busing, in fact, had almost no effect in Detroit. By the time it was implemented the city's school system was already about 80% black, and demographic effects [[wealthier families moving out at a consistent rate + a faster rate of decrease in white family sizes) meant that that percentage would have increased with or without busing. That's why it was abandoned here after a relatively short while. There was really little or no 'desegregating' to be done.

The fact is that the Detroit area segregated by municipality. This trend was already very apparent when Judge Roth made his original ruling back in the early '70s, by which time the city's schools were way over half black [[city schools had been blacker than the population for quite a while, in part due to the high number of kids who traditionally went to Catholic schools in Detroit). This is why he ordered busing across district lines, in order to desegregate schools across the entire metro area. That plan was struck down by higher courts after a protracted fight in the Bradley v. Milliken decision and was never implemented. The plan that was eventually implemented was for the city schools only, and was really quite limited in scope.

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Originally Posted by FoxyScholar10

I suppose the more productive way to look at it is this: one should be grateful one had/has the resources to "flee". Just go and don't let the door hit ya where the Good Lord split ya. Alrighty then.

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Go, but send money back.

While we didn't flee when busing began, I was pulled out of DPS and sent to a private school close to home. My parents had good reason for this...a single car family. With dad working 24 hour shifts and a 2nd job, mom was left without wheels. If something were to happen in school, mom would not be able to fetch me unless she took the bus. I am sure there were folks she could count on for a ride but that is the reason my family left DPS. There was a perfectly great elementary school right around the corner from us [[the reason my folks bought the house). They saw no reason to bus me to the east side.

While there are many practical arguments for keeping neighborhood schools in walking distance of the children attending the school, the philosophy in the 60s and 70s was that schools in a district could not be considered racially integrated unless all of the schools across the system were "balanced" so that if a system was 70% white and 30% black, all of the schools across the system had to be within a few points of that goal.

One of the ways this was done when residential patterns created black and white areas was to make an elementary school in the black area grades K-2 and a paired school in the white area grades 3-5 with cross-busing. We had this in Prince George County, VA in 1969-1972 when my kids were little and I was stationed at Ft Lee, VA and my kids were bused down to Disputanta, VA

Eventually, through the use of private schools, parochial schools, and just moving out of the district, people got around any busing which they considered to be unfair. Finally, it became sort of overcome-by-events as sprinkling the few remaining white kids evenly through the system became an exercise in futility and distrcits just decided to forgo the cost of busing.

Then Judge Roth in the Detroit area and Judge Merhige in the Richmond, VA area decided that school integration was such a compelling need, that they ordered cross-district busing to impose "meaningful integration" of schools. Many folks sold their homes and moved out to Imlay City [[or its Virginia counterpart) to avoid the possibility leading to the one lawyer asking Judge Merhige, "What will you do, chase them with helicopters?"

Finally cross-district busing was overturned on appeal and more and more school districts have gone back to neighborhood schools despite the fact that many of the schools are 100% black or Hispanic.

Hearing stories of you who were bused and are now adults is very interesting and I appreciate your sharing those memories. So much of the emotion of that turbulent experiment focused on the parents and their concerns. Not much was reported about the kids, probably because they were rarely interviewed and lacked perspective.

I share Eastside Al's assessment that Detroit was already well on its way down, so busing was not what 'killed' Detroit. Like the riot, which I have called the ton of bricks that broke the camel's back [when straw would have], busing likewise did not kill Detroit. It just tossed more bricks on the wounded camel.

The outcomes?

It severely wounded the DPS and allowed parochial, particularly Catholic schools, to endure far longer than they would have in a now Protestant city.

It also paved the rise of L. Brooks Patterson, whose code-speak tirades against busing became his avenue to power.

Our jewish parents who had "fled" in the 50s/60s to Oak Park/Southfield,were not going to allow their kids to be forced back to Detroit to attend school.Period.West Bloomfield here we come.I can remember all the dining room talk at the time,as I was about to start high school.How far is Brighton?

