Busing in Southern Cities: Charlotte and Richmond

It was an ugly, worn, but still functional piece of machinery that stopped by the roadside that fall morning to take Robin Smith to high school. Its coming was part of the early morning rhythm for the Smith family, a half-noticed reminder to Robin’s father, the town dentist, that it was high time to be off. But following that school bus into town was greatly annoying; it made endless stops, as did the cars piled behind it, all thanks to state law. Yet on other, less hurried days, the bus had a faintly endearing quality, reminding Mr. Smith of his own childhood friends and frolics on the way to school. Back then the old school bus had been quite a necessity; not all families owned cars and the new county high school was quite a ways off. Neither the Smiths nor the millions of other Americans riding and honking at school buses in 1954—certainly not the justices of the United States Supreme Court—had any idea that this creaky piece of daily routine would become the flash point of domestic politics in the early 1970s, the symbol of America’s ceaseless attempt to solve its insoluble race problem. Busing, as all races, ages, and classes understood, rubbed the raw nerve endings of American life. It posed the most vicious questions. Must the children of today atone for yesterday’s wrongs? How much must white America compromise its own interests for its mistreated minority? And who should make the compromise: North or South, rural or urban areas, working class neighborhoods or the more affluent suburbs? How much social reform might the judiciary shoulder? To what extent must educational policy be tailored to race? For all such questions, the yellow school bus and its short, hissing derivative— busing—now became the transcendent symbol. Busing made race seem much more complex. But not to everyone. As one student put it: “Nobody’s busing me just so some niggers can get a better deal. I didn’t set up the schools. I didn’t make ‘em like they are. No one I ever knew had anything to do with it.