AN EXPLORATORY STUDY OF
PARENTS AND PUBLIC. SCHOOL
EDUCATORS ON THE ISSUE OF
CROSS'DISTRICT BUSING IN. A
SUBURBAN DISTRICT

Thesis for the Degree of .Ph. D,
MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
THOMAS G. BARNES
1972

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thesis entitled
An Exploratory Study of Parents and Public School

Educators On the Issue of Cross-District Busing
in a Suburban District

presented by

Thomas G. Barnes

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

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ABSTRACT

AN EXPLORATORY STUDY OF PARENTS AND PUBLIC
SCHOOL EDUCATORS ON THE ISSUE OF
CROSS-DISTRICT BUSING IN A
SUBURBAN DISTRICT

BY

Thomas G. Barnes

The purpose of this exploratory study was to find
if a common perspective among suburban citizens and edu-
cators existed in regard to the current issue of cross-
district busing. The methodology employed to secure the
pertinent findings was that of the in-depth interview
process and limited symbolic interaction or participant
observation.

The methodology was basically guided by four
exploratory questions aimed at revealing a community
perspeCtive. Selection of a sample was determined by the
combination of statistical random sampling procedures and
the employment of theoretical sampling.

The issue of cross-district busing, being an
outstanding topical issue of the day quite obviously
precluded the researcher from gaining valuable data from

past research. Pertinent to the issue and thus of value

Thomas G. Barnes

to the background of the study was the utilization of
salient judicial decisions of a historical nature and the
contemporary findings regarding the matter of integration,
and equal educational opportunity.

A rather typical white suburban school community
was selected for this research project. The area is
currently involved with litigation concerning the issue of
cross-district busing. A selection of elementary school
parents and teachers was used to gather the data in this
exploratory study.

It was discovered that a collective community
perspective did indeed exist in relation to the issue of
cross-district busing. In relation to the basic exploratory
questions used and from the researcher's employment of
participant observation the following conclusions were

drawn.

1. All personnel agreed that the community did not

accept the notion of cross-district busing.

2. On the more general matter of integration, a
majority of the population frame agreed that
socially such a move would be acceptable and
necessary for the continued stabilization of the
races. The particular modes of integration,
however, were suggested to be least disruptive to

the white community.

Thomas G. Barnes

3. Regarding each interview aimed at the individual's
personal orientation to the issue of cross-district
busing, there was unanimous disapproval. Virtually
all interviewees felt the tactic of busing employed
to integrate schools was indefensible as a measure
to eliminate racial animosity, or create a school
atmosphere condusive to good education.

Most citizens and educators felt that a more
compensatory economic settlement should be adopted
to improve black schools and at the same time

maintain the "separate but equal" philosophy.

4. In response to the question concerning community
behavior, should cross-district busing be ordered
by the courts, most interviewees admitted with
frustration that they would abide by the law, but
would continue to utilize the democratic processes
to turn the situation around. This majority
believed that any forms of violent protest would
not only be futile but damaging to the situation

that was already barely tolerable.

A minority of the population interviewed, par-
ticularly males, indicated that they would simply not allow
such a court order to take place, even if that meant civil

disobedience. Most antagonists, however, felt they would

Thomas G. Barnes

first leave the community and seek educational racial
separation in another area removed from the issue.

As an exploratory study this research was not
purported to be hypothesis testing in nature. The intent
of the study was to provide a foundation of descriptive
data which would have the potential of being hypothesis
generating. Out of such an exploratory study the number
of possible relationships that might be examined is legion.
Therefore, the researcher must be careful to employ a
theoretical framework in postulating heuristic assumptions.
The hypotheses generated from this study fall within the

social conflict theory framework.

AN EXPLORATORY STUDY OF PARENTS AND PUBLIC
SCHOOL EDUCATORS ON THE ISSUE OF
CROSS-DISTRICT BUSING IN A

SUBURBAN DISTRICT

BY
1,.“

(
Thomas G? Barnes

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Administration and Higher Education

1972

14)
“20‘
0",

AC KNOWLE DGMENT S

My sincere gratitude is expressed to the many
persons who have contributed to the completion of this
study. To publicly acknowledge each individual who
assisted in an endeavor such as this would, of course,
be impossible. However, at the very least, I should like
to acknowledge my indebtedness to the following:

Dr. Phil Cusick for providing a foundation of
knowledge, encouragement, and inspiration throughout the
many months in his capacity as chairman of my Doctoral
Guidance Committee.

A particular word of appreciation is also extended
to Dr. Sam Moore, not only for his sage guidance but as
well for the special efforts on his part that has truly
made residency a particularly human educational experience.

I would also like to thank Dr. George Ferree for
his willingness to serve on the committee. His educational
abilities and concern for students is probably second to
none in the College of Education.

Dr. McKee of the Sociology Department also deserves

a portion of my sincere indebtedness. His reputation like

ii

that of the other members of my committee is a well
established fact. I can personally think of no other men
who surpass the above committee members in intelligence,
dedication, and humaness.

A pledge of anonymity precludes naming those
educators, and community residents who made this study a
reality. My thanks to these people and a special debt of
gratitude is owed to the superintendent of the Risk School
District who allowed this study to be performed.

Lastly, my deepest appreciation to my wife,

Janet, for her immeasurable support and understanding, and

to our beautiful children, Bernice, Katie, and Mary.

iii

Chapter

I.

II.

III.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION C O O O O O C O O C

The Purpose of the Study .
Specific Objective . . .
Exploratory Questions . .
The Problem. . . . .
Justification of the Study.
General Background . . .

Specific Background . .
Conceptual Framework. .
Significance of the Study
Definition of Terms . .
Delimitation of the Study

REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE . . . . . .

Historical-Legal Background . . . .
Contemporary Findings . . . . . .
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . .

MET HO DOLOGY O O O O O 0 O O O 0
Organization of the Chapter . . . .

Data Analysis . . . . . . . . .
Definition of the Population .

Random Sample Selection-Theoretical Sampl

Theoretical Sampling. . . . . . .
The Instrument. . . . . . . . .
Questionnaire . . . . . . . . .
Field Procedures . . . . . . .
Initial Contact With the Superintendent
Initial Contact With the Building
Principal. . . . . . . .

Organization of the Study . . . . .

iv

i

Page

l-‘

21

22
47
63

65

69
70

74
77
80
81
83
84

85
85

Chapter Page

Iv. THE FINDINGS I O O O I O O O O O O O 87

Description of the School Zone . . . . . 88
Educational Personnel . . . . . . . . 96
Narration of Selected Parents. . . . . . 123
General Findings . . . . . . . . . . 150
Educational Personnel . . . . . . . . 150
General Findings From Parents of

Elementary Children . . . . . . . . 152

V. EXPLANATION OF THE FINDINGS, IMPLICATIONS,
AND RECOMMENDATIONS . . . . . . . . . 154

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . 154
Theoretical Framework . . . . . . . . 156
Hypotheses and Implications . . . . . . 165
Recommendations for Further Study . . . . 177

BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

The Purpose of the Study

The author's purpose in this exploratory study is
to describe the perspectives of suburban educators and
parents of elementary school children on the issue of
cross-district busing and integration. This exploratory
study will be limited to studying a portion of a single
school district, specifically an elementary school zone,
located in a single school district within the greater
Grand Rapids metropolitan area. This single school
district is currently involved in litigation to determine
whether busing will be approved or disapproved.

The specific type of busing considered in this study
will be cross-district busing. Cross-district busing, as
interpreted and applied to this population, randomly
selected educators and parents of elementary school
children, will mean the transfer, into the suburban school
of black inner city students, and conversely the busing
out of a certain number of white elementary students into

inner city schools.

Cross-district busing will also include the

reassignment of white and black educational personnel.

Specific Objective
The specific objective of this exploratory research
is to discover if there is a common perspective among
parents and educators in the Risk Elementary School area,
regarding the issue of cross-district busing.
Perspective, as defined and utilized in this
study, means "the common ordered understanding which the
members have of their environment which enables them to
act in accordance with their common beliefs about their
situation, and which in turn, makes their beliefs seem
reasonable according to the results of their acts.”1
Specifically, this study will deal with the
collectiveness of perspective, taken from the selected
personnel in this Risk area, as they behave toward the
issue of busing.
Fundamentally, group action takes the form of a fitting
together of individual lines of action. Each individual
aligns his action to the action of others by ascer-
taining what they are doing or what they intend to do--
that is, by getting the meaning of their acts. This
is done by the individual "taking the roles" of others
either the role of a specific person or the role of a
group. In taking such roles the individual seeks to
ascertain the intention or direction of the acts of

others. He forms and aligns his own action on the
basis of such interpretations of the acts of others.

 

1Howard 8. Becker, Blanche Geer, and Everett
Hughes, Making the Grade (New York: John Wiley and Sons
Inc., 19687, p. 28.

This is the fundamental way in which group action
takes place in human society.

The issue of busing has temporarily caused the
group norms to lose their efficacy as a guide to conduct,
and the resultant behavior of a collectivity takes on
different forms. It is the realignment of this collective
behavior as a result of the perceptions growing out of
individual perspectives that this author intends to deal

with.

Exploratoryiouestions
The research will be guided by the following

exploratory questions:

1. What are the assumptions of residents and education
personnel regarding the feelings of the total
population concerning the issue of cross—district

busing?
2. How do those interviewed behave toward the issue

of integration?

3. How do those interviewed feel about the issue of

cross-district busing?

4. What attitudes are held by those interviewed if
forced cross-district busing is ordered implemented

by the courts?

 

2Herbert Blumer, "Society as Symbolic Interaction,"
Human Behavior and Social Processes, ed. by Arnold M. Rose
TBoston: Houghton, Mifflin Company, 1962), pp. 179-92.

The Problem

 

Integration, as a result of court ordered busing,
may cause some problems for the Risk School District. As
a result of a possible court decision ordering cross-
district busing, this suburban community may be forced to
face the full impact of integration. Accepting minority
children into their schools is one dimension of the problem,
transporting their children to inner city schools, where
for years the white parents have heard of crime, violence,
and educational inferiority, is quite another dimension.
Specifically, the problem then, is integration of students

by the use of cross-district busing.

Justification of the Study

 

The topical social issue of cross-district busing
and integration has admittedly generated consternation
among society as a whole throughout the country. Educators
themselves are perplexed and divided over the issue which
points out the fact that there is still much valuable data
that must be gathered in hopes of reconciliating this
issue.

This study is aimed at increasing awareness of many
problems inherent in the issue. The study of the Risk
School area provides an excellent opportunity to increase
our understanding of the issue. The Risk School District

in most respects is representative of other suburban white

school districts throughout the country. Similarities far
exceed any unique qualitites that tend to separate schools
in distinct categories.

The "one of a kind study" therefore should allow
the researcher the Opportunity to make sensible extrapo-
lations from the data accumulated in the Risk School
District to similar districts. Though it is incorrect to
assume that all suburban school districts would be totally
similar, it is fair to assume that there would be a
consonance among human behavior in similar districts
dealing with the same issue.

As stated, the justification for this study is
based upon the issue itself and the lack of definitive
knowledge concerning the issue. In total the issue is a
complex matter to deal with and much of it is simply beyond
the parameters of this study.

It is within the limits of this study, however, to
describe the views of one small suburban area that is
deeply involved with this entire issue. Substantively
this study will concentrate on parents and educators in a
white elementary school area for the purpose of adding to
our present knowledge, a collective perspective toward

integration as a result of busing.

General Background
The Supreme Court, in dealing with this issue, has
clearly found that any form of separate schools by their

very nature cannot be equal.3

In line with that finding,
the Court has decided that equal educational opportunity
for all races can only be achieved through the abolition
of dual school systems.4

Primarily during the fifties and early sixties,
the matter of dual school systems and de jure segregation
was commonly publicized and isolated to the South. The
process of school integration in that area of the country
was exceedingly gradual, accomplished generally by
residential mobility of minority people who only occasion-
ally moved into school zones that were predominately white.
Today, there is evidence that the South has made great
strides in abolishing segregated education.S Because the
courts have found such integration to be limited in respect
to the intent of the Brown decision and because of the

absence of a better solution, school children, by court

order, are now being bused into different zones and

 

3Brown, et al. v. Board of Education, 347 U.S.

483 (1954).

4Swann, et al. v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of

Education, 402 U.S. 281 (1970).

5Mary Costello, "School Busing and Politics,"
Editorial Research Reports, No. 9 (March 1, 1972), 184.

 

districts for the purpose of achieving integration in
public schools throughout the country.
The basis for such court ruling is not by intent

aimed at achieving "racial balance,‘ or integration, pg; £3.
The specific goal as set by the courts is the attainment
of equal educational opportunity for all minority school
children, whether they are located in the South or in the
cities of the North.6
The issue posed by the ending of segregated edu-
cation has in the last decade, affected almost every
county in the South, as well as almost every state and large
city in the North. That the matter is complex cannot be
denied, yet, despite the complexity of this issue, the
trend has been a steady forward movement to desegregation
of public schools, and an assumed increase in educational
opportunity.
In the last three decades the assault by the
Federal Courts on de jure and de facto segregation in
public schools has become increasingly vigorous. Most
notable among Supreme Court rulings aimed at abolishing
segregation in elementary and secondary public schools is
the 1954 Brown v. Topeka Board of Education decision.
Since that ruling the courts, exhibiting con-

temporary interpretations of the equal protection clause

contained in the fourteenth amendment to the United States

 

6Swann, op. cit.

Constitution, have decided that busing, as outlined by the
Supreme Court in the famous Swann-Mecklenburg decision of
1971, be implemented as one acceptable tool to end
segregation in public schools. In so doing, the Supreme
Court, though sanctioning cross-district busing, admonished
inferior courts to utilize this method only in line with
the practicalities of the overall situation.7
The Court's adoption of this tool to end dual

school systems has grown out of the fact that since the
Brown ruling, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) only a small proportion
of minority group children have been integrated in public
schools. In the large cities of the North and West,
de facto segregation seems to prevail for the vast
majority of negro children.8

Even in 1964, a decade after the Supreme Court ruling

against segregated education only 9 per cent of the

more than three million negro children of school age

children in the southern and border states attended

integrated schools. Patterns outside the south are

not notably dissimilar.9

As of the last school year (1970), 39 per cent of

black children in the South went to schools where whites

 

7Swann, et al. v. Charlotte—Mecklenburg Board of
Education, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 281, Argued October 12,
1970, Decided April 12, 1971.

8Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Integration v. Segre-
gation (New York: Crowen Co., 1964), pp. 2-3.

91bid., p. 2.

were in the majority, compared with 28 per cent of the
North and West.10

Segregation has continued as a result of salutary
neglect by responsible people, in some cases as a result
of intentional circumvention of the court order as in
Prince Edward County, Virginia where public schools were
closed and white children were provided state and county
grants to attend private schools. Primarily, however, the
failure to realize the intent of the Brown decision was
inherent in that decision itself.

In the Brown case the court gave to the local
school board, the official duty of effectuating the newly
defined constitutional rights of black children to equal
education. This was an unfortunate choice because, on the
one hand local authorities were the least likely to
understand the impact of the law's thrust, and on the
other hand they were more prone to resist the need for
change or to view the Court's decision as a personal
affront.11

Even where there was a desire to comply with the

law, political problems had to be overcome before any

affirmative action could be taken. School board members

 

10"The Agony of Busing Moves North," Time Magazine,
November 15, 1971, p. 57.

 

11Robert L. Carter, "Equal Educational Oppor-
tunities for Negroes," With All Deliberate S eed, ed. by
John McCord (University of IllihOis Press, 196 , pp. 56-84.

10

are elected and where resistance to the Brown decision has

aptly been labeled "massive,' they are not free to exercise
independent judgment.12
In April of 1971, the Supreme Court, in a unanimous
decision (Swann—Mecklenburg case), found that the political
structures of many schools could be a possible source for
continued segregation. To offset this, the Court has
allowed busing even beyond school district boundaries to
become a viable tool intended to end segregation in public
schools.
Since that decision was handed down by the Supreme
Court, several Federal District Courts have uncovered
similar forms of segregation. In Richmond, Virginia,
Federal District Judge Robert Merhige noted that
. . . the city remained "identifiable black" and the
counties had become "identifiably white." He declared
that the State's duty was to dismantle the Richmond
area's racially dual educational system.13
The city of Richmond and several other large
cities, particularly outside the regions of the "deep
south," are now pressing ahead with plans of court
compliance similar to the Richmond order. In Detroit

where a similar desegregation suit is being handled,

Judge Stephen Roth replying to the attorney for the

 

lzIbid., p. 73.

13"Angry Focus on Busing," Life MagaZineo March,
1972, p. 26.

11

school board who claimed the board should not be held
responsible for the acts of other governmental bodies,
declared: "The actions or the failure to act by responsible
school authorities . . . were linked to actions of other
governmental units."14

In effect the plans as outlined by the courts such
as those in Richmond and Detroit call for the merger of
school districts, incorporating city and suburbs in a
busing program aimed at achieving racial integration and
equal educational opportunity.

Presently it is not known, with any degree of
certitude the feelings of many people who are involved
directly in this issue. Consequently, we cannot be sure
of any general behavior expectations should cross-district
busing be ultimately sanctioned by the Supreme Court.

Admittedly, there is available in most newspapers,
magazines, and editorial columns, a host of personal
Opinions both expressing support and opposition to the
busing issue. One of the most influential supporters to
those who have expressed opposition to busing is the
President himself. In March, Mr. Nixon called for a
moritorium on all court ordered busing decrees. Some of
his advisors, and many of his Republican party members

have urged the administration to sponsor a move to

 

14William Grant, "Suit Unraveled Long History of
Race Segregation in City," Detroit Free Press, Oct. 11,
1971, p. 43.

 

12

implement a constitutional amendment should the courts
continue their present course for achieving "racial
balance." Thus far, the Supreme Court in the Swann v.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education case, April, 1971,
has held only in the most general way that busing is a
useful device to break up dual school systems.

Ultimately, the Supreme Court will have to settle
the issue of busing and then of course, the Congress and
the people can, if they so choose override that decision
with an amendment. In the meantime confusion surrounding
this issue will remain and possibly more civil disobedience
as witnessed in Pontiac, Michigan when some citizens

reacted violently to a court ordered busing decree.

Specific Background

 

Currently the Grand Rapids School District is
involved in a desegregation suit filed by the NAACP in
July of 1971. Included also as litigants in this suit are
several neighboring school districts contiguous to, or
just outside the Grand Rapids District. The suit filed
by the NAACP has charged that the school districts, by
design and approval of the State, has perpetuated a dual
system whereby minority students have been denied equal
educational opportunity.

On the basis of similar case findings there are,
it is assumed by this researcher, four conceivable rulings

that could emerge from this case:

13

1. The District Court could find that there is no
substantive evidence of de jure segregation in

the Grand Rapids or suburban school districts.

2. The Court could find a dual school system operating
in the Grand Rapids School District, and thus
order integration by busing within the boundaries

of Grand Rapids only.

3. The Court may find the state and local governmental
agencies responsible for allowing the creation of
discriminatory practices within the city and

suburbs, and thereby order cross~district busing.

4. Lastly, even though the District Court may not find
any agencies culpable or in violation of the law,
it may be decreed that new plans be implemented to
improve the process of integrating the children in
public schools. This could conceivably require
that urban districts and suburban districts
collaborate in plans for eliminating the effects

of de facto segregation.

Each school district involved in this civil rights
case has retained legal council and as reported in the
local news media, they are prepared to expend any amount
of tax dollars to maintain their school systems as they
are. On the basis of such action taken by the various

school boards, it would be logical to assume that such

14

actions are indicative of the districts populations
views. Yet, at present, there have been no surveys, or
studies of anyone of these suburban populations to
corroborate such assumptions.

As stated earlier in the purpose of this study,
it will be the intent of this project to discover the
common perspectives of white suburban parents of elementary
school children, and educators toward cross-district
busing and personnel reassignment aimed at achieving racial

balance in schools.

Conceptual Framework

 

This area of study, cross-district busing, will
not be examined by the theory-hypotheses-statistics type
of research design. Rather the researcher will attempt
to develop a description of the findings as solicited from
parents of elementary students, and their teachers.
Hopefully, this descriptive research project will con-
tribute to the development of theory and testable
hypotheses.

This type of study will thus seek to build theory,
not test it. Through description and narration of
accumulated data gathered from identifiable per-
spectives held in collectivity, it is hoped the

results will be sufficient to rovide some components,
or units for theory building.1

 

15Robert Dubin, TheoryBuildigg (New York:
Collier Macmillan Limited, 1969), p. 7.

15

Essentially then, hypotheses will be constructed
out of identified perspectives relative to the issue of
cross-district busing. "Perspective," as cited earlier
in this study, "is the common, ordered understanding
which a collectivity have of their environment which
enables them to act in accordance with their common
beliefs about their situation, and which, in turn, makes
their beliefs seem reasonable according to the results of

their act."16

Significance of the Study
Quality education within the urban school setting

has been the goal of concerned educators as well as some
governmental agencies for decades. There have been a
variety of plans implemented to reach that end. For
example, the Federal Government has allocated billions of
dollars for compensatory programs, but generally the
results have not been significant in terms of goal
attainment.

