6-1 Discussion Supporting a Thesis Statement PDF

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Initially, I did not agree with either thesis statement. However, after reading and rereading, I found that I am in agreement with busing supporters. “In the long run, busing helped Boston because it desegregated the school system, provided equal educational opportunity for minority students, and set the stage for racial healing and an improved racial climate in the twenty-first century.” Judge Garrity’s ruling in Morgan vs. Hennigan was unprecedented, Garrity was forced to take an “unyielding approach”. Boston’s School Committee, led by Louise Day Hicks, persistently rebuffed efforts to establish a thoughtful desegregation plan. In fact, in June of 1974 the Federal district court established that the Boston School Committee had unconstitutionally promoted and propagated segregation in public schools. U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. (1975). Faced with Boston’s School Committee standing in staunch defiance of the State mandated Racial Imbalance Act of 1965. Garrity made the decision to force desegregation by mandating busing. Fast forward 40 years Boston is still reeling from Garrity’s ruling. Historian Jim Vrabel stated “He got the problem right; he got the decision right. It was the remedy that he didn’t get right”. Vrabel, J. (2014). In that moment Garrity could clearly see that desegregation was not going to happen organically. It had to be held accountable. African Americans would not have the equal educational opportunities or even the hope of racial healing today without his difficult decision.

The struggle to achieve desegregation, “equal educational opportunity” and racial healing was long fought and the scars were still evident almost 20 years later. Whites went from 84% of the population in 1970 to 59% in 1990. It is debated whether this change is due to white flight or natural migration patterns to the suburbs of American cities.

The worst of the violence and protests was over by the end of 1976, but the city and its schools were permanently changed. By the time Boston's schools were declared desegregated in 1987, the student population had declined by almost 40 percent and the overwhelming majority of students were nonwhite (Richer, 1998)....