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Originally Posted by EastsideAl

Busing, in fact, had almost no effect in Detroit. By the time it was implemented the city's school system was already about 80% black, and demographic effects [[wealthier families moving out at a consistent rate + a faster rate of decrease in white family sizes) meant that that percentage would have increased with or without busing. That's why it was abandoned here after a relatively short while. There was really little or no 'desegregating' to be done.

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This is not so.

I was in elementary school [[A.L. Holmes) in the mid-late 1950s. Students began getting bused into that school about 1957-1958.

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Originally Posted by jiminnm

This is not so.

I was in elementary school [[A.L. Holmes) in the mid-late 1950s. Students began getting bused into that school about 1957-1958.

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Yes, but that was not part of a court-ordered plan to achieve racial integration of schools, which is what we are talking about here. Those didn't start until the 1970s, and the Detroit's federal court-ordered busing plan wasn't implemented until 1976 [[at which time only about 10% of students were indeed bused).

That's not to say that some students weren't transported by bus by the Detroit Board of Ed. themselves before that. In fact, in several cases they were, for various reasons. I was transported by bus to my middle school in 1971 and 72, but that was because the distance from my home and elementary school district was too great.

However, the Detroit school board apparently also used some busing to help keep schools segregated through the '50s and '60s. This was one of the pieces of evidence used to show a pattern of segregation by the DPS in the federal court case that led to the desegregation order. As was shown in the case [[and was well-known to people who worked in or with DPS administration), the school system had regularly moved district lines in order to keep some schools 'white' and other schools 'black,' or, as residential patterns changed, to create 'white' schools and 'black' schools in certain areas.

Sometimes these district lines were moved far enough that students needed to be bused to their school, or 'island' districts were created that required students from predominantly or increasingly black areas to be bused past a closer 'white' school to a 'black' school further away.

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Originally Posted by jiminnm

This is not so.

I was in elementary school [[A.L. Holmes) in the mid-late 1950s. Students began getting bused into that school about 1957-1958.

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That may have been to alleviate overcrowding at the source school. I was 'bused" to Jackson Intermediate in 1951-1953. There were no intermediate schools in the far east end. Elementary students from Wayne, Arthur, and Clark were bused to Jackson [[DSR charter buses) while the kids from Hosmer walked to Jackson.

I think it was sometime in the 1960s that forced busing for integration began on a large scale.

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Originally Posted by Lowell

It also paved the rise of L. Brooks Patterson, whose code-speak tirades against busing became his avenue to power.

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Ok, LBPs antics predate my existence, but, removing the racial code speak, wasn't the major issue busing across district lines? Isn't that valid objection? If not, why not?

It only made sense to do it cross-district, since Detroit schools were largely rebalancing into black majorities already. But, the cross-district plan would directly impact those families who left Detroit to get away from the rebalancing schools and whatever, so there was a huge court fight. Parents who left Detroit for school districts that better suited them sure didn't want their efforts reversed.

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Originally Posted by bailey

Ok, LBPs antics predate my existence, but, removing the racial code speak, wasn't the major issue busing across district lines? Isn't that valid objection? If not, why not?

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Within district busing was ordered by the courts to force integration and districts complied. When white flight rendered within district busing a moot point, two federal judges ordered busing across district lines to enforce integration. This was overturned on appeal.

Most school districts under integration orders have complied and one of two things happened. Either they successfully integrated their school system or white flight made busing ineffective and it was discontinued.

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Originally Posted by bailey

Ok, LBPs antics predate my existence, but, removing the racial code speak, wasn't the major issue busing across district lines? Isn't that valid objection? If not, why not?