National test scores were recorded during a five year

period under Title I of the Elementary and Secondary

Education Act of 1965. After almost $1,000,000,000

had been spent yearly on compensatory education

programs in schools that virtually were segregated,

before and after tests suggest that . . . only 19 per

cent of the children in such programs improve their
reading significantly: 15 per cent appear to fall

 

16Howard S. Becker, op. cit.

l6

behind more than expected, and more than two thirds of
the children remain unaffected-~that is, they continue
to fall behind.17

Programs of de-centralization intended to create
an environment of black community control have also failed
to meet the desired expectation of the proponents. Even
the increase of black teachers and administrators in the
urban schools have not been totally successful despite a
genuine effort of creative innovations to improve scho-
lastic attainment of black pupils.

The failure of the urban schools in America to
provide the educational experiences which could help
overcome the effect of discrimination and deprivation are
obviously multi-casual.18

At present the most noted plan to achieve the
above goal as legally put forth by the courts is to
integrate school systems by busing if practical. The
basis of such rulings are in effect legal; involving
constitutional rights, but they are also heavily supported
by sociological findings as elicited in court opinions.

The unhappy reality is that the constitutional

guarantee of equal education is meaningless to the vast

majority of black children, whether in attendance in

 

17Norman E. Silberberg and Margaret C. Silberberg,
"Reading Rituals," Trans Action, 8:46 (July-August, 1971).

18E§£§gg_§gpgrt, Report of the National Advisory

Commission on C1v11 DisObedience TNew York: E. P. Dutton

and Co., 1968), p. 428?

17

public schools in the South or in the urban North. The

question arises, why, what is recognized as a public and

personal necessity is not yet within the reach of large

numbers of our citizenry.19
The answer to that question would seemingly

require an analysis of all the complex social and political

forces that shape this society, a task obviously beyond

the scope of this study.

Definitions of Terms
The following terms are defined to fit this

particular study:

Suburban School District.--When not otherwise
specified, shall refer to the school district of Green
Hills. Green Hills is a neighboring school district to
the larger Grand Rapids school system. Approximately
thirty-five hundred students are in attendance in the
Green Hills School system which has one high school, one
junior high school, and five elementary schools.

The student population and the certified and non-

certified staff is totally white.

Risk Elementary School Zone.--An elementary school

zone in the Green Hills School District. There are 347

 

19Robert L. Carter, "Equal Educational Opportunity
for Negroes," With All Deliberate Speed, ed. by John
McCord (University of Illinois Press, 1969), pp. 56-84.

18

students enrolled in this school. There are 210 families
listed on the school records, and 15 full time teachers in

service.

Population.--This term shall be limited to the

 

20 teachers assigned to the Risk Elementary school and the

210 sets of parents.

Cross-District Busing.--Busing of white and black
students from "home districts" to neighboring school
districts for the purpose of achieving racial integration

and equal educational opportunity.

Inter-District Busing.--Busing to achieve racial

 

integration and equal education, across district school
lines. Inter-district busing implies, in this study, one-

way busing of minority students out of urban schools.

Minority Students.--For purposes of this study,
minority students shall refer to inner city children,
usually residing in the core area of Grand Rapids, low in

scholastic achievement, economic status, and black.

Equal Protection.--Reference to Article XIV,
Section 1 of the United States Constitution. The consti-
tutional guarantee of equal protection of the law to all

citizens. The legal basis for court ordered busing.

19

Perspective.--A common ordered understanding
which the population have of their environment, which
enables them to act when together in accordance with their

common beliefs.

Demographic Variables.-—Specific personal charac-

teristics of an individual.

Primary Questions.--Any question which introduces

a new topic or asks for new content.

Secondary Questions.--Probes, which are intended
to elicit more fully the information already asked by a

primary question.

Delimitation of the Study
This study will be limited to gathering data from
randomly selected parents of elementary school children
and educators employed in the Risk Elementary School, a
zone within the Suburban Green Hills School District.
The study has been delimited to this school zone
and population frame (randomly selected parents and

educators of elementary children) for several valid reasons:

1. The Risk Elementary School Zone, a part of the
»Green Hills School District, is to be directly
involved in the outcome of a Federal District

Court decision regarding cross-district busing.

20

The time requirements for studying the entire
district or the entire population within the Risk

Elementary Zone would be prohibitive.

It is felt by this researcher that an adequate
representative sample can be gathered from this
area and population for the purpose of gathering

data to build theory.

The delimitation of this study also enables the
researcher to conduct in detail this project

without exhorbitant expenditure.

Lastly, the researcher has selected this area to
study because he has access to virtually all
communication networks and is known and accepted

within the area delimited.

CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

The fruitful quest for minority educational
equality is a relatively new phenomenon. The adoption of
busing as a tool to hasten that quest has evolved only
recently. Substantiation of these facts is being revealed
to the author by the extremely limited research or liter-
ature available in this area of cross-district busing and
community reaction.

No specific studies and very little literature,
which includes contemporary media presentations, were
available that related directly to community involvement
and busing for purposes of integration. The absence of
such studies certainly substantiates the need for serious
investigation into this area.

Therefore, this chapter will be structured to
encompass a review of the literature which can generally
be classified into two categories: (1) a general his-
torical summary of the black man's progress toward

equality, with emphasis on those salient historical-legal

21

22

developments that have led to the present state of affairs,
and (2) a second category which will deal specifically
with current findings as they are offered by contemporary
analysists and reputable figures within the country who
have in one way or another contributed to the formulation
of national and domestic policies. This material will be
found in media material such as newspapers and magazines

because of the immediacy of the busing situation.

Historical-Legal Background

Because of the plentitude of land and its cheapness
in America in the seventeenth century, a permanent labor
force necessarily meant an unfree labor force. The first
people to suffer enslavement in this country were the
Indians.

When early settlers reached the new world they
believed the "aborigines" would provide an almost inex-
haustable supply of forced labor. But the American Indians
failed to realize their conquerors hopes; when enslaved
they refused to work, ran away, or died.20

In the year 1619 the first blacks were brought to
America as slaves. The black man proved far more advan-

tageous to the aims of the white man than the Indian had

been, thus providing the essential labor force for the

 

20John C. Miller, The First Frontier: Life In
Colonial American (New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1966),
pp. 144-45.

23

"new world" inhabitants. The primary reasons for the
black man's "docility" as compared to the Indians was the
simple fact that the black slave had no place to run in
this strange land.

Early apologists for the slavery institution
based their assumptions on the burden of christianizing
and civilizing the "black savages" through the only
acceptable means of controlled enslavement. Many of the
leading political architects of this era, most being
deists, admitted the evil of slavery, but also lamented
the need to maintain slavery as an assurance of economic
survival in the competitive system of commerce. Without
free labor an entrepreneur could not remain viable.

Thousands of small farmers in the Southern colonies
depended upon the labor of their immediate families
for their prosperity, and they quickly found that the
great planters of the tidewater region, with groups of
slaves to cultivate their tobacco or rice plantations,
to cut their timber, gather rosin and make naval
stores in the pine forests, and do all the heavy work
requiring little skill, were in a favored economic
position.29

It was early understood in this country that the
hatred and despisement for the black man was not solely
because of color or cultural difference:

On the lowest level, the least successful of white
workers, nondescript itinerant laborers, sometimes
transported convicts, sometimes Ne'er-do-wells that

crop up in any such society--those denominated "poor
white trash"--hated their negro competitors with a

 

21Louis B. Wright, The Cultural Life of the
American Colonies 1607-1763 (New York: Harper and Row
Publishers, 1962), p. 29.

24

virulence known only among those who struggle for
survival in the jungle. That conflict of interest
between "poor white" and negro slaves which began in
the colonial days, resulted in an abiding hatred that
developed into the most corrosive influence bequeathed
to later times.

The era of slavery in America, unquestionably one
of the most perverted social issues in our history,
submitted a class of people to a form of degeneration, and
social anihilation, the effects of which are still visible
today.

In 1862, by presidential decree, the black man in
America was freed from slavery. In many respects this
legal decree proved even more devastating for the black
man than slavery itself. The black man had not been
trained for freedom. He possessed few skills, no edu-
cation, he 1acked self-direction and he had no one to turn
to or no place to go; freedom by presidential decree
pointed out the urgency of a lost people. Emancipation
ended slavery and that was a momentous thing, but it did
not solve the negro problem.23

The legal process of emancipation had begun during
the Civil War; the process was legally consummated by the

adoption of three amendments to the United States Con-

stitution. The thirteenth, ratified in 1865 abolished

 

221bid.

 

23Samuel Morrison and Henry S. Commager, The
Growth of the American Republic (New York: Oxford Uni-
verSity Press, 1958): P. 2.

25

salvery in places not reached by the Emancipation Procla-
mation. The fourteenth amendment extended federal pro-
tection to the freedmen for their personal and property
rights, and the fifteenth amendment gave them the
franchise.
Emancipation altered the form but not the substance

of the black's economic status. By law, the black man did
achieve political power, but because there was no land
redistribution as was promised through plans for land
confiscation, the negro achieved no lasting basis, and his
position was easily overthrown. Without requisite capital
to purchase a farm, equipment and animals and without
credit from bankers, or store owners, the majority of
freedmen were unable to rise above their new class as
share cropper and tenant farmer.

The failure of the Federal Government to fulfill its

responsibility is not easy to explain; the expectation

of forty acres was perhaps excessive but it would not

have been either difficult or expensive to have

established each colored family on a small plot of

eight or ten acres; and a government that found it

possible to give forty million acres of public land

to a single railroad (Northern Pacific) might well

have purchased ten million acres for the freedmen.

Essentially the freedmen continued a life style

and work substantially the same as it was prior to the
Civil War. Some moved north and west but the majority

remained in the southern cotton fields. To strike out at

a better life meant a gamble and the possible risk of

 

24Ibid., p. 21.

26

losing the basic needs for survival. The risks at this
time appeared as severe as they did prior to emancipation,
also the negroes had a clear understanding of what the
white man's world of justice meant, for them.

The intent of the war amendments were swiftly
frustrated following their enactment. The thirteenth
amendment ratified on December 18, 1865 freed human
slaves, but as a result of circumstances, the majority of
negroes became sharecroppers and economic slaves to
bankers and proprietors.

The fourteenth amendment, perhaps the most
important in the constitution, was designed by the
significance of the first article of that amendment, to
guarantee due process and equal protection to the freedmen
against arbitrary state action. The real and immediate
impact of this amendment was ostensibly meant to protect
the negro. However, that article coming under laissez-
faire court interpretations extended the protection of
the federal government to business corporations whose
property rights were threatened by state legislative
regulations.

To preserve the new economic alignment of interests,
the cabalistic "due process clause" was inserted into

the fourteenth amendment, by which the ostensible
defense of negroes' rights, as the Boards have

27
pointed out, was made the eternal bulwark of great
property rights.25

The fifteenth amendment adopted into the con-
stitution in March, 1870 extended to the freedmen the
legal right to the franchise. As a result, in many
southern.states where whites were temporarily disin-
franchised, the Republican party was led by white carpet-
baggers and scalawags and composed predominantly of
negroes who controlled the political south. The political
record of this era was a compound of blatant corruption
and forward social legislation. It was an expensive
program. Money was needed to gratify the desires of
white and colored politicians for graft and of the colored
masses for social services furnished by the state.

To place controls on the heavy expenditures of
the states, the whites generally attempted to ally and in
some cases manipulate the negro politicians, but the
negroes continued to demand a program of greater social
service, and ultimately higher taxes. The differing
economic aspirations of the negroes and the wealthy
whites prevented any lasting alliance. And so the
planters and the businessmen, unable to prevent the
establishment of negro suffrage and unable to control

it after it was established, joined with the common

 

25Matthew Josephson, The Robber Barons (New York:
Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1962), p. 52.

28

whites to overthrow the Republican state governments. By
1877 the Democrats controlled every southern state and
what textbooks call white supremacy was restored. Actually
negroes continued to vote, although in reduced numbers
and white supremacy was not completely restored until the
1890's.26
During the 1890's there was a flight into racism
and Jim Crowism in the South. This was primarily abetted
by the Supreme Court which was in a mood of compromise,
appeasement, and retreat. In the famous Slaughter House
Cases of 1873 and in the United States v. Reese and the
United States v. Cruikshank in 1876, the Court whittled
down the "privileges and immunities" which were considered
to be under the protection of the Federal Government, and
in 1883, it nullified virtually every section of the
Federal Civil Rights Acts.27
The Civil Rights Acts adopted by the Congress in

1875 were the most serious actions taken by Congress to
halt arbitrary state actions against blacks.

The Congress provided that all persons regardless of

race or color, were entitled to the "full and equal"

enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities
and privileges in inns, public conveyances on land or

 

26Donald Sheehan, The Making of American History
(New York: Henry Holt & Company, Inc., 1954), p. 505.

 

27Guy B. Johnson, "Freedom, Equality and Segre-
gation," Integration vs. Se re ation, ed. by Hubert
Humphrey TNew York: Tfiomas CroweIl Co., 1964), pp. 91-107.

 

29
wateré theatre and other places of public amuse-
ment. 8

Denial of these right by any person was to be
considered a federal crime punishable by fine or im-
prisonment. This law was intended to extend the protection
of the Federal Government to many areas of civil rights
which traditionally had been under the guise of state
jurisdiction.

Five cases involving the Civil Rights Act of 1875
were decided by the Supreme Court together in 1883. The
indictments were brought against persons for denying
accommodations to negroes at a hotel, admission to a
theatre and admission to a ladies' car on a railway.

Mr. Justice Bradley delivered the opinion of the
Court, rendering the Civil Rights Act unconstitutional.
In effect,

The Supreme Court served notice that the federal
government could not lawfully protect the negro
against the discrimination which private individuals
might choose to exercise against them. This was
another way of saying that the system of "white
supremacy" was mainly beyond federal control.29

Justice Harlan, the lone dissenter, claimed the

Court had gutted the fourteenth amendment by subtle and

ingenious verbal criticisms. Railroad corporations, inns,

 

28Alfred H. Kelly and Winifred A. Horbuson, The
American Constitution Its Ori ins and Development (New
York: Norton Co., 1948), p. 491.

29

 

 

Ibid.

30

hotels, and places of public amusement, he continued, are

instrumentalities of the states.
It seems to me that . . . a denial, by these instru-
mentalities of the states, to the citizens, because
of his race, of that equality of civil rights secured
to him by law, is a denial by the state, within the
meaning of the fourteenth amendment. If it be not,
then that race is left in respect of the civil rights
in question, practically at the mercy of corporations
and individuals wielding power under the states.30

This judicial ruling was in effect an emasculation
of the necessary legislative action to enforce the
fourteenth and fifteenth amendments. The Supreme Court
thus established the doctrine that the war amendments did
not authorize the federal government to protect citizens
from each other, but only from state legislation.

As the various states began to feel out the
situation with segregation statues and as test cases went
before the courts, the Supreme Court gave aid and comfort
by ruling that segregation was a legitimate exercise of
the "police powers" of the state and did not make the
state guilty of an act of discrimination.

This decision came at a time when the South was
fighting bitterly to turn back the tide of emancipation.
This legal amputation of the fourteenth amendment spawned
a maze of discriminatory laws largely consigning the

negro to the status of the pre-war era. Such devices as

the poll tax, grandfather clauses, literacy tests and the

 

3ODerone Benett, Jr., Before The Mayflower
(Chicago, 111.: Johnson Publishing Co. Inc., 1962), p. 226.

 

31

neglect of the educational systems in dealing with blacks
negated the potency of the negroes in all aspects of social
as well as political life. Also, the South and in most
parts of the country, there developed residential patterns
that separated the races almost totally.

By 1896, the Supreme Court was ready to say that
the state itself could require segregation. In the case
of Plessy v. Ferguson the Court formally approved segre-
gation of public carriers.

This case grew out of a Louisiana statute
requiring railroads to provide "separate but equal"
accommodations for black and white passengers. Further,
the state statute stipulated that all passengers were to
be assigned to the compartment used for the passengers of
a particular race.

Plessy who was one-eighth negro established
himself in the compartment reserved for whites and refused
to re-locate himself when ordered to do so. He was
subsequently imprisoned for violation of a state statute.
The Louisiana Supreme Court upheld the conviction and
Plessy appealed to the United States Supreme Court.

Mr. Justice Brown delivered the opinion of the
Court:

The object of the fourteenth amendment was undoubtedly
to enforce the absolute equality of the two races
before the law, but in the nature of things it could

not have been intended to abolish distinctions based
on color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from

32
political equality, or a commingling of the two races
upon terms unsatisfactory to either.

In effect the Supreme Court wrote into law the
doctrine of racial classification and separation.
Continuing on with its justification for the "separate
but equal doctrine" the Court through Justice Brown
claimed:

Laws permitting, and even requiring, their separation
in places where they are liable to be brought into
contact do not necessarily imply the inferiority of
either race to the other, and have been generally, if
not universally, recognized as within the competency
of the state legislatures in the exercise of their
police powers. The most common instance of this is
connected with the establishment of separate schools
for white and colored children, which has been held
to be a valid exercise of the legislative rights of
the colored race have been longest and most earnestly
enforced.31

The Supreme Court by this decision found no form
of discrimination apparent, but also admitted that social
equality must result from natural affinity and mutual
appreciation of the races. Till that happens, the Court
believed legislation would be powerless to remove social
instincts, and distinctions.

This famous decision was heavily influenced by the
post reconstruction era. In many respects the decision
was truly born out of contemporary America at the turn of
the century. Justice Warren Harlan the lone dissenter in

the Civil Rights Case of 1875, again dissented and offered

his rationale which exposed his prohetic insights:

 

31Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896).

33

The arbitrary separation of citizens, on the basis of
race, while they are on a public highway, is a badge

of servitude wholly inconsistent with the civil freedom
and the equality before the law established by the
constitution. It cannot be justified upon any legal
grounds.

If evils will result from the commingling of the
two races upon public highways established for the
benefit of all, they will be infinitely less than
those that surely come from State legislation regulating
the enjoyment of civil rights upon the basis of race.
We boast of the freedom enjoyed by our people above all
other peoples. But it is difficult to reconcile that
boast with a state of the law which, practically, puts
the brand of servitude and degradation upon a large
class of our fellow citizens, our equals before the
law. The thin line of "equal" accommodations for
passengers in railroad coaches will not mislead anyone,
nor atone for the wrong done this day.

The Plessy decision, as predicted by Justice
Harlan, led to a new stimulus for laws to separate the
races. In time negroes and whites were separated in the
use of schools, churches, cemeteries, drinking fountains,
restaurants, and virtually all places of public accommo-
dation and amusement. One state enacted a law providing
for the separate warehousing of books used by white and
negro children.

Where there was no legislation requiring segre—
gation, local practices filled the void. The object was
to maintain racial distinction at all costs. Negroes were
segregated by law in the public schools of the South,
while those in the northern states, residing in ghettos
were sent to predominantly negro schools. Negroes were

as unwanted in the white churches as they had been in the

 

BZIbid.

34

late eighteenth century; and negro churches of virtually
every denomination were the answer for a people who had
accepted the Christianity of the white man who in turn

rejected his religious fellowship.33

The doctrine of "separate but equal" was to become
a way of life in the American scheme; particularly
noticeable in the southern states was the desirability for
both blacks and whites though functionally related
segments of a biracial society to remain separate, while
maintaining a participatory dimension in the economic and
political order.

The theory of biracialism visualized a future in
which negroes would gradually acquire wealth and education
on a scale within the negro community paralleling that of
the white community. Defenders, both black and white,
believed that although institutional life including
schools and neighborhoods should remain separate, negroes
should be allowed to compete freely for jobs and should
gradually acquire the full voting rights they had lost in
the South after 1875. It was generally considered unwise,

however, to make a frontal assault upon segregation in

public places since the key to the ultimate solution lay

 

33John Hope Franklin, "The Two Worlds of Race: A
Historical Review," The_Negro American, ed. by Talcott

Parsons and Kenneth B. Clark (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967),
pp. 47-680

35

in the acquisition of education and economic well being,
not protest.

The later accumulation of experiences over several
decades substantiated the views held by many who could not
accept the "separate but equal" compromise that Booker T.
Washington had made so famous in 1895. Experience had
demonstrated that, while it might be theoretically possible
to achieve equality within the framework of a segregated
school system in the South, it seemed impossible in actual
practice. The costs of duplicating facilities to make
public accommodations truly equal would have been exorbi-
tant beyond means, and certainly intentions.34

In 1947 the President's council on civil rights
remarked aptly that the "separate but equal" doctrine

. . . is one of the outstanding myths of American
history, for it is almost always true that while
indeed separate, these facilities are far from equal.
Throughout the segregated public institutions Negroes
have been denied an equal share of tax supported
services and facilities.35

The dual system in America would continue unfettered
by a Supreme Court that was philosophically embedded with
the doctrine of laissez-faire well into the 1930's. Prior
to this time the fourteenth amendment had little real

meaning for the negro, it was rather the bulwark for

corporate protection against legislative restrictions.

 

34Ibid.

3SPresident's Committee on Civil Rights, To Secure

These Ri hts (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office,
1947), pp. 81-82.

36

The fourteenth amendment as interpreted by the
courts in earlier cases showed clearly that the courts'
narrow interpretations of that amendment dulled the civil
rights protections intended by the framers of that
amendment. The courts were inextricably bound up with the
concept of protecting business interests and thus preventing
legislatures from dealing with pressing social problems
long before approved by other industrialized nations.

In the 1930's this nation was becoming increasingly
aware of "corporate slavery" as indicated by court cases
involving child labor, working conditions, and the eight
hour labor day. Also the new deal policies of Franklin D.
Roosevelt raised hopes for a new assault against social
and legal inequity.

