Sultan Olusekun
History Rough Draft
March 10th 2014
Mr. O’Leary
Boston Busing Rough Draft
Introduction/Thesis:
The decision to integrate Boston schools in the 1970’s created negative race relations and later fueled a political debate that would change schools across the country. Most desegregation efforts in the United States began with the case of Oliver Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka in 1954. The case ruled that segregation on the basis of race was prohibited because it violated citizen’s rights under the Constitution. On June 21, 1974 in the case of Morgan vs. Hennigan, Judge Garret made a ruling that accused the Boston School Committee of engaging in racial segregation. “This ruling later would serve to fuel one of the prominent controversies embedded in our nation’s ongoing struggle for racial desegregation.” The busing policy created extreme acts of violence, invaded personal freedoms, hindered students’ education and
Background:
Although Boston was perceived to be a free and racially balanced state, the people of Boston never welcomed diversity. The city of Bos...
In the 1954 court ruling of Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation of schools was unconstitutional and violated the Fourteenth Amendment (Justia, n.d.). During the discussion, the separate but equal ruling in 1896 from Plessy v. Ferguson was found to cause black students to feel inferior because white schools were the superior of the two. Furthermore, the ruling states that black students missed out on opportunities that could be provided under a system of desegregation (Justia, n.d.). So the process of classification and how to balance schools according to race began to take place.
In the essay, “Boston and New York in the Eighteenth Century” by author Pauline Maier describes the duties and personalities to the American colonial cities and what made New York and Boston so exclusive and distinctive from one another by the point of the eighteenth century. Maier comes to an end of the cities that are being observed and concentrated functions of the Boston and New York were the local capitals and important to the cultural centers of newspapers and pamphlets being advertised, deliberated, and delivered. In the seventeenth century, the Boston merchants had encountered with their colony’s Puritan leaders to separate Massachusetts from the Old World contamination to verify the demands of commerce. New York and Boston have their differences not only in the people or legislation, but the feelings and character that surrounded culture. They did a request of the characteristics of how they establish and continue over the time also their effects in the American history.
The loss of public housing and the expanse of the wealth gap throughout the state of Rhode Island has been a rising issue between the critics and supporters of gentrification, in both urban areas such as Providence and wealthy areas such as the island of Newport, among other examples. With the cities under a monopoly headed by the wealth of each neighborhood, one is left to wonder how such a system is fair to all groups. Relatively speaking, it isn’t, and the only ones who benefit from such a system are white-skinned. With the deterioration of the economic status of Rhode Island, and especially in the city of Providence, more and more educated Caucasians are leaving to seek a more fertile economic environment.
Board of Education was a United States Supreme Court case in 1954 that the court declared state laws to establish separate public schools for black segregated public schools to be unconstitutional. Brown v. Board of Education was filed against the Topeka, Kansas school board by plaintiff Oliver Brown, parent of one of the children that access was denied to Topeka’s none colored schools. Brown claimed that Topeka 's racial segregation violated the Constitution 's Equal Protection Clause because, the city 's black and white schools were not equal to each other. However, the court dismissed and claimed and clarified that segregated public schools were "substantially" equal enough to be constitutional under the Plessy doctrine. After hearing what the court had said to Brown he decided to appeal the Supreme Court. When Chief Justice Earl Warren stepped in the court spoke in an unanimous decision written by Warren himself stating that, racial segregation of children in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which states that "no state shall make or enforce any law which shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." Also congress noticed that the Amendment did not prohibit integration and that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees equal education to both black and white students. Since the supreme court noticed this issue they had to focus on racial equality and galvanized and developed civil
Edward, Rebecca and Henretta, James and Self, Robert. America A Concise History. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2012.
Boston was the largest harbors during the colonial era. Products going to and from Britain were rotating out of Boston daily. When word reached Boston of the...
The book “Boston Against Busing: Race, Class and Ethnicity in the 1960s and 1970s” written by Ronald P. Formisano examines the opposition of court-ordered desegregation through forced busing. The author comes to the conclusion that the issue surrounding integration is a far more complex issue than just racism that enveloped the southern half of the country during this time period. Formisano argues that there were broader elements including a class struggle, white backlash and “reactionary populism” that contributed to the emotions of those involved.