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Can you imagine how pissed off parents that got their kids the hell out of Detroit only to be told by a federal judge "sorry we are going to force your child to travel an hour and half round trip because of our Utopian ideals of integration"

talk about activist judges

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Originally Posted by lincoln8740

Can you imagine how pissed off parents that got their kids the hell out of Detroit only to be told by a federal judge "sorry we are going to force your child to travel an hour and half round trip because of our Utopian ideals of integration"

talk about activist judges

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You speak as if the judges came up with the idea. The only thing judges can do is say whether the policy breaks the law or not.

It's not well-remembered now, but the Detroit Board of Ed. did try to head off busing back in 1970.

Pretty much everyone familiar with civil rights law and the case law of federal court decisions on school segregation at that time knew what was coming for Detroit, given its very racially segregated schools, which was some sort of court-ordered desegregation. But one of the things case after case consistently cited though was the failure of school boards and school system administrations to show some reasonable progress towards ending previous segregating practices. Some school systems that were found to be segregated but had begun instituting plans to address segregation and to end segregating practices had escaped large-scale busing orders, or had even avoided a busing order entirely.

The school board in Detroit attempted to begin dealing with this reality by approving a plan in 1970 that would have phased in over several years the redrawing of some high school district boundaries to be more geographically consistent. It was hoped that this plan would create greater racial integration in 12 of the city's 21 high schools, and enable Detroit to show the federal court that some progress was being made.

What followed was loud and vicious campaign that resulted in a recall election that unseated 4 school board members who had voted for the plan [[the only recall election in DPS history), and in the state legislature in Lansing passing a law that essentially killed the plan.

As the school board members who were deposed rightly warned at the time, the end result of the recall election and the action by the state legislature was that, under the case law in effect at that time, federal courts would essentially have no choice but to find the Detroit school board and the State of Michigan guilty of violating federal law and the constitutional rights of parents and students by acting to keep DPS schools racially segregated.

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Originally Posted by iheartthed

You speak as if the judges came up with the idea. The only thing judges can do is say whether the policy breaks the law or not.

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Lower Court Remedial Order which was overturned by a Higher Court

so.. then the whole "LBP is Michigan's answer to George Wallace standing in the school house door" is a bit of disingenuous hyperbole?

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Originally Posted by bailey

so.. then the whole "LBP is Michigan's answer to George Wallace standing in the school house door" is a bit of disingenuous hyperbole?

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I view the people that say that in the same category as the likes of BAMN.

Can you imagine the Milken case if it was decided the other way? It was 5 to 4 and the majority ripped the shit out of the Lower Court's "plan" but still.

My guess is that the result would have been an explosion of catholic and private schools

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Originally Posted by bailey

so.. then the whole "LBP is Michigan's answer to George Wallace standing in the school house door" is a bit of disingenuous hyperbole?

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It has to do with the Pontiac school desegregation fight in 1971. Not Detroit's.

L. Brooks Patterson first broke onto the public scene as the verbose, fear-spreading [["children are being sent to the hospital day after day") lawyer of Irene McCabe's group NAG that opposed school integration in Pontiac. A lot of nasty rhetoric was thrown about and a lot of noise was whipped up, culminating in the dynamiting of a schoolbus yard.

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Originally Posted by EastsideAl

It has to do with the Pontiac school desegregation fight in 1971. Not Detroit's.

L. Brooks Patterson first broke onto the public scene as the verbose, fear-spreading [["children are being sent to the hospital day after day") lawyer of Irene McCabe's group NAG that opposed school integration in Pontiac. A lot of nasty rhetoric was thrown about and a lot of noise was whipped up, culminating in the dynamiting of a schoolbus yard.

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I am confused--wasn't LBP the lawyer that argued the Milken case in front of the US supreme court?[[or part of the team) and didn't that case revolve around the cross-district busing of kids into and out of Detroit?

Pontiac came later or was it at the same time?

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Originally Posted by lincoln8740

I am confused--wasn't LBP the lawyer that argued the Milken case in front of the US supreme court?[[or part of the team) and didn't that case revolve around the cross-district busing of kids into and out of Detroit?