One of the first important Supreme Court cases that
seriously dealt with the equal protection clause as it
related to negroes in education was the Missouri ex. e1.
Gaines v. Canada case of 1938. Gaines, a black law student
filed a suit against the State of Missouri because as a
black he was denied admission to the white state law
school. The State offered to pay Gaines tuition to an out-
of-state law school, but the Supreme Court ruled this
action unconstitutional on the basis of equality of legal
right. The State of Missouri argued that tuition payments
satisfied the "separate but equal doctrine," even though

the State did not have a legal school for negroes, however,

37

the Court claimed that equal facilities within the state
must be made available to blacks desiring a law degree.
Provisions for the payment of tuition fees in another
state does not remove discrimination, the Court ruled.36

In subsequent cases the Supreme Court continued to
insist upon equal facilities for negroes. In Sipuel v.
University of Oklahoma, 332 U.S. 631 (1948) the decision
was handed down that black law students must be admitted
to the state law school or be provided with equal edu-
cational facilities within the state. In 1950 the Supreme
Court ruling in the McLaurin case (339 U.S. 637) dis-
allowed the regents of the University of Oklahoma from
segregating black students in the graduate school after
they had been admitted to the University.

Notably, in the landmark case of Sweaat v. Painter
the high court declared that the separate but equal doctrine
was irreconcilable when the state must deal in the area of
professional and graduate education. In this case, the
Court discerned that the University of Texas Law School
for whites far exceeded that which was planned for negroes
in many areas. Not only were physical facilities found

comparably wanting, but matters dealing with the teaching

 

36Rocco J. Tresolini, American Constitutional Law
(New York: Macmillan Co., 1965), p. 580.

38

staff, library, scholarships, accreditation, and repu-
tation.37

By mid century, the walls of segregation were
crumbling. The war had exacerbated race relations and
advanced racial equality. With the defeat of Nazi Germany
and its cult of racial superiority, the doctrine of negro
inferiority was largely deprived of its intellectual
justification. In 1948, President Truman ordered an end
to segregation in the armed services and the inequality of
opportunity for promotion and appointment.

Prior to the war, President Roosevelt ended
discrimination based upon color in all defense industries
thus causing a mass migration of blacks from the South to
the cities of the North where they found employment and
political freedom.

The NAACP, acting under the direction of Thurgood
Marshall at this time, fresh from victory in the Sweatt,
McLaurin, Herndon (Outlaw of the white primary) cases now
sought to file suits attacking segregation at the ele-
mentary and high school levels. As Marshall put it, the
time was ripe to go after the "whole hog."

In the Brown cases, Thurgood Marshall attacked
the "separate but equal principal." This assault on the
famed Plessy decision became a logical legal extention of

the Sweatt case where the court had already held that

 

37Ibid., p. 581.

39

equality involved far more than equality of physical
facilities. Marshall pleaded with the Court to abolish
laws that required the separation of the races in edu-
cation. "Slavery," Marshall said, "is perpetuated in
these statutes."

John W. Davis argued for the states. He claimed
that the fourteenth amendment had never been originally
intended to prevent segregation in public schools. He
argued principally from the Plessy decision, but also
claimed that the tenth amendment (reserved powers clause)
allowed the states to educate their children as they saw
fit and without federal intervention.

On May 17, 1954 the Supreme Court handed down its
epochal decision. Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered the
opinion of the Court:

Whatever may have been the extent of psychological
knowledge at the time of Plessy v. Ferguson, this
finding is amply supported by modern authority. Any
language in Plessy v. Ferguson contrary to this finding
is rejected. To separate them (children) from others
of similar age and qualifications solely because of
their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to

their status in the community that may affect their
hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.

38
The Brown decision indicated that the Court relied
heavily upon moral and sociological factors in legal

testimony offered. Emphasizing this dimension Chief

Justice E. Warren inserted into the Supreme Courts opinion

 

388rown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).

40

the findings of the lower court which substantiated human

consequences of segregation, even though the lower Kansas

Court felt compelled to rule against the Negro Plaintiffs:
Segregation of white and colored children in public
schools has a detrimental affect upon the colored
children. The impact is greater when it has the
sanction of the law, for the policy of separating the
races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferi-
ority of the negro group. A sense of inferiority
affects the motivation of a child to learn. Segre-
gation with the sanction of the law, therefore, has a
tendency to retard the educational and mental develop-
ment of negro children and to deprive them of some of
the benefits they would receive in a racially integrated
system.

Since the Brown decision, many cases have been
ruled upon in line with the precedent setting Brown case
virtually abolishing any, and all forms of racial
separation in facilities serving the public. But as was
expected, old customs and traditions in many areas of the
country were not so easily dismantled and many initiations
were undertaken to circumvent the Court's mandate that
ordered states to make reasonable and prompt moves toward
full compliance with the Brown ruling.

In the South, notably, there was sufficient vagary
on the part of officials and dilatoriness regarding the
court mandate which prompted the Federal Congress to enact
the 1964 Civil Rights Act. This act gave the attorney

general authority to initiate school desegregation suits,

and it added to "deliberate speed" of the courts the

 

39Ib1d.

41

threat that the Federal Government would withhold funds
from segregated school systems.

Even into the mid sixties the pace of change had
been slow. At the beginning of the 1965-66 school year,
the number of southern negro pupils still in segregated
classrooms was variously estimated at 92.5 to 94.8 per cent
of the total.40

In 1968 the courts looked at the most widely used
methods for bringing children of both races together,
"open enrollment," under which pupils are allowed to
transfer from schools that are segregated or over crowded
to others in the district, was found wanting. Reasserting
the intentions explicit in the Brown decision, the courts
stepped up attacks on inhibiting schemes that functioned
under a blanket of legitimacy.

In the Green v. County Board of Education case,
the court was confronted with a record of a freedom-of-
choice program that the District Court had found to in
fact preserve the dual system. While acknowledging that
a freedom-of-choice concept could be a valid remedial
measure in some areas, given the proper circumstances, its

failure to be effective in the Green case prompted the

Court to admit: " . . . that the burden on a school

 

40Harold C. Fleming, "Federal Executive and Civil
Rights," The Ne ro American, ed. by Talcott Parsons and
Kenneth B. Clark (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), pp. 371-99.

42

board today is to come forward with a plan that promises
realistically to work . . . now . . . until it is clear
that state imposed segregation has been completely

removed."41

The thrust of this decision placed pressure on
school officials to submit effective, workable plans to
be examined by District Courts for their remedial effec—
tiveness in the fulfillment of unitary school systems.

Now school districts were ordered to end segregation by
court order, and the new plans submitted began to include
busing as a tool for integration.

On April 20, 1971 the Supreme Court took a formal
position on the issue of busing in the Swann v. Charlotte-
Mecklenburg N.C. Board of Education case. At the time of
this case, the school district in North Carolina was
responsible for 84,000 students in 107 schools. Approxi-
mately 29 per cent (24,000) were negro, about 14,000 of
whom attended 21 schools that were at least 99 per cent
negro.

Swann petitioned the District Court claiming that
a dual educational system existed. Upon examining the
situation, the District Court ordered school authorities
to submit a plan (based upon the Green decision) that

would realistically work now in ending segregation.

 

41Green v. Board of Education, 391 U.S. 430 (1968).

43

School officials submitted several plans, however,
the District Court as well as the Court of Appeals found
them to be arbitrary limitations negating reasonable
steps. The District Court thus having the power to
fashion the remedies (Green case) solicited the expertise
of Dr. Finger, a school administrative authority, who
developed the plan for busing, pairing and clustering to
eliminate segregation.

The Supreme Court entertained the case in April,
1970 and unanimously upheld the lower courts decision; the
busing of children to achieve a unitary school system.42
The Court's objective as pronounced in the Swann decision
was to eliminate from public schools all vestiges of state
imposed segregation. Such segregation as noted, was held
violative of the equal protection guarantees stipulated in
the Brown cases of 1954.

In rendering the Swann decision the Supreme Court
claimed that faculty, staff, transportation, extracur-
ricular activities are among important indicators of a
segregated school system. To achieve a unitary system,
the Court warned that schools must eliminate invidious
racial distinctions in those respects.

On the issue of teachers, the Court was explicit

and pointed out that the Constitution does not prohibit

 

42Swann, et al. v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of
Education, 402 U.S. 281 (1970).

44

District Courts from using their equity powers to order
assignment of teachers to achieve faculty desegregation.

The Court also pointed out that while in the
process of seeking remedies to eliminate legally imposed
segregation, school districts and officials must be
cognizant of plans for future school construction and
abandonment of facilities that might perpetuate a dual
system.

In effect the Swann decision, upholding busing,
also offered the lower courts guides to the process of
implementing school desegregation programs. Because of
the intracacy of this decision and its sensitive nature as
applied as a nation-wide precedent it becomes imperative
to point out precisely what the Berger Court affirmed and
what it did not affirm in this case.

The central issue in the Swann case was that of
student assignment, and the Supreme Court sighted four
critical areas to be considered: racial balance (quotas),
one-race schools, remedial altering of attendance zones,
and transportation of students.

Racial balance, the Court claimed, could not be
upheld as the constitutional command to desegregate schools
and does not mean that every school in every community must
always reflect the racial composition of the school

system as a whole. The court has insisted that inflexible

45

mathematical ratios could not be enforced by the Supreme
Court: "As we said in GREEN, a school authority's remedial
plan or a district court's remedial decree is to be judged
by its effectiveness."43
Concerning the issue of one-race schools, the
record in the Swann case showed that in most metropolitan
areas minority groups are concentrated in the inner city
or an exclusive part of it. Thus the Court acknowledged
that in many instances schools are predominately of one
race, but that such schools are not necessarily indicative
of a system that practices segregation by law. The Court
went on, however, stipulating that lower courts and
school officials must be concerned with the elimination
of one-race schools.
An optional majority-to-minority transfer provision
has long been recognized as a useful part of every
desegregation plan. Provision for optional transfer
of those in the majority racial group of a particular
school to other schools where they will be in the
minority is an indispensable remedy for those students
willing to transfer to other schools in order to
lessen the impact on them of the state imposed stigma
of segregation.44
Regarding this issue of freedom-of-choice, an
additional measure to eliminate segregation, the Court
stipulated that persons favoring to be transferred must be

provided not only space in the new school but transpor-

tation to the school he desires to move to.

 

43Ibid. 4402. cit.

46

A third problem area that the Court sighted on the
issue of a dual school system was the altering of attendance
zones. In the Swann decision, the Court admitted that
sometimes drastic gerrymandering of school districts and
attendance zones along with pairing, clustering or the
grouping of schools with attendance assignments made
deliberately to accomplish desegregation, was indeed
within the broad remedial powers of the courts. The
Court also stated that it was within the powers of the
courts to transfer negro students out of a formerly
segregated negro school and transfer whites into a
formerly all negro school.45

The Supreme Court did not offer specific guidelines
or fixed criteria, it simply cautioned that plans must be
effective, and in line with the practicalities of the
situation and objectives sought. There are no universal
answers to the problem and there is obviously no one plan
that will do the job in every case, the Court stated.

On the issue of permissable student transportation,
the Court again did not offer any difinitive guides. The
Court did, however, admit to the importance of busing as
a normal and acceptable tool. In the Swann companion
case, Davis v. Board of School Commissioners of Mobile

County, the Court accepted busing as a legitimate tool as

well.

 

45Swann, et al. v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of
Education, U.S. 402 U.S. 281 (1970).

47

In the Swann case the actual busing plan developed
by the District Court would require less travel time than
that earlier preferred by school authorities. This fact
obviously impressed the Supreme Court to hold that local
school authorities should employ busing of students as
one tool of school desegregation.

In the Swann case decree, the Court did admit to
limits of reasonable objection to busing: "An objection
to the transportation of students may have validity when
the time or distance of travel is so great as to either
risk the health of the children or significantly impinge
on the educational process."46

In seeking to define the remedial power and the
limits on remedial power of courts the Supreme Court
admitted that words are poor instruments to convey the
sense of basic fairness inherent in equity. Through this
Court opinion the attempt was made to suggest the limits

of court actions while insuring an appropriate form of

equity.

Contemporary Findings
It was the precedent setting Swann decision of
1971 that has become the catylist for district court

rulings against segregated schools throughout the country,

 

461bid.

48

thereby, creating an increased escalation of rhetoric
regarding the merits of such legal dictates.

The new dimension of recent court orders is that
they are not isolated to the South. Understandably, the
problem of de facto segregation in the North had been
obscured by the spectacular events in the South in the
last ten to fifteen years. The Federal troops at Little
Rock, the closing of schools in Virginia, the riots in New
Orleans--in a word--the massive resistance of the South to
the Supreme Court mandate had preempted the nation's
concern.

Today the distinction between de jure and de facto
segregation are not so identifiable. De facto segre-
gation, arising from neighborhood patterns not created by
law, is primarily a northern problem that recent court
decisions find to be remedial. Also, it has been found
by courts that though patterns may give the appearance of
de facto segregation, they are in effect the product of
de jure doings.

To abolish de jure and de facto segregation which
was found detrimental to the mental development of negroes
in school as cited in the Brown cases, the courts have
ordered busing of children as a tool to end segregation.

This issue of busing is now one of the nation's
primary domestic problems. Most of the suits deal with

large cities and call for intra-district busing, but some

49

cases involve plans requiring the busing of students to
the suburbs and conversely the busing of white suburban
children into inner city schools.

There are several notable cases involving the
issue of busing at this time. One of the most spectacular
involved intra-district busing of students in Pontiac,
Michigan. District Judge Damon Keith ruled on a suit
filed by the NAACP (Davis v. School District of the City
of Pontiac), that segregation in schools was not caused by
housing patterns, and that evidence was sufficient to
substantiate the fact that school boundaries were frequently
redistricted to maintain a dual system.

He then ordered 9,000 of the city's 24,000 school
children bused for an average of 15 minutes each way to
achieve a better racial balance. On October 26, 1971, the
Supreme Court refused to review the District Court's
order, thus allowing it to stand.47

Though the Keith ruling has come under the guise
of de jure segregation in a northern city, his opinion
smacks of the detrimental effects which are not dissimilar
from de facto segregation.

When power to act is available, failure to take the
necessary steps so as to negate or alleviate a situ-

ation which is harmful is a wrong as is the taking of
affirmative steps to advance the situation. Sins of

 

47"Latest in the Furor Over School Busing," U.S.
News and World Report (November 8, 1971), p. 72.

 

 

50
of omission can be as serious as sins of com-
mission.48

As a result of the Keith ruling, several school
buses were burned this past September, on the eve of
school openings in Pontiac, Michigan. A white boycott of
the schools was then put into effect, and there were
demonstrations which gained nation-wide attention. At the
present time, nearly eight months after the Court plan was
implemented, the Pontiac situation has reached a calm
point. However, the Pontiac issue gave rise to the
National Action Group. An adamantly opposed busing
organization.

As of November of 1971, National Action Group had
branches in seventy Pontiac areas, and currently boasts of
a membership of over 100,000 persons, including membership
in out-state branches. The primary goal of this organi-
zation is to work for a constitutional amendment prohibiting
the busing of school children.

In a similar case the Supreme Court refused to
grant a stay of a busing plan for Winston-Salem, North
Carolina. The reason for the refusal was that the briefs
were filed too late, however, Chief Justice Berger afforded
a measure of solace to opponents of busing when he

delivered an unusually lengthy opinion claiming that he

 

481bid.

51

is convinced that many of the lower courts have mis-
interpreted the scope of the Swann decision.

The Chief Justice expressed fear that confusion is
apparent in the lower courts where busing is being used to
reach a racial balance in every school. Continuing with
the Winston-Salem opinion, Berger stated that the con-
stitutional command to desegregate does not mean that
every community must always reflect the racial composition
of the school system in its entirety. The workings of the
Swann case, Berger reminded, meant that decrees must take
into consideration the greatest possible degrees for
desegregation, but must take into account the practicali-
ties.49

Three days after this opinion was rendered,
President Nixon expressed his views concerning the issue:

I have consistantly opposed busing of our nation's
school children to achieve racial balance, and I am
opposed to the busing of children simply for the sake
of busing.50

On September 7, 1971, President Nixon directed the
Attorney General, John Mitchell, and the Secretary of
Health, Education and Welfare, Eliot Richardson, to work

closely with the southern school districts in an attempt

to hold busing to the minimum required by law. He also

 

49Swann v. Board of Education, 402 U.S. 281

(1970).

50"The Agony of Busing Moves North," Time,
November 15, 1971, p. 57.

52

directed his administration officials to amend the
emergency school assistance act and to stipulate in that
amendment that none of the 1.5 billion in aid intended
for the costs of desegregating school systems could be
used for or to acquire school buses.

The Nixon proposal had the effect of appeasement
to the South as well as other parts of the country, but
the impact of his proposal was negligible in terms of
policy and that was evidenced by the attendance of anti-
busing group leaders who descended upon Washington for the
purpose of seeking an amendment to stop busing. The
leaders of various groups opposing busing represented
twenty-two states and forty-seven cities.

Michigan has proven to be one hot spot since
busing has moved into the North. Detroit, Michigan and
Grand Rapids are now involved in suits demanding a merger
of city and suburban school districts to increase inte-
gration.

Judge Stephen Roth, Federal District Court
Magistrate in the Detroit area, found that school segre-
gation had been abetted by official policy in the Detroit
metropolitan area. He then went further and noted that
all-white suburban havens had also been prompted by official
actions, in this case, by policies of the Federal Housing
Administration and state agencies, which he believed

could have prohibited racial discrimination in real

53

estate dealings had they wished. He subsequently ordered
the State Board of Education to submit plans for a new
metropolitan area school district.51
Grand Rapids and the neighboring suburban school
districts are now in the process of a District Court
hearing as to the issue of segregation (Higgins v. Board
of Education). At present, District Judge Engel has not
ruled concerning the evidence being presented. His opinion
is to be expected not later than the summer of 1972, and
many persons are watching closely since Albert J. Engel
was appointed by Nixon in 1970 and nominated to that
federal bench by Senator Robert Griffin, an avowed leader
of the anti-busing movement in the Senate.
Senator Philip Hart, Michigan's other repre-
sentative to the United States Senate, supports busing as
a temporary tool to achieve equality of education even
though his mail from Michigan constituents has been over-
whelmingly against busing.52
Representative Gerald Ford of the fifth con—
gressional district which encompasses the Grand Rapids
area, is bitterly opposed to busing. In a speech delivered

in Grand Rapids this November, Ford called for a greater

allocation of funds for improving schools rather than

 

511bid., p. 58.

52"Busing," Grand Rgpids Press, March, 15, 1972:
sec. A, p. 2-

54

busing students. Ford, an influential figure in the White
House also admitted the President felt the recent school
suits exceeded the intent of the Supreme Court.

In January, 1972, Ford, minority leader in the
House of Representatives, gave full support to a committee
discharge petition which was intended to open the way for
rapid approval of a constitutional amendment. Ford acted
unexpectedly precluding the committee system when the
Justice Department did not intervene in the cross-district
busing suits being carried on in Detroit and Grand Rapids.

Despite legislative threats upon the perogatives
of the courts from Washington as well as Lansing, the
courts have continued in a deliberate fashion to process
the civil rights suits. Judge Roth continued to listen to
testimony and study proposals, but all indications pointed
to an outcome similar to that recently decided in Richmond,
Virginia. In this case District Court Judge Robert
Merhige ordered three Richmond area public school districts
to merge into a single desegregated system.

On March 16, 1972, after considerable study and
time spent in search of alternatives, a presidential
advisory committee supplied the President with a legis-
lative scheme aimed at dulling integration of students.
There were two immediate effects as a result of the
President's proposal; first it tended to calm the

emotionalism within the legislative solons throughout

55

the nation and secondly, it at least, temporarily put a
halt to plans sponsored by many lawmakers to amend the
Federal Constitution.

The Nixon bill as proposed, calls for a moratorium
on all pending cases of busing until July 1, 1973.
Additionally his plans call for the adoption of an "equal
educational opportunities act." This part of the legis-
lative proposal would require that all Federal Courts
exhaust all alternatives prior to utilizing busing as a
tool for eliminating dual school systems, also the
President had planned to earmark 2.5 billion to upgrade
inferior big city and rural area schools.53

President Nixon's call for a moratorium on court
ordered school busing drew a hopeful but skeptical reaction
from many lawmakers. Some wondered if the Congress could
impede court actions by legislation, some preferred the
amendment route. All seemed to applaud the monies allo-
cated for inferior schools as a fair and equitable trade-
off for busing. Representative Ford hailed the Nixon move
as a proposal long advocated by many persons who opposed

forced busing and racial balance. He also claimed that

 

53"Nixon Busing Legislation Dampens Amendment
Drive," Grand Rapids Press, March 20, 1972, Sec. A, p. 8.

56

the President was most noble by attempting to provide
additional funds to provide quality education for all.54

Senator Robert Griffin was also elated by the
President's initiative, but many lawmakers were dismayed
by the President's actions, and began to speak out, and
for the first time lines began to develop clearly regarding
the pros and cons of busing.

Representative John Bradema, Democratic, Indiana,

a member of the House Education and Labor Committee,
claimed Nixon attempted to leave the impression the 2.5
billion allocation is new money. One billion, Bradema
claimed had already been budgeted for so called Title I
aid to poverty area schools and the remaining 1.5 billion
was already intended to help schools pay for the costs of
desegregation.

