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On June 21, 1974, in response to decades of racial segregation and ...
On June 21, 1974, in response to decades of racial segregation and clear evidence of educational disparities, U.S. District Court Judge W. Arthur Garrity ordered the Boston Public Schools to integrate through a court-mandated busing plan. Despite the city's self-proclaimed reputation as the "cradle of liberty" and the "birthplace of abolition," it had always been racially divided. The instituti...
On June 21, 1974, in response to decades of racial segregation and clear evidence of educational disparities, U.S. District Court Judge W. Arthur Garrity ordered the Boston Public Schools to integrate through a court-mandated busing plan. Despite the city's self-proclaimed reputation as the "cradle of liberty" and the "birthplace of abolition," it had always been racially divided. The institution of forced busing set off racial violence and class tensions across the city, and media coverage of the unrest shaped Boston's reputation and attitudes toward school desegregation across the country for decades. Using eyewitness accounts, oral histories and rare news archives, the film examines the volatile effort to end segregation in Boston's public schools and details the decades-long struggle for educational equity that preceded the busing crisis.