Pontiac came later or was it at the same time?

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Here are the lawyers involved in the Supreme Court arguments for the case.

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Frank J. Kelley, Attorney General of Michigan, argued the cause for petitioners in No. 73-434. With him on the brief were Robert A. Derengoski, Solicitor General, and Eugene Krasicky, Gerald F. Young, George L. McCargar, and Thomas F. Schimpf, Assistant Attorneys General. William M. Saxton argued the cause for petitioners in Nos. 73-435 and 73-436. With him on the brief in No. 73-435 were John B. Weaver, Robert M. Vercruysse, and Xhafer Orhan. Douglas H. West filed a brief for petitioner in No. 73-436.

J. Harold Flannery and Nathaniel R. Jones argued the cause for respondents in all cases. With them on the brief for respondents Bradley et al. were Jack Greenberg, Norman Chachkin, and Louis R. Lucas. George T. Roumell, Jr., and C. Nicholas Revelos filed a brief for respondents Board of Education for the School District of the city of Detroit et al. John Bruff and William Ross filed a brief for respondent Professional Personnel of Van [418 U.S. 717, 721] Dyke. Robert J. Lord filed a brief for respondents Green et al.

Solicitor General Bork argued the cause for the United States as amicus curiae urging reversal. With him on the brief was Assistant Attorney General Pottinger.Fn

Fn [418 U.S. 717, 721] Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were filed by Theodore L. Sendak, Attorney General, Donald P. Bogard, Deputy Attorney General, and William F. Harvey for the State of Indiana; by Lewis C. Bose and William M. Evans for the Metropolitan School District of Lawrence Township, Indiana, et al.; by Richard D. Wagner and Richard L. Brown for the town of Speedway, Indiana, et al.; and by Harold H. Fuhrman for the National Suburban League, Ltd.
Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed by Leonard P. Strickman for the city of Boston, Massachusetts; by Alexander A. Goldfarb for the city of Hartford, Connecticut; by Sanford Jay Rosen for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund; and by Inter-Faith Centers for Racial Justice, Inc.
Briefs of amici curiae were filed by Charles F. Clippert, Charles E. Keller, Thomas H. Schwarze, John F. Shantz, Raymond McPeters, Walter J. Guth, Jr., Raymond G. Glime, Tony Ferris, and Perry Christy for Bloomfield Hills School District et al.; by Stephen J. Pollak, Richard M. Sharp, and David Rubin for the National Education Assn.; and by David I. Caplan for the Jewish Rights Council.

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Basically, ask yourself if you would let you kids be bused 15 miles away when there is a school a few blocks away. You already know the answer.

Thing is, when you're a teen, everything is up for grabs. And when I was a teen I couldn't see one iota of difference between if my ass was whipped by blacks, or whites. Except maybe that the blacks might have a sense of humor about it. But parents are protective, and I can understand now why parents would have none of it, for GP's. Too much sh*t was comin' down too fast, and they punted. Ain't nothin' personal.

EastsideAl gave a nice summary of what happened. For all of the angst about busing, the parents of the day just shifted the issue from their children to their grands and great-grands to deal with 40-60 years later.

Integration of schools was a hot button social issue for mid-20th century America [[and Detroit), but it's everyday reality in 2010. No one is really talking about the rapid integration of suburban schools all over the nation. Inner-city parents are being either priced out of desirable urban neighborhoods [[not here), or are fleeing crime and crumbling schools [[here). Suburban districts and personnel seem almost shell-shocked, and neither policymakers nor researchers are paying much attention to the matter. They're too busy shuttering urban schools in favor of charters. The one aspect of the Waiting for Superman movie that I found valuable was the attention paid to the excessive tracking in suburban schools, which is how they are dealing with "diversity."

That is today's reality in SE Michigan, although it's interesting to read about what happened back in the 1960s and 1970s to provide historical context.