"This is not new money and it should be made
clear," Bradema continued, and then said that President
Nixon had twice before vetoed education bills that were at
a level he is now proposing but which he previously con-
sidered excessive.55

Representative John Conyers of Detroit charged

that the President has encouraged the people to ignore the

 

54"Nixon Busing Plan Leaves Lawmakers Hopeful,
Skeptical," Grand Repids Press, March 18, 1972, Sec. A,
p. 16.

SSIbid.

 

57

laws of the land.56

Columnist, Carl Rowan accused the
President of the United States of abusing the powers of
the executive by placing that branch of government on the
side of the "separate but equal doctrine." "He is
decreeing generations more in which the poor, the have-
nots, wind up without a remote chance to succeed in that
chase we call the pursuit of happiness."57
Among other notable black leaders reacting to the
Presidential proposal, Roy Wilkins of the NAACP said that
the executive scheme would lead to a constitutional crisis.
Clarence Mitchell, the NAACP representative in Washington,
D.C., charged the President's message was a lie. Repre-
sentative Shirley Chisholm said the President was under-
mining the principle of racial equality. Reverand Jesse
Jackson, the Chicago black leader, said the President's
address was one of the most dangerous speeches he had ever
heard.58
Typically most of the leaders in the Democratic
party have now felt that the President has made the busing
issue a cheap political gimmick by appealing to the fears

brought about by changes accompanying the end of school

desegregation. Whatever, aside from the criticisms and

 

SGIbid.

57Carl Rowan, "A Return to Separate But Equal
Doctrine," Grand Rapids Press, March 24, 1972, Sec. A,
p. 11.

saIbid.

 

58

praise the President is now receiving, the issue of busing
is far from settled.

Approximately ten days after the President
delivered his obstructionist proposals to Congress,
District Court Judge Stephen Roth rejected metropolitan
school plans for desegregating the Detroit school system.
Judge Roth has decided to go ahead and consider desegre-
gation proposals despite a request from the Justice
Department to refrain from such rulings.

In rejecting the plans for the Detroit area,

Judge Roth declared that the desegregation of Detroit
schools cannot be accomplished within the existing Detroit
School District. School district lines, he reminded the
planners, are mere political conveniences and the courts
must look beyond such limits for a solution to the problems
of segregation in Detroit schools.59

In Grand Rapids, United States District Judge
Engel is also continuing to process a similar suit, but as
of yet has not determined if indeed there is a violation
of civil rights.

At this point, the issue of busing is for the most
part a legal battle as indicated by research sighted from
the various court decisions offered in this chapter. Both

advocates and opponents of busing, it seems, based upon

 

59"Proposed Detroit Busing Plans Hit," Detroit
Free Press, March 27, 1972, Sec. 4, p. 22.

 

59

the particular circumstances within a given area are
seeking legal guarantees that would substantiate their
cause.

The issue of busing, however, carries with it far
greater implications than what the term legal alone would
infer. For example, it is a social problem for all
people, and to a degree both forces (for and against) are
not without some justification for their positions.

Aside from the legal aspects, proponents of busing
have repeatedly pointed out the Coleman Report as soci-
ological evidence for busing to achieve integration. In
that report, conducted by the United States Office of
Education, it was found that a nation-wide study of the
effects of school segregation on 600,000 minority group
children disclosed that those in predominantly white
middle class schools scored higher on achievement tests
than did those in segregated schools. The report went on
to claim that physical and economic resources of a school
had little relation to the achievement of pupils. This
study strongly suggests that it is the interaction of the
races, plus the stimulus one provides the other, that
improves the standard of education for all, rather than

the mere spending of more money.60

 

60James S. Coleman, et al., Equality of Educational
Opportunipy (Washington, D.C.: Department of Health,
Education, and Welfare, 1966).

 

60

Heretofore, public opposition to the busing issue
basically centered around the question of infringement on
legal rights. Recently, however, opponents of the busing
issue are bolstering their legal stand with seemingly
meritorious research that disputes earlier sociological
data used in support of the busing issue.

The Jensen Report of 1969 is one such study that
is purportedly of significant value to the undermining of
the busing issue.61

Arthur Jensen, the noted Berkley psychologist, has
claimed that equal educational opportunity, the goal of
busing, will not necessarily lead to equality of per-
formance. Jensen who has developed the "inheritability of
intelligence" hypothesis emphasizes genetic factors in
intelligence, and largely dismisses as antiquated the
uniformity of educational treatment. Schools should be
geared to the determination of goals on the basis of the
child's own characteristics, not necessarily educational
pluralism.

In effect, Jensen claims that through his research
he has discovered that genetic factors rather than
environmental factors are the real determiners between
black and white ability. According to his findings,

which to this point have not been disproven, Jensen claims

 

61N. L. Gage, "I.Q. Heritability, Race Differences,
and Educational Research," Phi Delta Kappan, III, No. 5
(January, 1972), 308.

 

61

that there exists a fifteen point difference between the
mean I.Q.'s of black and white Americans, and that
difference is immune to environmental manipulations.

Given this hypothesis, legislative schemes aimed
at improving the education of negroes and other low-income
students would be futile. Instead of such social engi-
neering schemes, as busing, Jensen calls for a realistic
appraisal of those differences and proposes that schools
become more concerned with individual differences in those
characteristics most relevant to educability.

The most recent anti-busing research to gain
popular attention is that offered by Professor David

62 Armor concluded

Armor, a Harvard sociology professor.
that as a result of busing in Boston and several other
northern cities, blacks did not increase achievement
levels appreciably. He also discovered that integrated
schools tend to increase black identity, or racial
awareness rather than the opposite.

Armor's work has been classified as anti-busing,
and is the first widely circulated piece of research to
draw these conclusions. Judge Stephen J. Roth who is
handling the Detroit school case referred to a deposition

submitted by Armor in the case as a "return to the dis-

credited doctrine of 'separate but equal.'"

 

62William Grant, "2 Profs Turn Foes Over Study
Critical of Busing," Detroit Free Press, July 27, 1972,
Sec. 12A.

62

Thomas Pettigrew, a colleague of Armor, and a
reknowned sociologist in the field of race relations,
considers Armor's research "generally sloppy," and
erroneous. Pettigrew claims that achievement among
black students jumped about 30 percentiles more than
Armor calculated. He also charges that Armor did not
question black elementary students in his study and that
elementary students make up the bulk of the students
involved in busing.

Pettigrew generally claims that Armor is not
SOphisticated to handle the racial issue. Armor on the
other hand claims that his research is definitive and
charges that Pettigrew is a super-liberal scholar who has
put politics ahead of research. He also charges that
Pettigrew and his colleagues are burdened by an un-
questioning attitude heavily overlapped with ideology.

This research by Armor is a direct attack on the
Coleman report that Pettigrew adheres to. Regardless of
the outcome of this professional dispute the fact is
apparent that Armor's findings has bolstered those white
as well as black Americans who deplore the issue of busing.
Armor's work has added substantive matter to rational
arguments against the basic tenents of integrated
schooling.

Aside from legal as well as socio-psychological

arguments against busing, the apparent strength of those

63

who oppose busing lies in their numerical superiority. A
recent Gallup Poll survey indicated that 76 per cent of
Americans surveyed were Opposed to busing for the purpose
of eliminating segregated school systems.63
In all fairness to those who are adamantly opposed
to busing it must be said, however, in practically all
areas throughout the nation where one form or another of

busing has been ordered there has generally been compliance

by citizens who find such a tool an abhorance.

Conclusion

If one were to review the recent literature for the
purpose of finding out why people feel a particular way
about the issue of cross-district busing, one would be
very disappointed to find that there is a dearth of
documented evidence. We know for example that a majority
of people oppose cross-district busing but we have no
reports as to any meaningful in-depth surveys.

The present study appears to be unique in several
aspects. For one, it seems certain to be among the first
investigations aimed at studying suburban community

citizens who face the prospect of cross-district busing.

 

63"News and Trends," Todayfs Education, LX,
No. 2 (February, 1972), 3.

 

64

Secondly, the research will aim at reporting in
narrative fashion the story of the people and their
feelings as well as expected behavior as a result of
possible cross-district busing.

Thirdly, this study is being conducted in a
community that at present has not in any way been effected
by integration. In that respect, I believe, we can
obtain a more objective picture of the situation rather
than the seemingly traditional reports carried on after
the fact and accompanied by large degrees of emotionalism.

Lastly, because of the lack of any difinitive
literature concerning the issue of cross-busing it seems
highly warranted that a study of this type would be of
value to those in general society who must deal with

similar problems.

CHAPTER III

METHODOLOGY

As stated in Chapter I, the primary purpose of
this study is to describe the behavior and beliefs that
constitute a common perspective among white suburban
parents of elementary children, and educational personnel
resulting from the issue of cross-district busing.

An elementary school zone within the Green Hills
School District has been selected as the area of study
because it is a white suburban school area, typical of
most suburban areas, but among the first to deal with
the matter of cross-district busing and integration. The
Green Hills School District borders the Grand Rapids
metropolitan school system. The residents in this area
are generally middle- and upper-middle class in terms of
income, and the student population in the total Green Hills
District is comprised of approximately 4,500 white students.

This research, as noted in the title of the study,
is an exploratory sociological endeavor. The value of an

exploratory study is to increase our understanding of the

65

66

empirical social world under study. Unlike the quanti-
tative methodology employed by deductive theorists,
exploratory research which is more concerned with the
phenomena of the empirical social world is not limited by
restrictive mathematical models.

The import of the natural science approach to the
subject matter of sociology is that sociologists have
tended to bend, re-shape, and distort the empirical
social world to fit the model they use to investigate
it. Wherever possible, social reality is ignored.
Most sociologists seem to have forgotten that reality
exists only in the empirical world and not in the
methods sociologists use to measure it. I can find no
methodological or epistemological justification that
would support the natural science model as being the
best model for presentation of the empirical social
world.64

Qualitative methodology thus allows the researcher
in his quest for social reality to obtain first-hand
knowledge about the empirical social world under study.
By getting close to the data rather than some highly
structured model the researcher improves his components
for explanation.

Exploration by definition is a flexible procedure in
which the researcher shifts from one to another line
of inquiry, adopts new points of direction previously
not thought of, and changes his recognition of what
is relevant data as he acquires more information and
better understanding. In these respects exploratory

study does not mean that there is no direction to the
inquiry: it means that the focus is originally broad

 

64William Filstead, Qualitatiye Methodology
(Chicago: Markham Publishing Co., 1970), p. 3.

 

67

but becomes progressively sharpened as the inquiry
proceeds.55

The value of exploratory investigation thus enables
one to move toward a clearer understanding of how one's
problem is to be posed, to learn what are the appropriate
data, to develop ideas of what are significant lines of
relationship, and to evolve concepts in light of what one
is learning about the area of life.

Because of its flexible nature, exploratory research
is not pinned down to any particular set of techniques.
Its guiding maxim is to use any ethical procedure that
offers a possibility of receiving a clearer picture of
what is going on in the area of social life. There is
no protocal to be followed in the use of any one
procedure; the procedure should be adopted to its
circumstances. Thus it may involve direct observation,
interviewing of people, listening to their conver-
sations, securing life history accounts, using letters
and diaries, consulting public records, arranging for
group discussions and making counts of an item if this
appears worthwhile. There is no protocal to be
followed in the use of any one of these procedures;

the procedure should be adapted to its circumstances
and guided by judgment of its propriety and fruitful-
ness.

The primary instrument utilized to gather data in
this exploratory study is the interview procedure, a
common sociological tool used with qualitative methodology.
In addition to the interview instrument described later in
this chapter, the research strategy of limited participant

observation will also be employed.

 

65Herbert Blumer, "Methodological Principles of
Empirical Science," Sociological Methods, ed. by Norman
Denzin (Chicago: University of California, Aldine
Publishing Co., 1970), PP. 20-39.

 

661bid., p. 33.

68

Participant observation allows the researcher to
gain first-hand knowledge about the social reality of a
situation through actual participation.

This method of understanding enables sociologists to
perceive and interpret human behavior at a greater depth
than the outer perspective would allow. Objects can be
known purely from the outside, while mental and social
processes can be known only from the inside, as well as
through shared meanings and interpretations we give to
Objects. Hence insight of the phenomena to be observed.
. . . It is participation in an activity that generates
interest, purpose, point of view, value, meaning and
intelligibility, as well as bias.

The value of employing participant observation is
that it compliments the interview instrument and enhances
the validity of the study and its reliability when the
researcher tries to picture the empirical social world as
it actually exists to those being investigated, rather than
as the researcher imagines it to be. By the use of
participant observation and the interview process, the
author has attempted to combine an awareness of the inner
and outer perspective of those investigated.

The latter assumes that the study of man's behavior or
conduct is adequate to produce knowledge about social
life. The inner perspective assumes that under-
standing can only be achieved by activity participating
in the life of the observed and gaining insight by
means of introspection.68

Qualitative methodology has been adopted for use in

this study because it, more so, than other methodologies,

 

67William Filstead, Qualitative Methodology
(Chicago: Markham Publishing Co., 1970), p. 4.

68Ibid.

69

best fits the problem of study. The object of this study
is to increase the understanding of human behavior in the
empirical social world.

In this "one of a kind study" the author has
attempted to discover the reality that exists within the
community under study concerning the issue of busing. It
is not the author's intent to shape and measure the
empirical world according to some model. The general
purpose of the study, once again, is to gain insight into
the perspectives formulated by selected people concerning
the issue of cross-district busing and integration. In
effect the author is interested in understanding this
substantive problem rather than demonstrating relation-
ships between abstractly defined variables.

The underlying assumption on the part of the
author, that renders this methodology of value to the
research is that there is simply insufficient knowledge
about the issue a priori to identify relevant problems and
hypotheses, and this is what the research methodology is
aimed at accomplishing. The final product of the study is
the tentative analysis of social behavior which may be

used to generate hypotheses for further testing.

Organization of the Chepter

 

Described in this chapter are the methodological
components employed in the study. These are organized

under seven topics: (1) Data Analysis, (2) Definition of

70

the Population, (3) Sample Selection and Theoretical
Sampling, (4) Description of the Primary Instrument, (5)
Field Procedures, (6) Initial Contact in the Community,

and (7) Organization of the Study.

Data Analysis
The analysis of the data will be based on the
indices of content, and demographic classifications. In
view of the fact that the methodological procedure employed
in this study is qualitative, rather than quantitative,
the researcher faces the problem of presenting his
conclusions and the evidence for them to the readers.
Readers of qualitative research commonly report and
justifiably complain that they are told little or nothing
about the evidence for conclusions, or the operations by
which the evidence has been assessed. For that reason a
more adequate presentation of the data of the research
operations and of the researcher's inferences may help to
meet this problem.69
Qualitative research has not been as systematized
as that found in quantitative studies. The data does
not lend itself to such ready summary. In view of this
fact, evidence is assessed as the substantive analysis
is presented. This is totally based on the fact that

the reader is given greater access to the data and
procedures on which the conclusions are based.70

 

69Howard S. Becker, "Problems of Inference and
Proof in Participant Observation," Qualitative Methodology,
ed. by William J. Filstead (Chicago: Markham Publishing
Co., 1970), pp. 189-201.

7OIbid., p. 199.

71

If this portion of the research project is
accomplished lucidly, the reader will be able to follow
the details of the analysis, and to see how and on what
basis any conclusions have been reached. This would give
the reader, as do present modes of statistical presentation,
sufficient opportunity to make his own judgments as to the
validity of the proof and the degree of confidence to be
assigned to the conclusions. The researcher will "know"
it is valid since he has been involved in the research,
it is then his responsibility to communicate this feeling
to his readers, so that they can identify the situation
and findings in an intuitive manner.71
The degree of reliability and validity in this

type of research depends largely on the researcher. On
the concept of reliability, it concentrates on the degree
of consistency in the data collection, and the saturation
of data resulting from the devices employed by the
researcher in gaining data. The test of reliability is
thus the degree to which the operation involved in securing
the value is independent of a particular researcher and his
idiosyncratic relationship to the measuring apparatus.

The results of all scientific research have to be

reproducable if they are to gain credibility. The

reliability of empirical indicators is what guarantees
the reproducibility of a given piece of research. When

 

71Becker, op. cit., pp. 189-202.

72

an empirical indicator is reliable, it produces values
of a unit that differ little if at all from one
observer to another.72

The validity of the research, or the truth of an

assertion about something made in the empirical world
depends on the extent the researcher details the events,
data and also to the degree these inputs are identified
and classified. If the data consist of direct behavioral
observations, and accurate reporting of findings as put
forth by those investigated, the problem of validity
becomes negligible and in this way evidence is assessed
as the substantive analysis is presented.

Validity is increased as the researcher moves
deeper into the situation under study, and as his
perceptions become clearer. Likewise as his validity,
becomes better, so his reliability, which is an
extension of his validity, improves. As the researcher
becomes more aware, more valid, so he must of necessity
become more reliable.73

The real proof, however, is in the presentation of

the data. For that reason the findings are presented in
narrative form, and absent of over inferencing. The
writer thus allows the reader to draw his own conclusions

from the data. In fact this is the major test of validity.

If, as others who are engaged in similar situations,

 

72Robert Dubin, Theory_Building (New York: Collier
Macmillan Limited, 1969), p. 188.

73Irwin Deutscher, "Looking Backward: Case Studies
on the Progress of Methodology in Sociological Research,"
Qualitative Methodolo , ed. by William J. Filstead
TEhicago: Markham Pu lishing Co., 1970), pp. 202-16.

73

upon reading the data agree "that is the way it is," so
the findings approach a higher degree of validity.

It should be pointed out at this juncture that
this research "one of a kind study" will limit the
generalizability of this community environment to others.
There are admittedly some unique variables within this
environment, yet at the same time there are character-
istics in this area that are representative to other
communities. While this particular instance of phenomena
may in fact be unique, that should not prevent us from
learning about it and capturing from it what we can.

Even though, uniqueness may be an overriding
ingredient in this area of study, human reaction to it is
common for the most part. A basic humaness transcends

social settings.

Definition of the Pppulation

The population shall be defined as those parents
of children attending the Risk Elementary School, which
is located in the Green Hills School District, a suburban
school district neighboring the larger Grand Rapids School
System.

Specifically this population includes 210 sets of
parents of school children now in attendance at the Risk

Elementary School.

74

The teacher population includes a total of twenty
certified and non-certified personnel employed by the
Green Hills District and assigned to the Risk Elementary
School.

Random Sample Selection-
Theoretical Sampling

 

The population of educational personnel considered
in this study is relatively small (twenty). Because of
the numerical size of this population, a sample frame will
be gathered by random procedure selecting every other
teacher according to alphabetical arrangement of the last
name taken from the school listing.

The population of parents of elementary school
students is large and cannot be considered as thoroughly
as the teacher population in this study. To perform a
valid study when the units, as in this case, are numerous,
and unwieldly, it is necessary to develop sampling tools
to assist the researcher in selecting representative units
from which data can be gathered that permits inference
drawing about the nature of the entire population.

The design used to acquire a sample and to insure
that the sample is representative, of the population of
parents is the random sampling design.

In random sampling, carefully controlled conditions
are created to ensure that each unit in the population
has an equal or known chance of being included in the

sample. To_prevent the investigator from biasing the
results by exerciSing direct control over the chOice

75

of units, some mechanical device is employed to draw
the sample./4

 

Aside from the validity of random sampling pro-
cedures and time and cost factors, this procedure is also
employed because of the sensitive nature of the issue at
hand. It is felt by this researcher that a "link-chain"
type of flowing research, or simply gathering data
throughout the community or area at will would tend to
create undue emotionalism, and consequently detract from
the findings.

The parental population according to school
enrollment data generally displays little variability.

The majority of this population have a commonness in terms
of income, residency, education, employment, and standards
of personal conduct.75

In addition to all of the above commonness and
absences of extremes among the population, the outstanding
quality of homogenity is color, the population is totally
white.

Such a homogeneous collectivity does not require
that the researcher utilize a hugh sample from the popu-
lation of parents of elementary children in the Risk

School Zone.

 

74Deobold Van Dalen, Understanding Educational
Research (New York: McGraw Hill Publishing Co., 1966),

p. 298.
75

 

Risk School Enrollment Records.

76

No specific rules on how to obtain adequate samples
have been formulated, for each situation presents its
own problems. If the phenomena under studyGare
homogeneous, a small sample is suff1c1ent.

The type of randomization used in this study is
systematic random sampling. This process is relatively
simple but effective in achieving representative samples.
The researcher is required to select an interval, and then
a number within that interval on a random selection basis.
The researcher then counts off the maximum interval number,
making a selection at that time, and carrying the process
through until the entire list of the total population is
exhausted.

Specifically, the process will be carried out in
the following manner. The total population consists of
210 sets of parents. Because of deaths, separation, or
divorce and because the researcher assumes considerable
consonance among father and mother regarding this issue,
only one parent in each of the selected parental units will
be interviewed.

The sample size taken from this total population
will be thirty. Thus, one out of seven parents will be
interviewed, or approximately 15 per cent of the popu-
lation. By dividing 30 into 210 we establish an interval

of 7. Then picking a starting number from 1 to 7, the

researcher establishes a starting point (number 4) and

 

76Van Dalen, op. cit., p. 298.

77

then selects each seventh number after that (ll, 19, 26,
. . .) until the 30 desired samples are chosen.

