Quote Originally Posted by dtowncitylover View Post
"In the 1970s, he was a leader in the fight against court-ordered cross-district school busing for racial integration"

Mmmm...busing. Another genius idea. I try to be a progressive person, but forced integration is not the way to go. My mom could have gone to West Bloomfield High [[don't think for a minute she was a rich snob, she wasn't), but instead had to go to Pontiac Central. It didn't do anyone good anywhere. Better funding in predominately African-American schools so they had the same resources as their white counterparts would have been a better answer. I don't believe in "separate but equal" of course, but when the demographic cards are handed to you, you have to play without hurting the neighborhoods and communities.
Two federal district judges ordered consolidation of school districts for attendance with busing across district lines to allow for more integration where a district was largely black. One of the cases was in Virginia where the judge ordered busing across the separate school districts of the City of Richmond, Henrico County, Chesterfield County. The purpose of this order and massive busing was to achieve integration of the virtually all-black City of Richmond schools. The second case was in Michigan where the judge ordered busing across multiple school districts in Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb Counties to allow for integration of the virtually all-black Detroit schools. Both case wound their way up to the U.S. Supreme Court where it was found that the district judges involed had exceeded their authority in their court-orders, so Patterson's opposition to the orders was upheld as the proper law.