1975 my parents pulled me and my brother out of Marcy Elementary on the East Side, and sent us to a Catholic School for three years [[Marcy had one white student at the time and he was in Kindergarten and 1st Grade with me).

Parents told us the Public Schools were going down, but they were really tired of my older brother being chased back across E. Grand Blvd. because he was too small to be talking shit to his classmates. And he would be getting his ass kicked at Barbour for three years. But it did directly coincide with the "Busing Scare" and as soon as it subsided.......

My parents decided the quality of education was not any better [[Or boning out tuition) so back to DPS we went. Did a 45 minute DOT bus ride to West Side Public Schools from 5th grade to High School graduation [[Burton Intl, and Chadsey H.S.) by my choice. And my brother went back to the neighborhood schools.

At 10 years old, I saw the neighborhood schools going to shit and wanted no part of it, I sold my case to my parents and they sent me to school across the city.

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Originally Posted by lincoln8740

I am confused--wasn't LBP the lawyer that argued the Milken case in front of the US supreme court?[[or part of the team) and didn't that case revolve around the cross-district busing of kids into and out of Detroit?

Pontiac came later or was it at the same time?

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The Pontiac decision was earlier than Detroit. It was handed down in 1970, and upheld on appeal in 1971. The Pontiac school district's lawyer was Robert Manley from Cincinnati, who had fought off a similar case in Cincy a few years earlier. A couple of Patterson's partners were 'of council' for the appeal. The plaintiffs' attorney was head of the Oakland County NAACP, Elbert Hatchett.

The Pontiac desegregation plan was implemented in fall 1971. The Pontiac case was not heard by the Supreme Court because the busing issue had already been decided in a Charlotte NC case.

The Detroit case [[Bradley v Milliken) was decided in September 1971. In that case the judge decided that both the Detroit School Board and the State of Michigan had engaged in discriminatory practices that led to racial segregation in Detroit schools. The court also found that these practices had spread de facto segregation to nearby communities of Detroit.

The judge ordered the parties to come up with a desegregation plan to remedy the situation. The state proposed a number of plans to the court, none of which met the desegregation criteria the judge had set out. So, the court came up with its own plan, which involved Detroit and several nearby school districts. As it turned out, this plan was never implemented.

The Court of Appeals upheld both the desegregation ruling and the cross-district integration plan. In February 1974 the case was argued before the Supreme Court, and you can see above in Hermod's post who argued it, and L. Brooks Patterson was not involved. In July 1974 the Supreme Court issued its ruling that struck down the lower courts' cross-district plan, and sent the desegregation order back down to the District court so that they could put together a plan for implementation and monitoring for Detroit only.

This is the plan that was implemented in 1976. However, as I said above, by the time a plan was finally in place the city's schools were already about 80% black, which made any meaningful desegregation a practical impossibility. In the end, the busing plan only affected about 10% of students, and was phased out after just a few years.

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Originally Posted by EastsideAl

The Detroit case [[Bradley v Milliken) was decided in September 1971. In that case the judge decided that both the Detroit School Board and the State of Michigan had engaged in discriminatory practices that led to racial segregation in Detroit schools. The court also found that these practices had spread de facto segregation to nearby communities of Detroit.

The judge ordered the parties to come up with a desegregation plan to remedy the situation. The state proposed a number of plans to the court, none of which met the desegregation criteria the judge had set out. So, the court came up with its own plan, which involved Detroit and several nearby school districts. As it turned out, this plan was never implemented.

The Court of Appeals upheld both the desegregation ruling and the cross-district integration plan. In February 1974 the case was argued before the Supreme Court, and you can see above in Hermod's post who argued it, and L. Brooks Patterson was not involved. In July 1974 the Supreme Court issued its ruling that struck down the lower courts' cross-district plan, and sent the desegregation order back down to the District court so that they could put together a plan for implementation and monitoring for Detroit only.

