busing, decline of detroit and it's schools

[Goose]

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......

[wolverine]

declining, but it should be decline

[Ray1936]

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

[gazhekwe]

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.

[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.

[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?

[Jimaz]

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.

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

[English]

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

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?

[gazhekwe]

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.

[FoxyScholar10]

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.

[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......

[Goose]

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

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

[Goose]

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?

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

[FoxyScholar10]

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

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?

[mwilbert]

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.

[reddog289]

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.

[Ray1936]

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.

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

[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.

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.

[Hermod]

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.

Go, but send money back.

[DetroitTeacher]

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.

[Hermod]

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.

[Lowell]

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.

[luckycar]

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?

[jiminnm]

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.

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.

[EastsideAl]

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.

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.