The randomization and selection of names has been
taken from a complete listing furnished by the Risk
Elementary School. The only factor of gaining a repre-
sentative sample that was exclusively left to the researcher
was the selection of a balance of male and female inter-
viewees. This was controlled by the researcher for the
purpose of studying that demographic variable. Other
demographic variables were controlled by the nature of the
methodolical selection procedure used.

Finally, because of the sensitive nature of this
type of study, and because school authorities thought it
prudent, names of interviewees and the school district and
elementary school zone will remain anonymous through the

use of fictitious names. All other information will be

factual.

Theoretical Sampling

Essentially statistical sampling employed in this
study is aimed at obtaining accurate evidence on distri-
butions of people among categories to be used in
descriptions or verifications. It is complimentary to
theoretical sampling in that the probability of bias in
the sample is minimized.

Theoretical sampling is aimed at collecting data,

and developing theory as it emerges. The process of data

78

collection is controlled by the emerging theory, and based
on a general sociological perspective. The initial
decisions are not based on a preconceived theoretical
framework.

The researcher who generates theory need not combine

random sampling with theoretical sampling when setting

forth relationships among categories and properties.

These relationships are suggested as hypotheses

pertinent to direction of relationship, not tested as

descriptions of both direction and magnitude.77

Though it is well acknowledged that in a soci-

ological study of this type random sampling is not
necessary, however for the following reasons I have

chosen to utilize it in conjunction with theoretical

sampling.

1. It is complimentary to theoretical sampling in

terms of eliminating biases in the sample.

2. This researcher will attempt to describe,
depending upon the progress of the study, the magnitude of
relationship within particular groups. When this is
attempted random sampling is considered necessary for

supporting theoretical sampling.

3. Theoretical sampling requires a skill that
many new researchers lack. That is the intuitive ability

to withdraw from the study at the appropriate time. This

 

77Barney G. Glaser and Anselm L. Strauss, "Theo-
retical Sampling," Sociological Methods, ed. by Norman
Denzin (Chicago: University of CaIifornia, Aldine
Publishing Co., 1970), pp. 105-14.

79

is usually determined only when the researcher feels that
no new data is forthcoming, and that the categories under
scrutiny have become saturated. Such a skill is not

necessarily endemic to all researchers. For that reason

an adequate sample has been randomly assigned.

4. By combining the two methods this researcher
feels he has added insurance. The problems inherent in
this combination have been planned for. For example,
if after all randomly selected individuals do not offer
saturation in terms of data, the statistical sampling can
be manipulated without difficulty, that is enlarged.

The second problem inherent in this combination
falls upon the researcher, and he must live with it since
adherence to the minimal basic plan of methodology is
essential. This specific problem deals with continuing
the study beyond the point of saturation until all samples
have been tested.

Though the researcher may become aware of what his
findings will be, and knows he is collecting redundant
data, he must continue even if prior to finishing the
count, or when conceptual realizations and implicit
analysis are evident.78

Though this is considered problematic to the
researcher it is not in any way detrimental to the study,
it cannot damage the research, only at worst require

unnecessary work and time. This risk does not outweigh

the advantages of combining the two sampling procedures.

 

781b1d., p. 108.

80

5. Lastly, randomization has been coupled with
theoretical sampling because of the sensitive nature of
the topic of inquiry.

Out of deference to the concerns of certain
officials in the school district, randomized selection
procedures were employed because of the sensitive, or
emotional-laden nature of the study. Concern was expressed
over the possible "hysteria creation" within the community
should "snow-ball" selection, a common but not essential
method in theoretical sampling, be employed.

While it is statistically safe to infer repre-
sentation based upon statistical randomization used in
this study, it should be noted that the primary goal is
to develop theory, out of "one of a kind study." Though
this community is similar to many other suburban areas,
and perhaps a microcosm of other areas, we cannot assume
that the findings are generalizable to all other similar

areas 0

The Instrument
The instrument used in this study to gain the

answers to the specific objective sought will be the

interview questionnaire instrument.
"Experience and research indicate that the inter-

viewer who arms himself with a carefully formulated set of

81

questions is more likely to communicate accurately to the
respondent and obtain the information he requires."79
The purpose of the interview questions will be to
translate the specific objective into a form in which it
can be communicated to the respondent with maximum effec-
tiveness. The questions used in this study will be "open."
From time to time the interviewer will make adjustments or
enlargements in his own vocabulary to accommodate that of
the respondent, but the basic content of the questionnaire
will not be altered. The same principle will hold true

when it becomes necessary for the interviewer to probe

incomplete responses.

Questionnaire

In the exploration of a given area of attitudes or
perceptions we can seldom be sure that any one question
will be completely "on target." For this reason a number
of questions will be asked aiming at the same target area,
which is the specific objective.

Aside from the primary exploratory question, and
secondary probes, some demographic data will be collected
for the purpose of looking for possible relationships

among such variables and perspectives.

 

79Robert L. Kahn and Charles F. Cannell, The
Dynamics of Interviewin (New York: John Wiley & Sons,
Inc., Publishers; Lon on: Chapman & Hall, Limited, 1957),
p. 107.

82

Sex

 

Age

 

Income

 

Education

 

Occupation

 

Family Size

 

Religious Affiliation

 

1. How do you think the people in this community
feel about cross-district busing?

Clarify and probe.

2. What do you personally think of integration, is it
good, bad, should be done, or shouldn't?

Probe.

3. What do you think of this issue of cross-district
busing?

Probe.

4. What do you think you will do if the courts order
cross-district busing out here?

Probe.

The above questionnaire is merely a general guide
for the interviewer. Much of the substantive information
is gained through the flexibility of the interview process
that allows extreme latitude to the interviewee to fully

express his feelings.

83

The interview process and above general approach
questions have been tested by the researcher on over ten
individuals. Most of the interviews took over thirty
minutes, and in some cases an hour. In each case the
interviewee felt he had fully expressed his feelings on

the issue of cross-district busing.

Field Procedures
The open question simply establishes the topic for
the respondent, and leaves him to structure his answer as
he sees fit. The answers given by respondents will
immediately be taken down verbatum by the researcher, and
classified according to content.

As with observation, the major disadvantage of depth
interviewing is the difficulty of quantifying or even
organizing data that was collected in semi-haphazard
ways. There comes a time, however; when the mass of
material must be put into some kind of logical order
so that the investigator can present what he has
learned in an understandable fashion. Usually this is
accomplished by analyzing the respondenETs remarks
fOr content that will become the focus of the report.
The goal of the stugy_offers somepguidance here but
many of these decisions depend on the insight of tHe
researcher.80

 

The researcher will also classify content according
to known demographic variables among the population.
Finally all information gained in relation to the topic

will be presented in narrative form in Chapter IV.

 

80Jacqueline P. Wiseman and Marcia S. Aron, Field
Projects for Sociology Students (Mass.: Schenkman
Pfiblishing Co., Inc., Canfield Press, 1970), p. 278.

84

Then the researcher will examine in Chapter V the
described pieces of behavior and feeling in relation to
the issue of cross-district busing, and then develop
tentative hypotheses.

Initial Contact With
the Superintendent

 

 

Prior to undertaking the actual field work within
the elementary school zone, I felt it was necessary and
prudent to inform school district officials of the project.
Legitimizing the study in this manner, I felt would, if
needed, insure the researcher's credibility, and also
preclude misunderstandings that might later arise as the
study progressed.

The Superintendent, at first, appeared cautious
but not negative. To insure the removal of any possible
apprehension held by him, I promised that the district,
and all actors involved in the study, would remain
anonymous. I also assured him that if my presence created
any disruptions or uncomfortableness for him that I would
immediately withdraw from the study whether it was
completed or not.

At the conclusion of our rather brief meeting, I
offered him an abstract of the findings when completed.

He answered with a shrug of the shoulders. I thanked him
for his approval and left with a feeling of duty

accomplished, and yet not accomplished.

85
Ipipial Contget With the
Building Principaii

It was decided that the first population component
to study should be the educational personnel in the
elementary school zone. This population was given
priority in terms of gathering data because it was getting
late in the school year, and I was determined to accomplish
that phase of the research before the selected personnel
scattered during their summer reprieve.

My initial contact in the school building was with
the principal and the school secretary. After explaining
the purpose of my presence, the principal appeared somewhat
surprised. He told me that he had not been informed of
any such study by the Superintendent. His surprise
substantiated my earlier feelings regarding the Super-
intendent's concern over my project. The principal was
assured that the Superintendent had approved of the project,
he was also guaranteed that the project would not inter-

fere in the operation of school activities.

Organization of the Study
Through the primary usage of the depth interview
process, this study will purport to describe the behavior,
and beliefs of a suburban school zone population and
educators as a reaction to the issues of cross-district

busing.

86

Chapter II included the review of the literature
from a historical-legal standpoint as it relates to the
movement of blacks in their pursuit for educational
equality.

In Chapter III, the methodology for the study was
presented. The findings will be presented in extended
narrative form in Chapter IV.

Finally, the analysis of the findings and the

conclusion and recommendations are contained in Chapter V.

CHAPTER IV

THE FINDINGS

As noted in Chapter I, the purpose of this
research is to describe the perspectives of selected
parents and educational personnel in an elementary school
zone, on the issue of cross-district busing.

The specific objective of this project is to
discover if there is a common perspective, that is a
systematic combination of behavior and beliefs among
those selected individuals concerning the issue of cross-
district busing. Perspective, as utilized in this study
and described by Becker, Geer, and Hughes, means:

The common, ordered understanding which the members
have of their environment which enables them to act
when together in accordance with their common beliefs
about a situation and which, in turn, makes their
beliefs seem reasonable according to the results of
their acts.31

The findings are presented in this chapter and

limited only to those points that need to be explained

 

81Becker, op. cit., p. 28.

87

88

to answer the basic exploratory questions. The findings

will be presented in the following order.

1.

Relevant data collected from selected educational

personnel will be explained in narrative form.

The data collected from parents of elementary
school children will be explained in the same
format, however the findings will be presented
separately, that is the data collected from the

two population frames will be segregated.

Because of this type of study, it seems that some
description of the area or community settlement
would be beneficial to interpreting the findings.
For this reason a brief community description will
precede the findings.
Description of the
School Zone

The area where this study is being done is located

approximately six miles outside the boundaries of the city

of Grand Rapids, Michigan. The area is, however, one

geographical portion of the Green Hills School District

which is coterminous to the Grand Rapids area at its

eastern and southeastern extremeties.

According to many sociological community defi-

nitions, this area or elementary school zone, could

correctly be classified as a community. For example,

89

"sociologists are in agreement that community consists of
persons in social interaction within a geographic area and
having one or more additional common ties."82
In line with that definition, this area and
residential population does conform to definitional
requirements, thus containing the elements upon which
most sociologists tend to agree. The area comprises a
social unit of which space is an integral part; it is a
place, a relatively small one. Secondly, the area
maintains a configuration as to way of life, both as to
how people do things and what they want--their institutions
and collective goals. The third element is the notion of
collective action. Persons in this area are not only
able to, but frequently do act together in the common
concerns of life.83
Some sociologists maintain that a community cannot
be so loosely defined. For them, a community infers the
totality of the social life in an area--all family living
and voluntary association, political and economic organi-
zations. Thus a community may be that which is the local

society in all its inclusiveness.84

 

82George A. Hillary, "Community Research; Areas of
Agreement," Rural Sociology (June, 1955), p. 111.

83Dwight Sanderson and Robert A. Polson, Rural
Community Orgenization (New York: John Wiley & Sons,
Inc., 1939), pp. 49-50.

 

84Harold Kaufman, "Toward an Interactional Con-
ception of Community," Special Focus, XXXVIII, No. 1
(October, 1959), 9.

 

90

This area under study, the Risk Elementary School
Zone, cannot be classified as inclusive according to the
above typology. Due to the mobility of the area residents,
the spatial factors of their lives, the separation of
production and consumption factors, and the unique com-
plexities and interactionism of this area, like unique
factors in most areas, make such a delineation impossible.
According to the first definition, this area can
be classified as a community. The specific type of
community, however, defies a neat sociological definition.
This is so because the area is currently in the stage of
transition from a rural settlement to a suburbanized area.
In view of this temporary state of flux, and with one
exception, the following definition comes closest to
accurately defining the type of community that exists.
Urban-rural fringe has usually been designated at the
area of mixed urban and rural land uses between the
point where full city services cease to be available
and the point where agricultural land uses predomi-
nate.85
At the present time agriculture is still prevalent
in the area. The exception is that it is not predominant,
as a matter of fact, it is rapidly diminishing.
This area which is primarily residential lies

outside the corporate limits of the central city of Grand

Rapids. It is in fact a sub-system of the metropolitan

 

85William Debiner, The Suburban Community (New York:
C. P. Putnam's & Sons, 1958), p. 17.

 

91

area. Many of the residents are still culturally, and
economically dependent upon the central city. Generally,
the residents interact with forces, and organizations
outside their area of residential location.

Perhaps, the only slice of their community life that
could reasonably be termed "inclusive" is their control of
the local school system, the locus of the community. It is
a regional enterprise, controlled internally, and not adap-
tive to change imposed from the exterior of the district.

In a recent newsletter the Superintendent summa-
rized the legal process regarding the court action dealing
with the busing suit. In doing so, his message denoted a
closed concept, that is undoubtedly shared by the resi-
dents.

This is where we are at the present time. We have
either legal procedures that must take place prior to
a case coming before the courts. As you can see, this
looks like it will be a long court case and that the
legal fees will be sizeable. We will continue to do
everythingpossible to protect the local sOhool
d1str1ct. 5

Recently in a farewell address by the president of
the Green Hills Board of Education, a similar attitude was
uncovered. "The current court suit threatens the existence
of the school district and we ask that you protect your

interest in maintaining the district as it is."87

 

86"Update on Integration in the Grand Rapids Area,"
Green Hills Newsletter, II, No. 5 (March, 1972).

87"School Election Special," Green Hills Newsletter,
II, No. 7 (June, 1972).

92

There are approximately 1,500 adult citizens
residing within the Risk Zone proper, which encompasses
almost fifty square miles. Of these 1,500 citizens, there
are over 200 parental sets of elementary school children
in attendance at the Risk School. The majority of these
families are in the fifteen to twenty thousand dollar a
year income bracket (many being dual incomes), and most
wage earners are employed in areas outside the Risk Zone.

Typically, the age bracket of the parents of the
elementary children is from 25-40. The average number of
children per family is close to three as indicated by
school records.

The teaching staff of the school is totally female,
the one exception is the principal. The average years of
teaching experience among the staff is rounded off at six
years. Among the educational personnel only two teachers
possess a masters degree, and the remainder at present are
in possession of a permanent teaching certificate, or plan
to acquire one. No one indicated any plans or desire to
gain a masters degree.

As stated, this area was once predominantly rural.
Prior to the 1940's the area was a rural settlement
generally consisting of farmers. The seat of their
economic transaction at that time was carried out generally
in the small rural town, then the geographical, and for

many, the social center of the area.

93

As a rural settlement the population maintained
and supported its own school system, a K-12 facility. As
the exodus from the urban cities took hold, and as many
people from northern Michigan moved southward, this rural
area began to lose its agricultural image and take on the
new design of an appealing suburban settlement.

Today this area is almost totally suburban. There
are still many farms scattered throughout the area, but
most are relatively small family concerns, low in productive
output, and steadily they are being sold and plotted out at
high prices by land developers.

The geographic center of the area is still the old
town that once served most of the citizen's needs when the
area was distinctively rural. Today that town and its
fewer businesses still serve many of the incidental needs
of the population, particularly the incidental needs of
those who live close to the center of the area.

Within the town proper there is one small grocery
store, a beauty shop, a barber shop that opens on a
partial time schedule, a hardware store that specializes
in motor cycles, a branch post office and bank. To the
other side of the main street there is a carpet shop and
a restaurant that continues to go out of business for lack
of clientelle and possibly poor management. Behind those
fronts, and next to a creek, are the remains of an old

grain store and mill.

94

Intersecting the block-long business center,
triangularly situated where the main street forks is the
social center for many residents, the local bar. Behind
that, a closed down rail depot, stands not too far from a
newly constructed laundromat, which faces the old theatre
that now houses a cement factory.

Around the town business center, the residential
homes comprise what appears to be nucleus of neighborhoods
which fan out in all directions. To the extremeties of
this first settlement there are churches, service stations,
business establishments and a large arena that attracts
persons from all over to take part in a variety of shows,
displays, and auto racing.

The center of the area, the old town, continues to
survive economically, particularly the bar, but most of
the tangible needs of the citizenry are served by recently
constructed shopping plazas located at the opposite
extreme of the school district close to Grand Rapids, a
short distance by way of modern expressway that partially
cuts the school zone in two.

Outside this concentric zone or town region, the
area is being occupied in block and cluster fashion by new
residents, living in modern homes. Most of the residents
living outside the concentric zone area are economically
ahead of those dwelling closer to the regions of the old

town. In practically every instance of children receiving

95

Title I assistance, they reside close to, or in the old
town vicinity.

Since 1962 the rural community school system has
been dismantled and now in place of the K-12 structure is
a partially new, partially renovated portion of the old
building used to educate the 347 elementary children of
the area.

This school is situated in the core area, a block
or so away from the cement factory. The school appears
typical of any elementary school structure but with
several noticeable exceptions. Having been once a high
school, the elementary school has certain advantages not
normally found in elementary facilities. For example, the
school area surrounding the facility is spacious. The
children have access to land once used as a football field,
a baseball diamond, and tennis courts. The high school
gymnasium is still attached to the newer additions and
thus provides an exceptional overall room and facilities
for scholastic as well as general usage.

The residents in this elementary school zone, and
particularly the parental residents of elementary school
children are typically middle class, but there is a class
spectrum among this area's population and consequently a
slight difference in life styles.

As stated, the residents are typically middle

class, most are, but there are also elements in the

96

population that fall into all sociological class cate-
gories. Most of those residents who live outside the
vicinity of the town are generally middle and upper

middle. Those who live in the town area, the oldest
section of the school zone, are mainly middle class, but
also in this area the dominant portion of the lower classes,

at least in terms of economics, reside as well.

Educational Personnel

During the initial conversation with 2225' the
building principal, I informed him that I would be pleased
to learn something about the selected personnel I was to
interview in his building. He was helpful, but he admitted
that there were not many characteristics among his staff
that could be considered unique. His rather brief
description of the personnel selected pointed to the
fact that his staff was pretty typical of any elementary
staff.

As for himself, Jack related that he was the
father of four children who attended public schools in the
city of Grand Rapids where he lived. Previously, he had
taught in a parochial school for several years where his
children also attended. The cost of raising a family
today, he informed me, forced him and his children into
public schools.

Jack was probably in his middle thirties, he was a

first-year principal and admittedly concerned with doing a

97

good job. His secretary, one of the selected personnel,
was probably around thirty years of age. She had four
children enrolled in the school system, three of which
attended the Risk Elementary School where she worked.

Martha, Jack told me, was a first-year librarian.
He really did not know much more about her, other than
that she was recently married to a conservation officer
and they had no children.

Gertrude was the library aid. She also had three
children enrolled in the school. gpppg was pointed out as
one of the few elderly teachers. She had taught a number
of years and had one child who now attended Grand Rapids
Junior College.

Jeanie and Mipi_were two of the younger staff
members, both probably in their early twenties, neither was
married, both were considered to be very good teachers by
the principal.

The remaining three personnel were Julie, Linda,
and Phyllis. Jplie, I was told was a widow and the mother
of one five year old child. 22292 was single, probably
around thirty but considered very innovative among the
staff. Phyllis was married, taught the third grade, had
no children of her own.

Throughout our informative meeting, Jack appeared
very sociable and open but when the interview actually
began he was most anxious to allow his secretary Mppy to

be interviewed at the same time.

98

Mary, I soon learned, had lived the major portion
of her life in the community. She had attended the high
school there prior to consolidation, was married and now a
resident in the same community she knew as a child.

In each interview instance the interviewees
assumed that the population in the area would be definitely
opposed to cross-district busing. These responses were
obvious assumptions and perhaps really individualistic
since practically all people interviewed admitted that the
topic of busing is rarely, if every discussed between the
school and the community population.

Though the educational personnel admitted little
verbal contact on the issue they all attempted to justify
their assumptions by facts that they felt would tend to
substantiate their views of public disapproval on the
issue of busing.

Mary, the secretary, readily admitted that an
overwhelming majority of the total population would be
totally opposed to integration by use of busing:

”Probably well over 90 per cent out here would be
opposed to busing."

"How do you know that Mary, do you discuss the
issue frequently among neighbors?"

"No, not really, but we have a lot of hard noses

out here who are generally opposed to progress. They

99

really get up-tight, some do, mostly the older ones, and
some young ones."

"What do you mean they get up-tight?"

"Blacks, they don't want them out here. It's
ingrown prejudice, heredity. They haven't had any contact
with blacks. That's the truth, no contact at all. Besides
they have to feel better than somebody."

"What do you mean feel better than somebody?"

"Well, if you're not happy with yourself you have
to find somebody worse off."

"You think a lot of people are unhappy with
themselves out here?"

"Sure a lot of them don't have much, they try but
I don't know, people out here seem to enjoy putting people
down. Now with the issue of blacks, everyone's got
someone to put down."

"Do people out here talk about the issue of
busing?"