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The Supreme Court found that the State of Michigan and the City of Detroit were responsible for segregation in Detroit by practices such as the drawing of school boundaries to maintain segregation. The Court also found that none of the fifty-seven suburban school districts which were included in the District Court order had been "fashioned" by the state to segregate the schools. In addition, none of the fifty-seven districts had ever practiced any form of de jure or de facto segregation. The Court was reluctant to do away with the local control of independent school districts and did not feel that a District Judge should be "managing" s "super district" solely for the purposes of desegregation. They sent the case back to the District Court with an OK to fix segregation in the Detroit School District alone. Al has said what happened after that.

High School is ultimately a segregating experience.

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Originally Posted by English

. For all of the angst about busing, the parents of the day just shifted the issue from their children to their grands and great-grands to deal with 40-60 years later.

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Yep going to the Supreme Court and fighting liberal utopian judges just "shifted the issue"

Thank god for those parents--I can't even imagine how worse off the schools would be today if they didn't fight the good fight.

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Originally Posted by bailey

so.. then the whole "LBP is Michigan's answer to George Wallace standing in the school house door" is a bit of disingenuous hyperbole?

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Those are your words and your hyperbole. Not sure why you put it "quotes"; it did not appear previously in this thread.

The analogy is inaccurate too. George Wallace already was governor when he did his grandstanding. LBP was a relative unknown who leveraged his opposition to busing to become Oakland County Executive much like Fieger rode Kervokian's horse to notoriety and name recognition. Exploiting a race issue is, however, the common thread between the two.

LBP furthered his codespeak-enhanced career by setting up Coleman Young and "Detroit" as his straw dogs. The behavior pattern is clear.

As to your question, "..wasn't the major issue busing across district lines? Isn't that valid objection? If not, why not"

Yes and many made that objection without exploiting negative emotions for personal benefit.

The decline of Detroit starts with political corruption, xenophobia, segregation, restrictive covenants, suburban building, the 1943 RACE RIOTS and the 1967 riots, acclerated white flight, insurance redlining, racial steering by various Detroit real estate brokers, the election of Coleman A.Young, sudden black dominance in Detroit city service after 1974, Detroit Police corruption, Detroit Public School corruption, the failing automobile manufacturing global market, the loss of various Detroit city Dept. Stores like Hudson's Kerns and Crowleys. The big finale of Detroit's decline was the KING KWAME Kilpatrick's Manoogian Parties to the textual healing with Christine Beatty.

WORD FROM THE STREET PROPHET

Can Detroit get any better than this for Neda sake?

Goose you hit the nail on the head. I graduated from Clark in 1976 and went to Finney ONE semester b/4 my parents put me in Bishop Gallagher.

We lived on Buckingham. Yes, it WAS a great area, busing is one of the factors that killed Detroit. I was a teacher and taught in Detroit and could write a book on the subject.

Quite frankly, when that was an all white area, it was great. The first blacks to move in were great folks. Then lower class blacks followed, crime when up, school scores and property values went down, and we all ran farther north to the very edge of Detroit up around Ball Duck Park. Got ran out of there too. Those areas are terrible now. Check the crime stats for zip 48224.

Letting the cops and firefighters move out of Detroit also had a huge impact
Blacks don't want their kids going to an all black school any more than white people do. Take my word for it.

Busing is a racial hoax.

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=44337

About 15% of black students do as well or better than whites on any given test. The other 85% do worse. There is 100 years of test data proving that. ACT, SAT MME and ASVAB tests all tell the same story. Can that be changed? I doubt it. In 1965 25% if black children were born out of wedlock. Today, 70%!

70% of black children r brn out of wedlock today. In 1960 25% were out of wedlock
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...toryId=4865449
so,
75% of black males drop out of high school in Detroit.
Detroit News, 2010
http://www.grpundit.com/2007/06/12/d...-dropout-rate/
so,
71% of high school dropouts come from fatherless homes. [[Source: National Principals Association Report on the State of High Schools.)
so
85% of youths in prisons grew up in fatherless homes [[Source: Fulton Co. Georgia jail populations, Texas Dept. of Corrections 1992)
and
AIDS is now the #1 killer of African-American women between the ages of 25 and 34
http://www.thebody.com/content/art45915.html
and
48% of US black women have herpes
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN0923528620100309

I sincerely FEAR what this country will look like in 75 years.

