Let’s remember when district-wide busing began in Seattle, on this day in 1978 (September 29)
Today in things that would bring a tear to Joe Biden’s eyes…
From Cassandra Tate at HistoryLink:
On September 29, 1978, the Seattle School District begins mandatory, district-wide busing of students to achieve racial balance. Limited mandatory busing (involving four middle schools) had been in effect since 1972.
Seattle’s schools had become increasingly segregated as a result of decades of housing discrimination, with students of color concentrated in schools south of the Lake Washington Ship Canal. At Garfield High School, for example, more than half the students were African Americans, compared to only about 5 percent of the students in the district as a whole. Predominantly nonwhite schools generally got fewer resources from the district than predominantly white schools.
Responding to the threat of legal action by civil rights groups, the Seattle School Board adopted a limited busing plan to desegregate the district’s middle schools in 1970. Implementation of that plan, involving about 2,000 students, was delayed for two years by a lawsuit filed by an anti-busing group. In 1977, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the Church Council of Greater Seattle threatened to seek federal intervention unless the district took more aggressive action.
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