"You don't have to talk about busing to know how
people feel," the secretary retorted. "A lot of people
out here go strictly by what they hear from the fifteen
or twenty Birchers who have contact with the schools."

"Birchers?"

"I don't know," Mary continued, "really just up-
tight people. Some are young, they simply have nothing

else to do but worry about it. Everytime there is a house

100

for sale in the neighborhood they worry that a negro
family has bought it, they talk about house values going
down all the time. Its always a big rumor party, never
any truth to it. My brother-in-law bought a Buick
Rivera, people joke about it being a 'nigger car.‘ You
can't believe some of these people."

"She's right," Jack interjected, "most of the
people would be opposed to integration by busing, some
would be damn vocal."

"But you are not sure are you, since you really
don't discuss it?"

"You don't have to discuss that issue to know how
people feel. It's there and you can feel it."

"Have you ever heard anyone say that they might be
in favor of busing, a teacher or parent?"

"That wouldn't be the most popular thing to say
even if you did believe it. It would only create hard
feeling in the area and heck you got to live here," said
the secretary.

"Did you say there were Birchers in the area?"

"No, I said just a group of up-tight people. The
straights you know, the ones who are overly patriotic,
your country right or wrong bit and love it or leave it
thing."

"But then, you know of no members of the Birch

Society living in the area?”

101

"No, not really, but I'm sure there are a few."

Marcia, the librarian, also agreed that well over
90 per cent of the people would oppose busing. "Yes,
there definitely is a community feeling toward busing.
Across the board I'd say practically everybody is opposed
to it for some reason or another."

"Why do you think that?" I asked.

"Because they don't want their kids going on a bus
down there. They moved out here to get away from it, and
they pay their taxes out here."

When asked what they had moved away from, Marcia
answered, "City life! They want quiet and peace and maybe
better education, maybe the blacks too, I'm not sure."

"How many people have you discussed this issue
with?"

"Not too many out here, mostly my own people."

Gertrude, the librarian's aide, also lived in the
community and her responses were a trifle more directive.
"We don't want them. If we wanted them we'd live inside
where they live." She also said that she thought most of
the people were opposed to busing from what she heard.
Yet, when asked what she had heard Gertrude replied:

"We don't talk about it too much, we feel kids out here
already do a good enough job being bad, we don't want black
kids too. If this happens we're pulling out kids out and

sending them to a Catholic school."

102

"What do the other people say they are going to
do?"

"I don't know, I know most of them don't want
busing, but I don't know, what they plan to do."

When I went to see Burna, one of the elderly
teachers on the staff, I found her setting at a round
reading table in the corner of the room with a seven year
old who was receiving additional reading help. I told
Burna I would return later, but she insisted the time was
right, and then dispatched the child onto the playground.

Burna also agreed that the population in general
would be opposed to busing and integration. She also said
that the issue of busing is not one that is commonly
talked about with parents or teachers.

"I definitely think," said Burna, "that there is
common feelings among the people in the community in
opposition to busing. Now I haven't had any parental
comments about the issue, I personally don't discuss it
with them, but most of my children have told me right in
class that they would move to get away from the colored."

I asked Burna if this was a common attitude among
second graders and she assured me that the children were
merely repeating probably what they had heard at home from
their parents. The children, she believed, were not
prejudiced yet, as a matter of fact she found them to be
most interested in black children or stories about black

people.

103

I managed to catch Julie, the fifth grade teacher
during her preparation period and she welcomed my presence.
"Come in, I know all about what you are doing, as you can
tell, I've been in the lounge," Julie responded to the
first question similarly as most of the personnel had.

"I can't say for sure what the people generally feel about
cross-district busing. I don't talk to many people. Those
limited few I have, aren't in favor of it."

When asked if she felt most people would then
oppose busing, Julie answered, "Yes, but I don't know for
sure, we just don't talk about the issue."

"What do you mean you don't talk about the issue?"

"Well we don't have to talk about the issue,"
Julie said, "We all know how everyone feels. It's pretty
common knowledge that no one out here wants blacks and it
isn't a matter of prejudice. I think its really a matter
of people doing what they want to do."

Linda claimed at least 90 per cent of the popu-
lation would oppose busing although she admitted that such
a figure was representative of a guess. Mini believed
many people would oppose busing, but then she had no idea
for sure. Phyllis, also, felt the community would gener-
ally oppose busing, but beyond that she did not dare to
speculate.

Jeanie concurred that there would be general

opposition among the community, "Yes, there would be

104

disapproval.. Some of the farmers out here employ migrant

workers and a lot of people don't like them."

"Migrant workers only remain here until the crops
are picked, don't they?" I asked.

"Ya, till usually around October. That's probably
why nothing really happens. Maybe the area would take a
few, but overall they would not go for busing out."

"Why?"

"Whites are afraid of blacks, I think."

On the merits of the general topic of integration,
most of the educational personnel admitted that some social
benefits could accrue to the races, but on the practical
aspects of integration little was offered.

Gertrude was one of the few who was unequivocal in
her statements regarding the issue of integration. "It
shouldn't be done at all." She added that nothing could
be gained for anyone through integration, and it would be
best to keep the races separated as they have been.

"It seems to me that someone is going to an awful
lot of trouble trying to put us all together. Its un-
natural and nobody is going to go along with any plan
that's going to try to put people where they don't belong.
In the end they're going to have more problems than what
they started with and wish they had left well enough

alone."

105

Along that line of thinking, Burna had said that
integration would possibly be bad in any form. She was
not in favor of it. When I asked her specifically why she
was opposed to integration she substantiated her views on
the remarks she had heard from other teachers in racially
integrated schools.

"I'm settled on this issue. I know teachers at
Union* and they have influenced me. I've heard them talk
and they say it's just terrible there. It's just one
constant battle in that school. No teaching goes on.

Yes, when I heard them talk about their situation I made
up my mind that it just doesn't work."

Julie, I found was not opposed to integration, but
said that she was violently opposed to forced integration.
She felt that the government had no right to tell people
who they have to live with. "If blacks have the money to
move into this area, or any white areas, great! But
blacks lack good education so I say give them money and
put it to good use in their schools instead of busses."

"The primary criterion then is money, right

Julie?"

 

*Union High School--Racially mixed high school in
Grand Rapids. Blacks are bused into this Union area which
is located on the west side of Grand Rapids. The west
side is primarily comprised of Polish and Dutch residents.
The Union High School is located in the first ward of the
city of Grand Rapids and has the distinction of never
passing a school millage in the history of the Grand
Rapids School System.

106

"Ya, if they got the money they can move in, and
that's how I think we should become integrated."

"Then you do see some good points for integrating
the races?" I asked Julie.

"Sure, I think much could be gained from inte-
gration, but I'm not for forced integration, that would
be bad."

Mary, the school secretary also expressed mixed
feelings over the issue. "Look, I don't want my kids
bused in, but I would go along with one-way busing."

"Right, I don't think kids could hack busing, I
don't know maybe I couldn't. If I were guaranteed their
safety, not like at Union, I don't know."

"But you said that you do approve of integration?"

"Look integration could be great. I want my kids
to know colored kids, I never knew them. When I was a kid
I always thought they were made of chocolate."

"Now you're putting me on," I said.

"No really, I never knew they weren't. As a kid I
always thought if you took their shirt off there would be
chocolate around the collar and cuffs."

"That's cute" I said.

"Not really," she replied. "We got a Polenesian
teacher evaluator, or something like that who comes here
periodically from Western Michigan University. I always
over react when I'm around her. I've never known such

people."

107

Jack also felt that some form of integration
would be good but he didn't say why, rather he talked
about the problems involved in carrying out integration.
"It will be extremely difficult. So much of the problem
is caused by a lack of interracial exposure."

Martha, the librarian, told me that she favored
integration but really had no concrete ideas on how it
should be accomplished. She said that she was extremely
mixed up on the issue, but would probably go along with
some busing to achieve integration. "How else can you do
it with the housing patterns today."

Jeanie, much like the principal, tended to hedge
on the question and pointed out the difficulties involved.
She essentially said that it could be done, but the problem
as she saw it lied with the older people who are unwilling
to make integration work. She did not feel it was right
to place the burden on the shoulders of children.

Linda thought integration would perhaps be a good
thing, but like Julie she felt it should be gradual through
open housing rather than through the schools or busing.

"I think integration would be good for both races, but
busing is not the answer. You can't simply drop them off
in a school where they are integrated by day and segre-
gated by night. I think integration should take the form
of a gradual movement of blacks into white communities.

This is the only sensible way to integrate."

108

Linda admitted that though this type of integration
was difficult to achieve because of the low income of
blacks and the resistence of whites to sell to blacks, it
was the only method she could see as realistic.

Phyllis agreed that integration should be
accomplished primarily for the betterment of the blacks,
but she too felt cross-district busing would be pejorative
to the issue of race relations. She favored housing and
better job opportunities for the blacks.

One day after I had been in the building attempting
to find teachers at appropriate times to complete the
interviews, I wondered into the office just prior to
student dismissal. As the secretary was announcing the
arrival of busses which was the key for student departure
from the building, I, along with the principal, watched
the students depart in a rather silent mood and then run
when they hit the doorwell.

Wandering back into the office the secretary and
I struck up some trivia conversation and moments later
several teachers entered the office and joined in. It
was not long however, when the topic changed to integration.

Obviously teasing, the secretary said to Gertrude
who was feigning exhaustion by half lying on the counter,
"Well Gert, you ready to go to the inner city?"

"Not me, I'm not going down there," Gert replied
without lifting her head too far from the top of the

counter .

109

"Sure Gert you'd love it," the secretary continued.

"Are you kidding, I'm not going and neither are my
kids. God I don't want my kids to know them. Not my kids,
I got plenty of trouble without that." (Group laughter.)

At that point I asked Gert if she and her husband
were seriously worried about it happening. She did not
answer the question, she simply reiterated the action she
and her husband would take if it did happen, that is enroll
their children into a parochial school.

One of the teachers standing around in the group
said such a move would be difficult since there were not
any Catholic schools in the area.

"Well," Gert responded, "We'll send them to
parochial schools in Grand Rapids."

"Wouldn't that be difficult?" another teacher
queried.

"I don't know, I guess we'd drive them in. We'll
find a way."

Mini, a rather young, attractive, and very well
groomed teacher had been idling by within the group and
seemingly enjoying the humor of Gert's candidness.

Quietly, she asked the general question or posed the issue
of parochial schools not accepting more students.

"Hell, we'll move" Gert said without hesitation.

"Where?" asked the principal who was just returning

to the office from the dusty corridors.

110

"I don't know, maybe up north."

"I don't think you are going to be able to run from
this once it gets going" someone stated.

"Oh no, we'll get away from it," Gert said in a
resolute tone which provoked laughter among the group.

Once Gert had left, one of the teachers standing
by said, "Now that's just plain ignorance, isn't it!"

No one in the group responded to the statement,
evidently it was considered a declaration rather than an
interrogatory statement.

Most of the personnel employed in the Risk Ele-
mentary School had really not paid too much attention to
the issue of cross-district busing. As a matter of fact it
came to most of them as quite a surprise that cross-
district busing as being implemented in other areas also
included the reassignment of educational personnel.

Most of the personnel had absolutely no knowledge
as to the purpose of busing, or for that matter where the
issue or why the issue ever evolved.

One teacher told me that it all started with James
Meridith. They knew very little about how the idea of
busing started.

When I asked Mary how she felt about cross-district
busing and that this also included a partial reassignment

of educational personnel to achieve some "racial balance"

111

in schools, she was exceedingly surprised. "Wow, I
didn't know that. Would that be funny."

"How do you personally feel about it, Mary?"

"I don't want my kids bused in."

"Why?"

"I would be afraid for their safety. I would
accept one-way busing, but I think that is asking too much
to send my kids in there."

The principal directly claimed that it would not
work. He explained that his staff were simply not prepared
to handle the situation. That the type of teaching that
they would be required to perform in that situation was
beyond their training and background. "The key would be
the teacher," he said, "and we are simply not prepared."

Julie said that the blacks deserve good education,
but that she would not go along with cross-busing. She
told me she would keep her child out of school, and if
necessary move to Australia. "I feel this is an impingement
on my freedom. I'd move out of the country. It's a
country of hate and violence anyway. I don't know where
the idea ever stemmed from, blacks don't want it. Some
say its for quality, does this improve quality? I'm not
prejudice, but its my freedom that is at stake."

Mini also said that she was not in favor of it.
She felt that the white kids, and parents, would be the
losers in such a situation. "Whites would be the losers

if they had to send their kids into those old areas."

112

Jeanie said, "No, it would be discrimination in
reverse to send those white kids into those inferior
schools." When I asked her if she thought the inner city
teachers were inferior she told me it was not the teachers,
it was rather the environment that was inferior. "It's a
different culture; a constant form of deprivation and
negative reinforcement."

Martha said "absolutely no," and that if she were
a parent she would not stand for it either.

All of the educational personnel were opposed to
cross-district busing. Frequently they noted the problems
such a scheme would create, and they generally felt that
the problems would outweigh any sociological gains. Also,
as an alternative and suggested by the interviewees
themselves, one-way busing would be acceptable in such a
context.

That afternoon as before, I hung around the office
hoping for another group discussion. Shortly after the
kids were released a group collected and I observed what
I could, without being too directive of my wants.

The collectivity that afternoon in the office was
unusually talkative and at first I did not feel anyone
would get around to the issue I was most interested in.

We talked of the effect of the pill on education enrollment.
The girls seemed particularly interested in this topic and

they frequently made jokes about the effect it had on

113

their lives, and of course the possible effects it would
have on their lives if they happened to take one that was
bogus.

When they talked about their children and schools,
invariably the cost factors entered into the dialogue.

The principal, I think, pretty well summarized the
feelings of that group when he said, "God, you like to
have your kids around, but there are times when you wish
they were grown up and on their own."

A lady bus driver joined the group that night and
she concurred with the principal. "Yes, I don't know how
you people do it. It's a hard job you have. Really, you
got these kids all day every day, I only have them for an
hour or so a day on the bus and believe me that's enough.
I don't know how you people do it, you've got a real tough
job."

None of the members in the group responded to her
comments. Silence was obviously taken to denote agreement,
or else they were not about to tell this lady that it
really was not that bad or even enjoyable.

With the presence of the bus driver the conver-
sation that was going on in what some might consider
"carefree" terms was halted. The four letter words and
the playing with sex business was stopped and the group
immediately switched to the role of the educator. It was

obvious that the intrusion of the bus driver inhibited

114

the relaxing atmosphere that the office provided the
teachers each night, after a long day of classroom
activity.

Because the conversation was now straight, three
or four of the teachers left the building office to myself,
the principal, the driver, the secretary, and Mini, the
single teacher.

"I hear you're running some kind of survey about
busing," the bus driver asked me.

"Yes, that's right, I want to know what the people
feel about the situation."

"He means, like how are you going to like busing
niggers around out here," the secretary said with laughter.

"Well, I tell you it's going to be something, isn't
it? I just don't know why they are doing all this. The
whites don't want it and neither do the blacks. They
don't want their kids bused all the way out here."

"I guess they are doing it to improve their edu-
cation," the principal interjected.

"Ya, sure they deserve just as good an education
as our kids get but I don't think this is the way to go
about it. I just don't understand it at all."

"Well," said Mini, who was now picking up her purse
and papers, "I really don't know for sure what the overall
situation is for them up here, but in the South it is

terrible. A few summers ago when I was still a student at

115

Western I had a job as a waitress in South Carolina. They
weren't allowed even to eat in that restaurant. Only a
few of the entertainers got in."

"Oh I don't think they mind it so much," said the
bus driver, "my husband lived in the South for a number of
years and he claimed they were happy, not like some of
those up North, always pushing."

The secretary immediately picked up on the comment
made by the bus driver. "Well, I wouldn't want to be
black anywhere in this country."

"Oh no, who would," retorted the driver. "But
really are their schools and their teachers that bad in
the city that they would want to come out here for a
better education?"

Half joking, half not joking, the principal said,
"If their teachers are worse than these then those people
are really in trouble."

"Come on now, you are joking aren't you?" the
driver asked.

"Is he?" the secretary answered with a smile.

"I think so. We have a good school system and
pretty darn good teachers too. I suppose you have your
problems but who doesn't?"

The driver and Mini had left and I was about to
when the principal began almost apologetically explaining

to us what he had meant earlier. "I don't mean to imply

116

that the teachers here are all bad, they aren't, but damn
some of them won't do anymore than they have to. They go
like hell, then they get tenure and juSt don't give a
damn anymore."

"Boy, you can even see that from where I set," the
secretary concurred.

"Christ, I don't know what the hell we'd do if
we had to integrate this school with some of these teachers.
That would really be the problem, the lack of good
teachers."

"Are you doing anything to prepare the teachers
for this possibility?" I asked Jack.

"No. Besides really what can you do as a principal.
What can I do. A principal today really doesn't do much
but keep the building going, we don't have any power, not
today."

"That's too bad."

"I'll say one thing, you wouldn't have this shit
if they ran this school like a parochial school. I'm
convinced parochial schools are much better than public
schools at least up to the fourth grade, and I know I
worked there for eight years."

"But you left because the pay was so low, how
could you attract good teachers in the parochial schools

when you don't pay them anything?" said the secretary.

117

"I'll tell you," the principal said to Mary, "The
parents care in those schools. When you have a complaint
they support you not like here."

It had been a long day for me as well as the
principal who was obviously in one of those frustrating
moods that seemingly attack all administrators from time
to time. I was in no mood to continue the conversation.
I would have loved to argue the point on the merits of
parochial education, but I was not about to jeopardize my
position by attempting to assasinate the logic of the
religiously oriented administrator.

The next question was phrased in such a way as to
discover what actions the various persons interviewed
would take if they were forced to integrate by a court
order requiring cross-district busing. It was admittedly
a difficult question, many of the people had not thought
about that fact, they were not prepared for such a
question but they all did their best to give meaning to
their feelings.

"I really don't know what I'd do," said Mary.
"I'd be tempted to do something. Maybe I'd give it a
chance, if the kid's safety is guaranteed."

"How could they guarantee the safety of kids?" I
asked.

"I don't know but they would have to do it, I

won't allow my kids to get nailed in another school."

118

"Then you really have no idea what you would do?"

"Oh," responded Mary "I would probably join in
some kind of protest, picket, make calls. I surely
wouldn't take any violent action on. I'm not about to
chain myself to a bus."

The principal indicated that there would be little
he could or would do. He pointed out that his children
are already enrolled in integrated schools in the city and
he is not too disappointed. As far as his job, he told
me, it would be difficult since the teachers and the
community are so removed from the culture of black people.
"It would be difficult but it could be done," he assured”
me.

Jack also went on to tell me that he thought he
would have a much easier task then the rest of the
principals should cross-district busing be ordered. "I
think this community would be less opposed. The rest of
the school district would be far more vocal. Some of
those people over on the ridge have already told the
Superintendent that if it happens, it's private schools
for them. That element over there, the elite, the ones
with the money do all the talking."

The principal also said that it will be difficult
for him too, and that more should be done in preparing
teachers to be teachers of all children, not merely white

teachers of white children.

119

Linda said that if busing is adopted she would not
want to be a black teacher in this area. "He'd be under
constant scrutiny." As for herself going into the inner
city she said, "I wouldn't mind it too much, it would be
a real challenge. I'd try, I don't know if I would live
up to it."

Linda also told me that she doubted if most of the
teachers would go to the inner city. "Maybe 10 per cent,
you know the young and more flexible people would try it.
The older ones I'm positive wouldn't do it." The older
ones, Linda explained, were not about to face a challenge
like that, besides most of them she noted had a stocking
full and really did not need the money that bad.

Burna, one of the older teachers on the staff, was
opposed to busing, and she was opposed to integration
because she felt it would not work. When I asked what she
would do if cross-district busing was ordered, she said,
"It wouldn't bother me. I have worked with colored before,
I could do it again."

Burna explained that she had taught in Missouri
when the state schools were segregated but when she came
to Michigan she was assigned to an integrated school in
the Grand Rapids district. "When I first came to these
parts I taught in a mixed school in Grand Rapids. Once a
black child approached me, he was going to touch me and

for the first time I realized he was black and I pulled

120

away in disgust. Later on I got over it and treated them
just like any other child."

"Burna, you have taught blacks before but would you
really do it again?" I asked.

"Not unless I have to. I wouldn't want to teach
in the inner city."

Gertrude said, "that the teachers just won't go
for it." She told me most would probably move to an area
where there are not black children. "They won't go for
it. Some of the young ones might try it, but I'm sure the
older ones won't."

"What about you Gert?" I asked.

"You know what I'm going to do, I'm going to move
out if necessary."

Jeanie, one of the younger teachers, told me that
most of the teachers would go along with it, but some would
quit, mostly the older ones. Jeanie also stated that she
would not stay there if the school was rule laden, or if
the grade level was outside of her area of speciality.
"I'd try it, I'd hate to be the only one. I'd want the
same grade level and in a school with a good environment,
not too strict. I'd be scared of older grades. If I
couldn't make it, I would quit."

Martha said she would try it for a year or so.

"It could be very beneficial, but maybe I wouldn't last."

Martha also mentioned that most of the teachers would be

121

opposed to cross-district busing and some would quit,
probably most of the older ones.

Phyllis said she would probably do it, and Julie
said she would not "unless it wasn't too much of an
inconvenience." Mini also was willing to try a cross-
district busing situation if required to do so but pointed
out that she would be very afraid for her life if she were
assigned to one of their older buildings. "Some of those
schools are fire traps."