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Originally Posted by sam

There is a long list of things that killed Detroit, but up until now I did not include busing, so I will have to add it. Of course if you think busing killed Detroit you should check out the busing history in South Boston during the early 70's.

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To me, South Boston and the accompanying busing-related race tumult pretty much mirrors the Detroit experience.

As in Detroit, Boston has basically no white ethnics in its public schools, and very few middle class families of any race. Boston, despite the thriving downtown, strong economy, and gentrified neighborhoods, has a poor-performing, poverty-stricken public school system that is over 90% black and hispanic.

This shows that, no matter how prosperous the urban core, no matter how many yuppie neighborhoods are created/subsidized, urban public education remains an abject failure, and busing plays an important role in this failure.

This post [[see insert) sounds pretty racist to me [[and I'm a white girl with a "whole lotta soul" in her...to quote my students).

We left Detroit in 81 and moved to Livonia [[talk about a culture shock). I know my parents were against busing not for racial reasons but because we had but one vehicle and my dad was on 24 hour shifts at the time. Mom had to have us close in case of illness at school or things of that nature. We had a GREAT school within walking distance, 1 block [[Ann Arbor Trail...elementary, at the time). They were going to bus us to the deep East side and mom had heard the bus service was unreliable, at best. My parents took no chance that I might not make it home safely and in a reasonable time frame [[we would have been on the bus an hour each way...with all the stops). Needless to say, I missed walking home each day from AA Trail. When we moved, we moved within walking distance of ALL of the schools my sister and I would attend. Moving made it quite difficult for my dad, who still had city residency requirements for his job.

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Originally Posted by Goose

i only reason from my experience, i remember our street on Chatsworth, sure it was homongenous white, everything the left hates, but it was awesome, i remember being safe, i remember being happy, riding around the blocks with no fear, playing at clark playgrounds.....

many of the residents of that street my parents are still in contact with, i attended UofM with one of the girls on the street I grew up with.... ALL left right around 1975-1976.... most to Grosse Pointe.....

i had a half a block safe walk to clark, why would anyone, black, white, green, EVER accept being bused 1/2 hour away from your family when the you were 1/2 a block away from the same school.....?????

im not saying that it would be 100% different today without it, but for sure, there would be many "pockets" of school districts in Detroit that would have remained desireable

they chose to divide and bus to the lowest common denominator and all suffered......

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"This shows that, no matter how prosperous the urban core, no matter how many yuppie neighborhoods are created/subsidized, urban public education remains an abject failure, and busing plays an important role in this failure."

What? Busing hasn't had an impact on Detroit's school for 30 years.

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Originally Posted by Novine

"What? Busing hasn't had an impact on Detroit's school for 30 years.

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Doesn't seem like that to me.

Last I checked, the effects of busing are evident today. None of the neighborhoods destroyed [[in part) by busing have reverted to their pre-busing demographic.

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Originally Posted by DetroitTeacher

This post [[see insert) sounds pretty racist to me [[and I'm a white girl with a "whole lotta soul" in her...to quote my students).

We left Detroit in 81 and moved to Livonia [[talk about a culture shock). I know my parents were against busing not for racial reasons but because we had but one vehicle and my dad was on 24 hour shifts at the time. Mom had to have us close in case of illness at school or things of that nature. We had a GREAT school within walking distance, 1 block [[Ann Arbor Trail...elementary, at the time). They were going to bus us to the deep East side and mom had heard the bus service was unreliable, at best. My parents took no chance that I might not make it home safely and in a reasonable time frame [[we would have been on the bus an hour each way...with all the stops). Needless to say, I missed walking home each day from AA Trail. When we moved, we moved within walking distance of ALL of the schools my sister and I would attend. Moving made it quite difficult for my dad, who still had city residency requirements for his job.

