Why Busing Failed: Race, Media, and the National Resistance to School Desegregation Volume 42

In the decades after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, busing to achieve school desegregation became one of the nation’s most controversial civil rights issues. Why Busing Failed is the first book to examine the pitched battles over busing on a national scale, focusing on cities such as Boston, Chicago, New York, and Pontiac, Michigan. This groundbreaking book shows how school officials, politicians, the courts, and the media gave precedence to the desires of white parents who opposed school desegregation over the civil rights of Black students.

This broad and incisive history of busing features a cast of characters that includes:

• National political figures such as then-president Richard Nixon
• Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley
• Antibusing advocate Louise Day Hicks
• Boston civil rights leaders Ruth Batson and Ellen Jackson, who opposed segregated schools
• Pontiac housewife and antibusing activist Irene McCabe
• Black conservative Clay Smothers
• Florida governor Claude Kirk

Matthew F. Delmont demonstrates how antibusing parents and politicians ultimately succeeded in preventing full public school desegregation. Why Busing Failed shows how the narrative of neighborhood schools was used to undermine the mandate of Brown v. Board of Education.