In responding to this question, each person
displayed uncertainty, apprehension, and qualifications
as to what they would do. It was obvious that no one
welcomed the change, it was seemingly rather a matter of
trying to interpret how they could fit into a new and
strange environment and create for themselves a sense of
stability. The principal was correct it seems, when he
said, "These people do not know anything about that world,
and we have done nothing to develop them, we merely keep
them abreast on what is happening on the suit in court."

On the issue of having black teachers assigned
to their own school system, most of the teachers said it
would work, but he would have to prove himself as there
would be a great deal of public apprehension, distrust,
and surveillance. As Mary put it, "Oh it could work but

that's as long as he didn't move out here."

122

Phyllis told me any black teachers out here would
be in a lot of trouble from the conservatives who mostly
affiliate with fundamentalist beliefs. "They don't say
anything about it one way or another, they don't have to.
You can tell there whole life is this community, they're
not interested in what really goes on outside it, except
for perhaps electing someone like Wallace or Nixon."

I had spent several days in the Risk School
gathering the data for this study. I had almost completed
my field work in this population frame and was about to
end the proceedings.

As I sat in the coffee lounge making the necessary
refinements in my field notes, Mary walked in laughing
hard. "Did you hear that?" she asked me as another round
of laughter nearly doubled her up against the wall. "Hear
what?" I asked. "I thought for sure you had overheard
that, but obviously not."

"No, I didn't hear anything unusual."

"Well, Gertrude was just in the office and she
asked me, is the nigger lover still here?" Mary again
started to laugh and I did my best toward a strained
laugh.

Within a matter of an hour or so several teachers
had approached me asking how the "nigger lover" was doing.
It was relieving to know that most of the staff found

Gertrude's vocabulary anything but modern. I felt their

123

joviality with the terminology was made not so much to
capitalize on poor grammar, but rather to show their
personal disapproval, and in their way offer an apology.

I returned to the building several times while I
was working with the community population. I was always
accepted cordially, and invariably someone would ask me
how the study was going. I usually responded favorably
and then they would usually tell me that I should have
been here on such and such a day to see or hear some
related incident.

One teacher informed me that it was too bad that
I had not come to the school picnic.

"We had reserved Jones Park and three busses of
black kids from the city came out on the same day. God,
I thought those teachers and chaperones were going to shit.
You could have loaded your notes with some choice state-
ments, it was really funny. And everybody looked like
they were trying to gather the kids up as if they were
protecting them from the black plague. The mothers
started it first, and of course the teachers had to go

along with it, sort of a panic movement."

Narration of Selected Parents
I managed to contact most of the parents by
telephone and explain what I was attempting to accomplish.
In most instances they were cordial though frequently I

had difficulty arranging times for the interview as many

124

of the parents worked, and those mothers who did not work
were rarely home in many cases.

Many of the parents appeared very pleased to have
the opportunity to express their views on this matter.
One gentleman told me it was about time somebody started
to ask the people what they thought about things in this
country.

As I made my contacts with the parents, in most
cases, I was surprised to find out that they were already
aware of the study I was conducting. "Oh yes, you're the
one at the school who's asking about busing." Or, "sure,
I'd be glad to talk over the issue, I heard you were at
the school."

No matter what the people were doing when I
arrived on the scene to conduct the interviews, they
stopped and gave their full attention to the interview.
Some of the men were at work, and many of the mothers were
involved with pressing maternal matters that had to wait
for the interview. I conducted interviews in the homes
of parents, in a car, in the school, in the local bar,
and sometimes on the street. No matter where we were
people were willing to talk about the issue of cross-
district busing.

At times the interviewing was delayed as I sought
to achieve a balance between males and females among the

parents. A few of the men were at their employment or out

125

of town and in each of these instances I was forced to
wait for an opportune time during the weekend.

In every interview the actor involved claimed that
the vast majority of the population in the Risk Elementary
School Zone would be opposed to cross-district busing.

"It just doesn't make any sense to punish white people who
try to better their life. Look those niggers don't give

a damn, so it's obvious whites don't want their kids to

go to school where they live. No sir, I'm positive the
people wouldn't go for it," one man claimed.

Another parent told me that riding on a bus that
distance is uncalled for. "If something went wrong how
would we get there. With the neighborhood schools people
can get there by foot if necessary."

"Do you really think busing is the issue?" I asked
this concerned mother who had recently become widowed and
had two children in the elementary school andcane more
youngster still at home.

"Its one part of the issue. The primary issue is
of course sending white kids like the ones out here to
city schools that are integrated. Busing is a part that
many people fear, having their child on a bus for such a
distance."

One mother who I later discovered was very active
in the school and the PTA claimed that everybody out here

is opposed to cross-district busing. "Everybody is scared

126

to death they are going to do it. The PTA out here has
gone on record unanimously opposed to cross-district
busing. It's just not fair."

"How isn't it fair, as you see it?" I asked.

"It's just not fair to take out kids and send them
into those areas."

"Do the people out here talk about busing very
much, I mean is there a lot of parental concern."

"You bet. We don't talk among the men so much,
we do talk with our husbands, but most of the gals talk
about it, we're scared."

Another women told me that she was sure everybody
out here opposes it, "We don't want it."

I asked why she thought people were opposed and
she answered "Well because practically everybody out here
worked hard for a living, nobody gave us anything. What
we got we earned, and now they're trying to take it away
from us and give it to niggers."

"What do you mean take what away from you?"

"The people I talk to moved out here, and they pay
taxes here for their own schools. Now they want us to
support blacks and send our kids to their schools."

Ken, the father of three children and a teacher
in one of the near by colleges, said that he was sure
practically everyone in the area opposed busing. "I'm

sure no one favors busing. God, nobody wants to ship the

127

kids into the ghetto. It's obvious that we would oppose
it, there are so many good reasons."

"What are some of the reasons that you have heard
expressed for opposing cross-district busing?"

"Well you're right, all the expressions I have
heard have been in opposition. For example, people when
they do talk about busing which is infrequently, they talk
about the way black kids are raised, the crime in the area,
dope and of course the fear that some little white girl
is going to get plugged by some darky."

"Most of the people feel this way?"

"I think so. I think from what I can gather that
sending your child into that area is a risk. I think most
people feel the risk is too damn high. You know, I
stopped into the bar last night with my brother-in-law and
several of the guys were talking about Wallace. All
agreed he'd make a hell of a good president, particularly
when it came to putting the blacks in their place, as well
as some of those judges. Now that's what they say, I have
my own versions."

"So, everyone is against busing you think?"

"I have never heard anyone say they were in favor
of it. I'm sure there are a few somewhere, but I'm also
sure they wouldn't dare to admit it."

"Why wouldn't they admit it?"

128

"Christ, are you kidding, they wouldn't have any
friends. A year or so ago a couple of families placed
election poster signs in their yard and people in their
neighborhood wouldn't speak to them. Some even went out
and tore out the signs when they were gone away. And
those were just for board elections."

Ken continued, "When people talk about how good
Wallace is, or that bastard Nixon, or welfare or anything,
I just keep my mouth shut, it's not worth it. People
aren't in the mood today to be concerned with others."

"What do you mean?"

"Well cross busing for example. What can whites
really gain from it. The only ones that might benefit or
become better off through association would be the blacks,
but why should we use our kids to help them, I mean the
cost is too high."

Another interesting interviewee, Ben, who was in
about his forties, owned a small business in Grand Rapids
but from what I was told by others, he was supportive and
active in school functions. He too was sure that everyone
was against busing two ways. "I'm positive everyone in
this community oppose busing. It's not just a matter of
black and white, it's also a matter of rights. When people
can tell you where to live, or send your kids to school
then I think we are losing our constitutional rights."

"You mean the courts, Ben?"

129

"Yes, what right, where do they get the right to
order cross busing. We bought our homes out here, we pay
taxes, and we want our own schools. If we can't even have
that right then what rights can we have."

"Then you don't consider the issue one of color,
is that right, Ben?"

"Oh, I'm sure color is a feature for some, I mean
some peOple are just prejudice too. If being prejudice
means working hard and getting into an area like this
where your kids can have a good education and can get away
from undesirables, whether black or white, then I guess we
are all prejudice."

During my conversation, usually the other parent,
when present, was supportive to the respondent. It was
evident that parents had discussed the issue and had found
agreement among themselves. For example, the "silent
parent" would usually direct his partner by saying, "and
don't forget," or "you're right" with nods of approval at
statements made in the interview.

In every case where both parents were present,
they were supportive of views expressed. Not once was any
disagreement among parents visible to the interviewer.

In each of thirty randomly selected interviews,
the respondants confirmed the fact there was a strong
consensus within the elementary population opposing cross-

district busing.

130

One particular man named Gerry expressed views
that were most representative of the feelings expressed
regarding the first question of community feeling on the
issue. He claimed that most people were primarily opposed
out of fear, and that though most have never been exposed
to minority people, they have generalized out of the
exceptional situations and events that make good headlines.

Gerry also felt it would be ridiculous for anyone
to openly support cross-district busing. "The guy would
have a rather uncomfortable time trying to live in a
community where he is hated."

Gerry, like most of the other interviewees, told
me the subject of cross busing is rarely discussed, and
if so irrationally. On the limited basis of what he had
heard, he claimed the justification for community oppo-
sition usually centered on such factors as safety, taxes,
inferior buildings and playgrounds. "Financing,“ he
claimed "is the big thing. This is realistic. How can
these people be responsible for those debts, whose going
to support our schools."

Unlike question one, question two was directed at
the interviewee personally. Most of those interviewed
said they could live with the fact of racial integration,
but practically in every instance there were qualifications
as to the way or type of integration that they would find

acceptable, or tolerable.

131

Mr. Timbles had lived in the community all his
life. His family represented some of the earliest settlers
in the area, and even today he lives on a small farm that
was willed to him when his mother passed away. Mr. Timbles
worked in the city of Grand Rapids as a custodian in a
factory. In his spare time he worked a portion of his
farm land for supplemental income.

Mr. Timbles appeared to be a rather sage person.

He told me he never attended college, few people that were
raised on farms in the area did. However, he boasted of
the fact that his two elder daughters were college
graduates, and his little fifth grader was going to make
it too. "There is a twelve year spread," he said, "but it
keeps you young to have a child later in life."

On the general topic of integration, Mr. Timbles
felt that he would go along with it, there would not be
much else he could do, although he admitted such a position
was less than honest since at the time he doubted very
seriously if anyone would sell land to blacks. "I don't
think blacks could buy out here even if they had the
money. Maybe they have a better chance if they tried to
purchase away from the town area, over there where they're
building a lot of new homes, but even then I'm sure no one
would sell. Everybody is afraid of their neighbor. They

don't want hard feelings."

132

Explaining further his feelings, Mr. Timbles
continued, "Well, if blacks move out here it would be
O.K. I'm going to have to get use to it. It's probably
going to happen sometime, it's already getting that way.
The states are taking over and telling the districts what
to do. These rich districts aren't going to share, so the
states will collect taxes and share it equally. That's
fair enough, I guess."

"Under what conditions would you accept integration,
Mr. Timbles?"

"I didn't say I'd accept it, I said I would go
along with it. Moving into the area would be one way.
One-way busing would be another way."

"You wouldn't mind one-way busing, Mr. Timbles?"

"I suppose I would mind it some, but I'm not trying
to keep them out. I would go along with one-way busing,
not two-way, and I think they should start with elementary
schools."

Mr. Timbles went on to tell me that it would only
be sensible to start at the elementary level because most
high school students are hateful of blacks. "I hired
colored apple pickers, and they were hated by the other
boys. The young kids didn't seem bothered either way."

Mr. Timbles said he felt there were more sensible
alternatives available, other than busing. He felt

busing was not the proper answer. "It's just the popular

133

thing today being offered by those social do-gooders. I
don't think those judges really think. They aren't doing
what the people want, neither the white or black people
want it. The blacks are just being led by a few in the
NAACP."

Ned was in his mid-thirties, and had one child
enrolled in the Risk School. He was some type of accountant
for one of the large conglomerates. I had met Ned before
on several occasions and I felt comfortable driving to his
house for the interview that evening. Ned lived in a
rather nice home, twenty-five to thirty thousand dollars in
value. When I met him, he informed me that his wife and
children had walked to the circus being held at the fair
grounds, and the local bar would be just as comfortable as
anyplace to carry on an interview.

When we walked into the bar at around 7:30 P.M.,
there was practically no space to sit. The clientele in
the bar represented a seemingly perfect cross-section of
the community population. Some men were dressed in suits,
some were dressed in dirty coveralls. There were a lot
of teenagers milling around the pool table, and during my
conversation with Ned, many of them acknowledged Ned and
spoke.

Ned assured me he rarely visted the local bar, and
that he knew most of the people through neighborhood

association.

134

Over his draught beer, Ned told me that he felt
integration had to happen. He said off hand he did not
know but that integration was essential for the survival
of our society.

"If not, there will be a general breakdown and
lawlessness in America, another civil var."

When I asked Ned why he thought a social breakdown
would occur because of a lack of integration he replied,
"Integration, as I understand it, means equal opportunity.
You cannot be secure simply because you're needs are met,
as long as a portion of people are denied their needs
there has to be trouble, hatred, and violence, look at
Ireland."

Ned continued that integration was essential, and
that it should be carried out through integrated housing.
"Maybe one out of every ten or twenty houses should be
owned by blacks, or Puerto Ricans, but the blacks are
probably afraid of that."

Ned's response to the reality of blacks buying a
home in the area was different than the elicited from most
interviewees.

"I think people would sell to blacks out here, I
think a lot would. A little town like this is ripe for
it."

"What do you mean the town is ripe for it?" I

questioned.

135

"This community, the town area is getting to be a
white slum area. These homes are old and a lot of the
whites living in the core area are trashy, besides many of
the houses are rented out by landlords who don't live in
the area, and really don't give a damn as long as they get
their money."

Ned said he preferred integrated housing because
it would lead to the intermingling of persons rather than
groups, and the problem if there is one, could be worked
out with adults, as well as just school children. In
regards to one-way busing to achieve integration, Ned felt
it would be good in some respects, such as having his
children meet black children, "an opportunity I was never
afforded," but he claimed it would not work because the
burden would be totally on the blacks.

"Now we don't discuss the race issue at home, that
is we don't put down blacks in front of our kids. Yet
I'm sure my kids are opposed to them. I don't know where
they got it, but I know they don't like colored people.

. . . But you see if they lived in the area it would be
better."

Mrs. Smith had recently moved into the Risk School
Area. She and her family had previously lived in an area
of the city of Grand Rapids that was becoming heavily

populated with blacks. She told me she was very happy

136

in this area, and relaxed now that she had left the place
where she used to live.

Mrs. Smith was obviously concerned with this issue,
it had been one of her families primary problems for the
last several years, and now she thought at times that
after all their hard work, hopes and finally dreams
realized, they would be lost.

She told me she was not for integration, that the
primary motivation for moving to the suburb was to get
away from integrated areas. "When we lived in the city,
the neighborhood was nice, at first. Then one black
family moved in, which was fine, but before you knew what
happened the whole area went black."

Mrs. Smith went on to tell me that particularly
during the summer months her children were continuously
being assaulted by blacks, their bicycles were stolen
repeatedly, and the homes in the area went from good to
bad in no time.

"The only people left there," she said, "were the
poor whites and the elderly people on fixed incomes.
Those poor old ladies," she continued, "they don't dare
walk the streets or take a bus without the fear of having
their purses stolen and their heads beat in. The lady
next door who we used to sort of watch over, sleeps with

a gun under her pillow. Some security in old age."

137

Mrs. Smith told me she and her husband had often
talked about integration and both agree that something
should be done.

"Now if there could be set a quota, or so many in
a neighborhood, I'd accept that. But the trouble is it's
not controlled and before long ghettos develop."

Mrs. Smith was not for any other forms of inte-
gration, she was resolutely opposed to any and all forms
of busing.

Another lady reported that she hated those "niggers"
and that she could not possibly foresee a workable form of
integration. But, as the interview proceeded, she, like
virtually every interviewee (except Mrs. Smith), admitted
open housing might be the answer. "This might be good for
white kids to understand blacks."

One gentleman told me that integration will have to
be the ultimate answer to the issue. "Whenever I say this,
my wife really gets aggravated, but the only answer as I
see it is through marriage. You know that way in time
everybody would be related and it's not likely that
relatives would be prejudiced toward one another."

There were a few persons, but very few, who spoke
adamantly against the issue of integration. These peOple
usually had had some personal experiences with blacks and
found the situation intolerable. As one man put it, "No,

absolutely no way. God damn, let them work as I do.

138

Between welfare, foodstamps, and ADC, those black bastards
got it made. . . . I've worked in situations in the ghetto
and I tell you some of those people are barbarians. . . .
The only mistake Hitler made was that he didn't include
the niggers."

As hard as this man was opposed to the issue of
integration, he did agree that a black man should be
entitled to purchase a home wherever he chose to as long
as he had the money. "There are some good ones, and I feel
sorry for those. They want to get away from the trash
too."

One father told me that open housing might be the
answer, certainly it was better than any other things they
have been doing. "They'd have to be good, clean, respecta-
ble people and they would have to take care of their own
property, keep it up. When I say open housing I don't
mean those public housing projects that are going up all
over. Hell, that's just moving the ghetto around the
country. They get in a group and they let everything go
to hell."

A few people believed that integration was contrary
to nature or God's design. As one lady put it, "There just
may be some sense in that Archie Bunker's joke that if God
wanted us together he wouldn't have separated them when
they were created. Of course I don't know my history too

well."

139

One lady pleaded with me that anything would be
acceptable in terms of integration as long as they don't
have to adopt cross-district busing. "Look, one-way busing
would be fine. I know there would be tension and black
mothers would worry just as I would, but I'll tell you I
will be the first one to come to the school to protect the
black kids if anything happened. I know it would be
awfully hard on their kids."

In practically each instance as noted at the end
of this chapter in the summation of the findings, the
interviewees accepted integration by either open housing
or one-way busing. With each acceptance, however, there
were always personal qualifying criteria, as well as the
fact that such agreement on integration was usually
accompanied by a compromise reaction to cross-district
busing.

When I dealt with the general topic of integration,
there were a host of opinions opposing it, but in almost
all cases the people were willing to accept some form of
integration according to their specifications. On the
opinion of cross-district busing, there was unanimous
oppositions according to the following findings taken from
personal interviews.

Ned, the accountant, struggled to answer the
question with a great deal of rapid self-analysis. "I

think I'm opposed. I've had good experiences with colored,

140

but I'm afraid my opposition is pretty much based or a
product of hearsay. Maybe I'm prejudice; not really deep
down."

After reflecting on his feelings, Ned said that
he is simply afraid to send his kids into that area as it
is today. He also cited as examples the disturbances at
Union High School.

Ned told me that he, like most of the people out
here, feel a lot of trouble has taken place in the inner
city schools that has not been released through the press
to the general public, but we still hear about situations
from reliable sources, Ned claimed.

Several other persons also claimed their fears
were justified by what they heard outside the public media:

My husband works with other men whose children go
to Union, and they just hate it. They say the colored
are always trying to pinch the white girls.

My girlfriend's brother worked in the inner city,
and he said it was just terrible. Those people, even
the young ones are taught to hate all whites.

Everybody says it's the colored kids that cause the
trouble and maybe they do some, but those white kids
and parents over there, I think from what I hear, are
the real trouble makers. I hear a lot of the white
parents actually go along with what the white kids do,
like making threatening phone calls to black kids.

Ed told me he personally felt cross-district busing

was insane. He said he did not see any possible good

coming from it, if anything he thought it would weaken

the relations between the races. "I don't want my children

141

to get acquainted with the immorality in those areas, what
can those people (blacks) possibly do for my child insofar
as cultural development. If I wanted my children to be
brought up with those people I wouldn't have tried so hard
all my life to improve their existence."

Ed went on to tell me that his early childhood had
been one of deprivation and hardship, and that he had
dedicated his life to making sure his children never
experienced such an environment. "Now they want to take
what I've done and undo it."

Ed said that neither the black kids or the white
kids would gain from cross busing. "Maybe ten or fifteen
years ago they might have learned the life and ways of
white children, but today the black parents are militant,
and so are their kids. The black people today are the
same as the white racists were back in history."

John had lived in the community only a short time.
He was the father of five children and he had recently
moved from the city to one of the newer homes on the
outskirts of the Risk elementary area. He told me he
would be terribly disappointed if cross-district busing
were approved, and that he was totally opposed to such a
thing. He said, "Let the facts speak for themselves. The
inner city where the blacks live is a jungle. The houses
are rotten, the schools, some of them new, are wrecked.
Nobody in their right mind wants to send their kids in

there. I don't even drive in there when I don't have to."

142

John also told me that the schools were inferior
educationally. Not the facilities or equipment, but the
teachers themselves. "Look I know fOr a fact that blacks
are given preferential treatment in employment, and I know
it's the same at the college level. Their kids get
scholarships even when they have a D average because they
need black teachers. Now those same people are becoming
teachers in black schools. The only qualifications they
have is that they are black."

John thought that black people should have similar
rights as any citizens, but he felt the lot of the black
people was being worsened by incompetent leaders. "The
only reason there are black people in high positions, many
of them, is because they are one of a kind. How many of
those blacks who got an education given to them stay in the
ghetto or send their kids to those schools. Hell no, they
live in the nice areas and send their kids to the good
schools. They don't give a damn about those people in the
trashy areas, and I don't blame them."