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I would really love to respond to this post truthfully but I know I'd get slammed, so I won't.

Please, respond truthfully. If it's in response to dad's residency, he still remained in the city most of the week...which is why it was hard. My parents just did what they thought was best for we kids, at the time.

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Originally Posted by Buy American

I would really love to respond to this post truthfully but I know I'd get slammed, so I won't.

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"Last I checked, the effects of busing are evident today. None of the neighborhoods destroyed [[in part) by busing have reverted to their pre-busing demographic."

Did you read this earlier post? The only busing that happened in Detroit happened within the city itself and didn't affect many neighborhoods or last long. But according to you, it helped destroy neighborhoods. A bit of a stretch of cause and effect there.

"This is the plan that was implemented in 1976. However, as I said above, by the time a plan was finally in place the city's schools were already about 80% black, which made any meaningful desegregation a practical impossibility. In the end, the busing plan only affected about 10% of students, and was phased out after just a few years."

I believe everything Goose is saying about his personal experience on Chatsworth and about his feeling about busing.

But it is a gross oversimplification to say busing destroyed Detroit. By the mid-1970s the city had already lost a few hundred thousand people and experienced the devastating riot. Detroit in 1975 was a long way from the city it had been 25 years earlier. Was busing a cause of white flight? In the 1970s, yes. The cause of much disruption? Yes. THE cause of Detroit's decline. Hardly.

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Originally Posted by DetroitTeacher

Please, respond truthfully. If it's in response to dad's residency, he still remained in the city most of the week...which is why it was hard. My parents just did what they thought was best for we kids, at the time.

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DetroitTeacher, you hit the nail on the head without me saying a word. Obviously your father was a Detroit fireman and worked 24 hour shifts. I knew many many firemen who had apartments, duplexes, rooms for rent in Detroit where 5 or 6 people had the same address. I totally understand people leaving the City because of the bussing, just don't sugar coat the reasons for doing it.

The reasons you gave for leaving are what your parents may have told you. Close proximity to schools, one car, what if a child was ill at school. I doubt very much if the number one reason was discussed in your presence. I had a school within sight of my home. We bought our house with that very thing in mind...to send our kids there. We only had one car. Then, DPS says they are taking my little children 10-15 miles away, on a bus, to schools that I knew were trouble, and trouble was bad kids who would threaten the very essence of my life. The "real" reasons were unspoken but we all knew what was going on.

I stayed and endured. Why? Because the powers that be were looking for people who moved outside the City limits to get rid of them if they violated the rules. I had too many years invested to take that chance and leave the City...and, I couldn't afford to leave. So, my next best option was to pay for my two kids to go to a private school. It was a struggle because tuition at that time was high in comparison to what my income was. Your parents were lucky not to have been discovered, and yes, they did what they thought was right for you kids at the time.

Bussing [[as in intergrated bussing) didn't killed Detroit, segregation and xenophobia did.

Buy: No discovering to it. Dad really did stay in the city when he worked. He owned the home himself, no one else had that address. I recently asked my parents if the reason we moved was because the racial issues were getting hot and heavy. They said no...that it really was a matter of logistics with the schools. The issue came up when the house I grew up in went up for sale and I wanted to buy it,. My parents [[especially dad) have been pretty loyal to the city [[and instilled that in me, which is why I teach in DPS).

The whole situation was pretty hard on my parents with dad being somewhere else most of the week...

I base my opinion on what I experienced and how I felt living in Detroit and my memories of it on my life there up to third grade. Nothing but fond memories, everything seemed perfect. After that I probably didn't set foot in Detroit until I was like 16 and was driving to Broncos or another liqour store that sold to underage suburbanites....... so take my "opinion" with a grain of salt....