busing, decline of detroit and it's schools

[Hermod]

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.

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.

[bailey]

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

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?

[gazhekwe]

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.

[Hermod]

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?

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.

[lincoln8740]

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?

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

[iheartthed]

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

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.

[EastsideAl]

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.

[lincoln8740]

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.

Lower Court Remedial Order which was overturned by a Higher Court

[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?

[lincoln8740]

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

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

[EastsideAl]

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

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.

[lincoln8740]

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.

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?

[Hermod]

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?

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

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.

[Patrick]

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.

[Pingu]

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.

[English]

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.

[scribe114]

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.

[EastsideAl]

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?

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.

[Hermod]

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.

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.

[Russix]

High School is ultimately a segregating experience.

[lincoln8740]

. 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.

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.

[Lowell]

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

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.

[Danny]

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?

[EastSideClyde]

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.

[Bham1982]

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.

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.