The call for desegregation and the first years of its implementation led to a series of racial protests and riots that brought national attention, particularly from 1974 to 1976.
In response to the Massachusetts legislature's enactment of the 1965 Racial Imbalance Act, which ordered the state's public schools to desegregate, W. Arthur Garrity Jr. of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts laid out a plan for compulsory busing of students between predominantly white and black areas of the city.
[11] On April 1, 1965, a special committee appointed by Massachusetts Education Commissioner Owen Kiernan released its final report finding that more than half of black students enrolled in Boston Public Schools (BPS) attended institutions with enrollments that were at least 80 percent black and that housing segregation in the city had caused the racial imbalance.
These racially imbalanced schools were required to desegregate according to the law or risk losing their state educational funding.
[23][24] An initial report released in March 1965, "Because it is Right-Educationally,"[25] revealed that 55 schools in Massachusetts were racially imbalanced, 44 of which were in the City of Boston.
[24] After the passage of the Racial Imbalance Act, the Boston School Committee, under the leadership of Louise Day Hicks, consistently disobeyed orders from the state Board of Education, first to develop a busing plan, and then to support its implementation.
[27] On May 25, 1971, the Massachusetts State Board of Education voted unanimously to withhold state aid from the Boston Public Schools due to the School Committee's refusal to use the district's open enrollment policy to relieve the city's racial imbalance in enrollments, instead routinely granting white students transfers while doing nothing to assist black students attempting to transfer.
[3] On June 14, the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Warren E. Burger (1969–1986) unanimously declined to review the School Committee's appeal of the Phase II plan.
[6] In December 1975, Judge Garrity ordered South Boston High School put under federal receivership.
[35] As a remedy, Garrity used a busing plan developed by the Massachusetts State Board of Education, then oversaw its implementation for the next 13 years.
[42][43] On October 15, an interracial stabbing at Hyde Park High School led to a riot that injured 8, and at South Boston High on December 11, a non-fatal interracial stabbing led to a riotous crowd of 1,800 to 2,500 whites hurling projectiles at police while white students fled the facility and black students remained.
[45] On February 12, 1975, interracial fighting broke out at Hyde Park High that would last for three days with police making 14 arrests, while no major disturbances occurred in March or April.
"[47] On July 27, 1975, a group of black bible salesmen from South Carolina went swimming on Carson Beach, and in response, hundreds of white male and female bathers gathered with pipes and sticks and chased the bible salesmen from the beach on foot with the mob destroying their car and the police making two arrests.
The following Sunday, August 3, a taxicab with a black driver and three Hispanic passengers were subjected to projectiles from passerby as they drove past the beach.
In response, on August 10, black community leaders organized a protest march and picnic at the beach where 800 police and a crowd of whites from South Boston were on hand.
In one case, attorney Theodore Landsmark was attacked and bloodied by a group of white teenagers as he exited Boston City Hall.
[53] A photograph of the attack, The Soiling of Old Glory, taken by Stanley Forman for the Boston Herald American, won the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography in 1977.
[54][55][56] In a retaliatory incident about two weeks later, Black teenagers in Roxbury threw rocks at auto mechanic Richard Poleet's car and caused him to crash.
[37] The debut of the television series Welcome Back, Kotter initially did not air in Boston as WCVB-TV feared the show's setting of an urban high school with diverse characters would only lead to further unrest.
[58] In 1987, a federal appeals court ruled that Boston had successfully implemented its desegregation plan and was in compliance with civil rights law.
"[59] Before the desegregation plan went into effect, overall enrollment and white enrollment in Boston Public Schools was in decline as the Baby Boom ended, gentrification altered the economic makeup of the city, and Jewish, Irish and Italian immigrant populations moved to the suburbs while black, Hispanic, and Asian populations moved to the city.
Although the busing plan, by its very nature, shaped the enrollment at specific schools, it is unclear what effect it had on underlying demographic trends.
[69] Forced integration was the subject of the documentary film The Busing Battleground which was directed by Sharon Grimberg and Cyndee Readdean and first aired on American Experience on September 11, 2023.