When people see the homeless, they are quick to assume whether the homeless are where they’re at because of drugs, or not being in a stable environment. However, homeless people rarely receive an opportunity to tell their life stories or even have the chance to explain how they ended up in the situations they are in. Homelessness in Boston has persisted and increased for decades. Though there have been efforts to combating the issues of homelessness and housing, it appears that there is no solution in sight. Winter have become nightmares for most of the homeless population in Boston. Weather ranges from thirty degrees down to ten, sometimes single numbers. Weather that is below freezing are moments where people like myself, need to be in warm places. Kourtney McLean is a woman financially and emotionally not stable enough to take care of herself. Ms. McLean has been living on the streets for almost all her life --homeless and struggling to get on her
Henretta, James A and David* Brody. America: A concise History . Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2010. Document.
Goldman, Hal. 1997. "Black Citizenship and Military Self-Presentation in Antebellum Massachusetts." Historical Journal Of Massachusetts 26, no. 2: 157-183.
Dumenil, Lynn, ed. "New York City." The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Social History. N.p.: Oxford UP, 2012. Oxford Reference. Web. 8 Apr. 2013.
Before the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 became law, the U.S. Supreme Court on May 17, 1954 passed Brown v. Board of Education law that outlawed racial segregation in public schools and determined that the "separate but equal doctrine" was unconstitutional. The Brown case served as a guide for motivating education reform and forming the legal means of challenging segregation in all areas of society. Since then, many states have been re-segregating and educational achievement and opportunity have been falling for minorities. (Brown v Board of Education Summary)
In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Brown vs. The Board of Education that schools needed to integrate and provide equal education for all people and it was unconstitutional for the state to deny certain citizens this opportunity. Although this decision was a landmark case and meant the schools could no longer deny admission to a child based solely on the color of their skin. By 1957, most schools had began to slowly integrate their students, but those in the deep south were still trying to fight the decision. One of the most widely known instances of this happening was at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. It took the school district three years to work out an integration plan. The board members and faculty didn't like the fact that they were going to have to teach a group of students that were looked down upon and seen as "inferior" to white students. However, after much opposition, a plan was finally proposed. The plan called for the integration to happen in three phases. First, during the 1957-1958 school year, the senior high school would be integrated, then after completion at the senior high level, the junior high would be integrated, and the elementary levels would follow in due time. Seventeen students were chosen from hundreds of applicants to be the first black teenagers to begin the integration process. The town went into an uproar. Many acts of violence were committed toward the African-Americans in the city. Racism and segregation seemed to be on the rise. Most black students decid...
The South Bronx, New York City: another northern portrait of racial divide that naturally occurred in the span of less than a century, or a gradual, but systematic reformation based on the mistaken ideology of white supremacy? A quick glance through contemporary articles on The Bronx borough convey a continuation of less-than-ideal conditions, though recently politicians and city planners have begun to take a renewed interest in revitalizing the Bronx. (HU, NYT) Some common conceptions of the Bronx remain less than satisfactory—indeed, some will still express fear or disgust, while some others have expressed the fundamentally incorrect racial ideas studied here—but others recall the Bronx with fondness, calling it a once “boring” and “secure” neighborhood.(BRONX HIST JOURNAL, p. 1) What are we to do with such radically different accounts between The Bronx of yesterday, and the impoverished borough of today? If we speak in known, contemporary cultural stereotypes, then segregation is strictly a Southern design, but natural otherwise—but to record this as a natural occurrence, no different than a seasonal change or day turning to night, would be to ignore the underlying problem. The changing role of white Americans from majority to population minority in the Bronx, coupled with the borough’s title of “poorest urban county in America” (as of 2012), is the result of careful orchestration and a repeating story of economic and political gain superseding civil rights. (GONZALES, BRONX) (BRONX HIST JOURN, HARD KNOCKS IN BRONX @ poorest note ) It is not coincidence.
The Supreme Court is perhaps most well known for the Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954. By declaring that segregation in schools was unconstitutional, Kevern Verney says a ‘direct reversal of the Plessy … ruling’1 58 years earlier was affected. It was Plessy which gave southern states the authority to continue persecuting African-Americans for the next sixty years. The first positive aspect of Brown was was the actual integration of white and black students in schools. Unfortunately, this was not carried out to a suitable degree, with many local authorities feeling no obligation to change the status quo. The Supreme Court did issue a second ruling, the so called Brown 2, in 1955. This forwarded the idea that integration should proceed 'with all deliberate speed', but James T. Patterson tells us even by 1964 ‘only an estimated 1.2% of black children ... attended public schools with white children’2. This demonstrates that, although the Supreme Court was working for Civil Rights, it was still unable to force change. Rathbone agrees, saying the Supreme Court ‘did not do enough to ensure compliance’3. However, Patterson goes on to say that ‘the case did have some impact’4. He explains how the ruling, although often ignored, acted ‘relatively quickly in most of the boarder s...