BUSING

BUSING Busing refers to the controversial process of transport­ing public school children (white or black, depending on the circumstances) by bus to schools outside their neighborhoods where necessary to achieve racial balance and to prevent de facto segregation. Most common in the North, attempts at busing were begun in the early 1960's. In most cases, busing was met with a degree of parental resistance, especially but not universally on the part of white parents. At the beginning of the 1974-75 academic year, for example, white parents in Boston, Massachusetts reacted angrily to a court-ordered busing program intended to integrate Boston public schools. The opening of school in Boston on Sep­tember 12 (more than twenty years after the Supreme Court declared that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal"), was marred by a number of ugly incidents, including the stoning of school buses containing black children (several of whom were injured) and a partial white boycott of classes. See also: DE FACTO SEGREGATION.