In the decades after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme
Court decision, busing to achieve school desegregation became one of
the nation’s most controversial civil rights issues. Why Busing
Failed is the first book to examine the pitched battles over
busing on a national scale, focusing on cities such as Boston,
Chicago, New York, and Pontiac, Michigan. This groundbreaking book
shows how school officials, politicians, the courts, and the media
gave precedence to the desires of white parents who opposed school
desegregation over the civil rights of black students.
This broad and
incisive history of busing features a cast of characters that
includes national political figures such as then-president Richard
Nixon, Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley, and antibusing advocate Louise
Day Hicks, as well as some lesser-known activists on both sides of
the issue—Boston civil rights leaders Ruth Batson and Ellen
Jackson, who opposed segregated schools, and Pontiac housewife and
antibusing activist Irene McCabe, black conservative Clay Smothers,
and Florida governor Claude Kirk, all supporters of school
segregation. Why Busing Failed shows how antibusing parents
and politicians ultimately succeeded in preventing full public school
desegregation.
