Before Busing

A History of Boston's Long Black Freedom Struggle

Zebulon Vance Miletsky, Zebulon Miletsky

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781469662770, 9781469662763
• eBook ISBN: 9781469662787
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: African American History
• Index: History

In many histories of Boston, African Americans have remained almost invisible. Partly as a result, when the 1972 crisis over school desegregation and busing erupted, many observers professed shock at the overt racism on display in the “cradle of liberty.” Yet the city has long been divided over matters of race, and it was also home to a far older Black organizing tradition than many realize. A community of Black activists had fought segregated education since the origins of public schooling and racial inequality since the end of northern slavery.

Before Busing tells the story of the men and women who struggled and demonstrated to make school desegregation a reality in Boston. It reveals the legal efforts and battles over tactics that played out locally and influenced the national Black freedom struggle. And the book gives credit to the Black organizers, parents, and children who fought long and hard battles for justice that have been left out of the standard narratives of the civil rights movement. What emerges is a clear picture of the long and hard-fought campaigns to break the back of Jim Crow education in the North and make Boston into a better, more democratic city—a fight that continues to this day.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface: The Arc of the Moral Universe in Boston
• Introduction
• Chapter One: The Origins of Slavery, Freedom, and Jim Crow in the Cradle of Liberty, 1638–1896
• Chapter Two: Boston Confronts a Jim Crow North, 1896–1934
• Chapter Three: Small Victories on the Way to Freedom, 1934–1945
• Chapter Four: Mobilizing for Freedom: Community-Based Activism in the Post–World War II Era, 1949–1965
• Chapter Five: Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud, 1967–1970
• Chapter Six: Boston, Not Birmingham: Busing as Boston’s “Reconstruction,” 1965–1988
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Index