Mr. Timbles also argued against cross busing. He
said, "aside from the facts of all the problems that would
come through busing, I think people should stay in their
own areas of local control." Mr. Timbles continued, "This
is more like what they do in Russia, under communism, tell

you how to live, where to work, and where to send your

143

kids to school. I don't see any difference, of course,
this is my personal Opinion."

Frequently, while interviewing the persons
expressing opposition to cross-district busing, like
Mr. Timbles, referred to the political-constitutional
drawbacks rather than the sociological impediments.

I just don't understand how the judges can say
those things. Even the President and the Congress are
opposed to busing, so what gives them the right.

This issue involves the people, and the people
have nothing to say about it. Everybody is against
busing, so if the majority oppose it then that should
be it.

What about the local control concept. I thought
the Constitution left the issue of education to the
people?

Just like Wallace said, if those judges were
elected instead of appointed for life they wouldn't
be thinking so crazy.

They take my rights, my taxes, and now they want
my kids to be given to those niggers. The government
disciminates against white people, it's reverse
discrimination.

If worse comes to worse the Constitution will be
amended. I know that will happen, its gotta happen.

Nixon's made a lot of Supreme Court appointments,
they are all opposed to busing. That's what the
people want.

This thing is a fad, the courts will back down.
If they don't a lot of them will be impeached.

I agree with the court's interpretation of equality
as it is in the Constitution, however, the courts are
too far ahead of the people. A good law is often
measurable by the degree of popular acceptance. I
think the courts are headed in the right direction,
but they are going way too fast.

144

In the defense of the parental views opposing
cross-busing, justifications were offered in terms of
fear, political rights, black inferiority as a result of
environment, inferior inner city schools, in some cases
overt prejudice. Interestingly, however, a frequent
justification came at the expense of white people them-
selves.

In many interviews the respondents claimed that
the issue was not as many would infer, simply racial.
They would then frequently cite the fact that they had no
desire to live near, or send their children to school with
some whites.

Mr. Key said that some of those kids particularly
in the town are undesirable. "A lot of those parents are
trashy and so are their kids. Now I've got to send my
kids to school with them because we live in the same
district, but that's the difference."

Mrs. Jones said they moved out in the suburbs to
get away from dirty people, "but we've found them out
here too. I'm just as opposed to them as I am blacks.
The issue isn't so much color, it's just that you expect
blacks to be different."

There were others who had similar remarks and felt

as Mrs. Jones did:

145

I find some of these white people just as bad as
the colored, but that doesn't make me prejudice
against whites. It's not money either, it's the way
they live and the way they let their kids run.

Every community I suppose has its share of whites
who are probably worse than most colored. With busing
the community could only get worse.

The kids who come from bad homes get special
treatment at school through government funds. We've
got to pay for that, my kids get no special treatment.
Just because you try hard you seem to get penalized.
You should see their homes, you wouldn't believe it.
We fix ours up and they raise the taxes on it.

The final question, aimed at uncovering the
individual's attitudes, or propensity to act as a result
of court ordered cross-district busing, was found by the
interviewees to be perplexing. Many felt they could not
with absolute certainty guarantee their actions, but most
of them did admit with some assurance prognostications of
what they might do, or were likely to do.

The following data offered here is generally
typical of those attitudes held by the entire population
of parents who were randomly chosen for this research.

Ned said that he would seriously consider moving
to a near-by community that is not involved in the issue.
He also added that he would look into the possibility of
sending his children to a private school, one that is not
parochial. "I'd have to see the situation as it developed.
I might allow my girl to go there, but I would definitely

not allow my boy, because he's older and I'd fear that.

I'd probably send him to another school."

146

Later in the conversation, Ned changed and said he
would probably go along with cross-district busing and
watch what happened. When I asked Ned how he felt about
his girl being there with blacks he said, "If something
happened I'd have to take my girl's feelings into con-
sideration before I acted. Maybe it would be her fault.
Really, I don't know now that you bring that up."

"Right now," he continued, "I'm following the
leadership of the school board, they are my representative.
If they fail, I might possibly follow the vigilante group,
maybe it would develop into another southern situation,
but like them we'd probably all end up going along with
it."

Though Ned acknowledged in the end he would
probably have to go along with it, he said there would be
disturbances, maybe violence, certainly some civil
disobedience. "I'm a transplanted farmer like many of
the people are out here. Many of us chose this area
because we not only like it, but because we are afraid of
large communities. So you see the issue is double edged
for us."

"Explain that Ned."

"Well, aside from the issue of blacks and whites,
a lot of us people who grew up in the country are simply
afraid of city life. Everything's different, it's totally
different, maybe I'm not afraid, maybe I just hate it and

everything in it."

147

Ned felt the commonness in the Risk community,
and the fact that anti-urbanism was "in their blood"
would assure the fact of initial, possible violent,
reaction to forced busing.

Mr. Timbles said that after all channels were
found wanting, it would be done "over his dead body" and
added "they would have to come in and get me, and I would
do everything to protect myself and family."

One mother said that they would move to another
area before her kids went to inner city schools. She
also assured me, however, that she had no plans of moving.
"I'll go to jail first." Some of the parents have decided
if this happens they will stop paying school taxes. "We
just wouldn't do it, I hope and pray they don't ask us."

Another mother told me, "All hell would break
loose." She clarified herself by stating that there
probably would not be violence, but that the community
would be vocally indignant. "My husband said that we
would move, but that's ridiculous, there isn't anyplace
you can run to, to get away from it if it spreads. I
guess the only real thing we could do is to use the only
power we got, the voting power. We might check our kids
into a parochial school, but for us that would be beyond
our ability, money wise. God, we're praying this thing

doesn't happen this way."

148

Many of the interviewees, as usual, spoke about
the overall issue of blacks and whites rather than the
question. For example, some of the initial responses to
the questions ran like these:

Blacks, hell they like welfare. It's people like
us who have to work. A lot of people think they are
dumb, I wonder. . . .

I don't know what I'm going to do, if the thing
is bad, I'll keep them out of school. That's legal,
the same as the Amish are doing.

In those schools? Hell, do you know what's
happening in those places. It's just control, that's
all that's going on.

I've had some good experiences with blacks. I
used to go to school with them, and as long as the
teachers and principals can contain the thing, there's
nothing else I can do about it.

Bob had married a girl from the Risk area, and
after living in the city for several years managed to
move out to the suburb. He too felt that the blacks were
being overcompensated particularly in public employmancy.
He said that as a fireman in the city of Grand Rapids, no
matter how hard officials tried they could not get a black
to join the fire department, he also added that few could
pass the necessary entrance examinations and certainly
none could be promoted. Bob continued that he did not
believe the problem for blacks was one of innate inferi—
ority, or biological deficiency, but rather one of attitude.
"They simply refuse to put forth effort."

When I asked him what he intended to do if cross

busing was ordered he said, "There isn't anything anyone

III I I'll I'llllll

149

can do. We just wait and watch events as they happen.
We will make ourselves heard to school authorities in
terms of getting school control but there is nothing we
can do, or nothing we will do except be vocal and vote."

In response to my probes, Bob told me that white
people are not activists. "I don't know what's wrong with
them, they talk a lot but they don't do anything. They go
to the polls and they feel that's all they can do. At
least that is all they dare to do, they lack leadership.
Now the black people have leadership and they do things.

We just sit around on our fat asses, talk a lot, and vote,
and that's all we do. We're passive, if that's the right
word."

Bob went on to tell me that the whites he knows
are passive and incapable of organizing. "It would be so
easy to get a letter campaign going, or all of us refuse
to pay taxes. Can you imagine what would happen to schools
and the legislature if people stopped drinking for one
day, and stopped buying cigarettes for one day."

Continuing, Bob said, "the whites are getting
'screwed' everyday by blacks." He said, "he despises
what they are doing, but he feels the whites are just as
blamable. Whites don't know how to organize," he repeated.

Bob concluded his thoughts by saying, "cross busing
is wrong, but we won't do anything, we'll go along, just

as we go along with welfare, muggings, high taxes, and

150

protecting some of those bastards. We'll be vocal, and

we'll vote but we'll go along with busing."

General Findings
The general findings of this study are presented
in this chapter according to the eight parts as they are
divided. Chapter V will include a conceptual analysis of

the findings.

Educational Personnel
Question 1. Assumed community feeling toward

cross-district busing by educational personnel.

 

 

Number Per cent
Acceptable O 0
Unacceptable 10 100

 

Note: No demographical correlation noted.

Question 2. How do those interviewed feel about

 

integration?

151

 

 

Number Per cent
Acceptable With
Qualification 8 80
Unacceptable 2 20

 

Note: Only demographic variable in common was age.
Both opposing individuals were over forty. All accepting
qualified integration were under forty years of age.

Question 3. How do the interviewed feel about the

issue of cross-district busing?

 

 

Number Per cent
Opposed 10 100
Unopposed O 0

 

Note: No demographic correlation noted.

Question 4. What are the attitudes of those
interviewed if forced cross-district busing is ordered

implemented by the courts?

 

 

Number Per cent
Remain 9 90
Leave l 10

 

Note: No demographic correlation noted.

152
General Findings From Parents
0 Elementary Children
Question 1. Assumed community feeling toward

cross-district busing by selected parents.

 

 

Number Per cent
Acceptable 0 0
Unacceptable 30 100

 

Note: No demographic correlation noted.

Question 2. How do the interviewed feel about the

issue of integration?

 

 

Number Per cent
Opposed 6 20
Favor With
Qualification 24 80

 

Note: No demographic correlation noted.

 

Question 3. How do the interviewed feel about the

issue of cross-district busing?

153

 

 

Number Per cent
Opposed 30 100
Favor 0 O

 

Question 4. What are the attitudes (propensity to
act) of those interviewed if forced district busing is

ordered implemented by the courts?

 

 

Number Per cent
Non-Compliance 7 23.3
Guarded Compliance 18 60
Uncertainty 5 16.7

 

Note: Those in non-compliance or uncertainty
always had religious access to private or parochial
schools. No other demographic correlation.

CHAPTER V

EXPLANATION OF THE FINDINGS, IMPLICATIONS,

AND RECOMMENDATIONS

As stated in Chapter I, this researcher has
attempted to describe and explain the collective per-
spective of citizens and educators regarding their views
on cross-district busing.

The purpose of this chapter is to present the
answers to the exploratory questions put forth in Chapter I,
secondly to analyze those findings and present the tentative
perspectives of social behavior, which may be used to

generate hypotheses for further testing.

Introduction
It seems warranted at this point to repeat that
this is an exploratory study not purported to be hypothesis
testing in nature. The intent of the study was to provide
a foundation of descriptive data which would have the
potential of being hypothesis generating. This is not to

say, however, that some firm conclusions cannot be evolved

154

155

from the study particularly in direct relation to the
exploratory questions.

The specific objective of this theoretical endeavor,
developed from what is perceived and constructed within
the researcher's "mind's eye" to model the empirical
system and as announced in the opening chapter, was to
determine if there was a common perspective among the
selected population regarding the issue of cross-district
busing. Perspective, as defined for this study, deals
with beliefs and behavior which are mutually supportive
to individuals and groups in their collective formation.
In this study the researcher is concerned with perspective
as developed by parents and educational personnel on the
issue of cross-district busing.

As noted in the general findings, located at the
end of Chapter IV, there is a significant magnitude of
relationship among the population's views concerning the
issue of cross-district busing. These general findings
taken alone do nothing more than announce the positions
taken by the population and the magnitude thereof relative
to the issue. Nevertheless, such an additional presen-
tation of the findings in this quantitative manner should
enhance the clarity of the study and thus compliment the
qualitative findings.

Utilization of the interview process, along with

limited participant observation in this exploratory

156

research enabled the researcher to gain a greater awareness
of the common perspective as defined for this study.

Along with the identified perspectives offered in the
explanation of the findings, this chapter will also deal
with the generation of hypothesis, constructed from
perceived components and combined into a theoretical

framework.

Theoretical Framework
Most authors who use qualitative methodology agree
that the researcher must allow his data to fit into a
theoretical framework associated with the units of study.
Within this theoretical framework the specific hypotheses
make sense. To put it more strongly, the hypotheses and
models should be derived, as rigorously as possible from
the theoretical framework.87
Merton states:
The investigator makes fresh observations. He draws
inferences from the observations, inferences depending
largely, of course, upon his general theoretical
orientation. He must allow his anomalous datum to fit
into, expand or form new theory.88
It should also be recalled that the conceptual

framework along with the theoretical framework supports

the research parameter. Smelser contends:

 

87Neil J. Smelser, Essays In Sociological Expla-
nation (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc.,

I p. 60

88Lewis Coser, The Functions of Social Conflict
(New York: Free Press, 15561, p. 157.

157

Sociology does not deal with a special class of
empirical data; instead, it deals with data as in-
terpreted within a special type of conceptual frame-
work. Sociology and the other behavioral sciences
arise from a common body of empirical data rather than
several separate classes of data. With respect to
characterizing the subject matter of sociology, then,
I hold the position that its subject matter is not in
any natural way given in social reality, but is the
product of a selective identification of aspects of
the empirical world for purposes of scientific
description, classification, and explanation.

Without a conceptual framework it is not possible

to identify ranges of empirical variation that are
scientifically problematical.89

The specific conceptual framework utilized in this
study is that which concerns the group and it arises when
we consider numbers of individuals who become aggregated,
more or less purposively, as members of a collectivity
with some common orientation.

The theoretical framework adopted for usage in
this study is that which deals with the theory of conflict.
Because social conflict theory appears significantly
within the community under study, the writer will utilize
the pertinent functions of conflict theory in the analysis
of the data.

There is sufficient evidence in Chapter IV to
verify the proposition that conflict avoidance among the
community population is a major determiner of collective
views regarding the issue of cross-district busing.

Parents and educators in the Risk Elementary School Zone

 

89Smelsner, op. cit., p. 47.

158

wish to avoid interaction of the races, the presumed source
of conflict.

Based upon the views of the community population
and the legal actions of the school board, the area under
study in relation to integration approached a "closed
system."

The community reaction to the issue of busing and
integration clearly demonstrates the existence of conflict
with out-groups and a concommitant social cohesion resulting
within the community in reaction to the source of irri-
tation. In virtually each interview and from what could
be gathered from participant observation, it was learned
that the population residing within the Risk elementary
boundaries prior to the emergence of the social problem in
question, had little in common other than proximity of
location. Rarely it was found did any responses from the
interviewees indicate to this researcher a collegial, or
for that matter a socially affable atmosphere for com-
mingling among the residents.

Generally the people in the area were found to be
cordial and friendly, but not involved socially or person-
ally to any significant extent with others. Their social
interactions with others in the community were basically
limited to acceptable amenities, usually those things in

line with one's social responsibilities such as attending

159

funerals, taking collections for victims of tradgedy,
sending condolence messages, etc.

Prior to the issue of cross-district busing there
was no discernable collective "we'ness" among the popu-
lation other than choice of geographic settlement. The
current pressure from without which is an attack upon the
equilibrium of the community has generated cohesion and
solidarity among the population that simply heretofore was
non-existent.

The degree of cohesion within the selected school
zone area and the population's revitalized value awareness,
as indicated by the general findings tend to substantiate
the fact that it is conflict and/or pressure for reform
that seems to be the most important factor for social
cohesion in the community.

Many notable social theorists, such as Lewis Coser,
George Sorel, and Robert Merton agree that conflict can be
positively functional. On the other hand, if conflict is
not guided, or properly controlled, it can become violent.

Lewis Coser, in his book Continuities in the Study
of Social Conflict, states:

Conflict within and between groups in a society can
prevent accommodations and habitual relations from
progressively impoverishing creativity. The clash of
values and interests, the tensions between what is
and what some groups feel ought to be the conflict

between vested interests and new strata and groups
demanding their share of power, wealth and status,

160
have been productive of vitality. . . . Conflict is a
sine qua non of reflection and ingenuity.9
This is, in effect, the application of John Dewey's

theory of consciousness and thought as arising in the wake
of obstacles to the interaction of groups.

Conflict is the gadfly of thought. It stirs us to

observation and memory. It instigates to invention.

It stirs us to observation and memory. It instigates

to invention. It shocks us out of sheep—like pas-

sivity, and it sets us at noting and contriving.

Theorists hold that there are positive aspects in

conflict, essentially the prevention of ossification of a
social system by exerting pressure for innovation and
creativity. Contrary to this school of thought, the
"human relations" approach stresses the concept of
collective purpose and the reduction of conflict. Social
conflict theorists contend that by ignoring the value of
conflict, dysfunctional factors intrude within the organi-
zation and negative entrophy becomes a reality.

Conflict tends to be dysfunctional for a social

structure in which there is no, or insufficient

toleration and institutionalization of conflict.

The intensity of conflict which threatens to "tear

apart" which attacks the consensual basis of the
structure.92

 

90Lewis Coser, Continuities in the Study of Social
Conflict (New York: The Free Press; London: Collier-
MacmilIan Limited, 1967), p. 20.

gllbid.

92Lewis Coser, The Functions of Social Conflict
(New York: The Free Press, 1956), p. 157.

161

The fact that cohesion within the Risk community
is a result of conflict and aimed at maintaining the
status-quo, and the concommitant fact that such cohesion
precludes toleration of conflict, lends support to the
possibility of dysfunctional community operations should
cross-district busing be ordered implemented by the
courts.

This reaction to conflict within the community
also points out the fact that the desire to maintain the
status-quo nullifies the opportunity to utilize conflict
for the purpose of creating constructive change.

The fact that this institution which seeks
stability by the avoidance of conflict according to
noted conflict theorists, removes the opportunities for
social progress, innovation, and creativity for the
organization. Not only is passivity guaranteed but also
the possibility of organizational chaos should change be
forced upon them.

It should be pointed out at this time that this
community school system, like others, lives with a certain
amount of internal conflict, discord, and controversy.

Individuals and groups within an organization never

have identical interests. The differences in interests
always produce some sort of conflict.93

 

93Bertram M. Gross, Organizations and Their
Managing (New York: The Free Press, 19687, p. 17.

162

To the degree of conflict that is endemic in all
collectivities, this community survives through compromise
and gradual adaptation. In this respect the community is
not totally devoid of conflict awareness but the conflict
emerging as a result of cross-district busing is seemingly
beyond their immediate reality. The population is
determined to secure the continuation of their vested
interests, and that will mean the maintainence of the
status-quo. The utlization of conflict for the purpose
of attaining constructive ends is simply not a fact.

Having given a general statement of community
posture resultant from the issue of cross-district busing
and an applicable theoretical framework, it remains in
this portion of the chapter to present first the answers
to the exploratory questions itemized in Chapter I and
lastly the heuristic assumptions.

Question 1: What are the assumptions of residents and
educational personnel regarding feelings
of the total area pOpulation concerning
the issue of cross-district busing?

Answer.--Each interviewee readily admitted that
the area population in total would be opposed to the issue
of cross-district busing for a variety of reasons.

In making this determination of presumed views
held by the total population, the interviewees continually

suggested that this area was a community intentionally

163

isolated by residents who have chosen a particular way of
life that did not yield to cumbersome sociological change.

The assumption by the interviewees regarding the
population's feelings generally centered around the notion
of avoidance of change. Though it was repeatedly admitted
by the interviewees that the subject per se was rarely
discussed, the answers seemed authoritative, and practically
all smacking of the population desire to maintain an
orderly, "slow" pace in terms of life change.

Question 2: How do those interviewed feel about the
issue of integration?

Answer.--Over three-fourths of the interviewees
felt that one form or another of integration should be
accomplished. Generally the rationale for their inclination
centered around stabilizing society in general, not neces-
sarily creating a better situation for minority people,
though frequently that was a secondary consideration.

There was a certain awareness among the inter-
viewees of the "goodness" of integration, but the methods
espoused by the respondents frequently showed that inte-
gration in forms acceptable to them would tend to scatter
blacks in the amorphous "white world," thus disintegrating
the black collective power (a perceived cause of social
instability) and eventually dominating the black sub-

culture into white submission.

164

Question 3: How do those interviewed SersonallE feel
about the issue of cross- istrict using?

Answer.--In response to this querie, there was
complete unaniminity in opposition to cross-distruct
busing. Whites generally felt that this method of
integrating the races was the worst possible avenue in
pursuance of social growth. The arguments in opposition
to this "social engineering scheme" basically centered on
the merits of theg>rogram itself. In almost each instance,
the interviewees pointed out mechanical as well as social
impediments which they considered far outweighed the
assumed benefits which sponsored the issue initially.

In line with their adamant denial of the busing
method, interviewees frequently offered alternatives for
attaining the goals of "racial equality." ThoSe alterna-
tives ran the gamut from financial aid to one-way busing,
but generally most appeared to line up behind the doctrine
of "separate but equal."

Question 4: What behavior will be enacted by those
interviewed if cross-district busing is
ordered implemented by the courts?

Answer.--Most interviewees admitted they would be
upset over such a ruling and some admitted they just were
not sure what action they would take. For some it would
simply "depend on the events as they unfolded." Most

admitted that in that framework they would comply guardedly

165

with the dictates of the court though, they personally
could not support or substantiate such a decision. This
majority also claimed that violent reaction would be
further damaging to the situation and their reactions, if
at all, would follow the democratic procedures available
to them.

A very limited proportion of the population
indicated they would take action. Among this limited
minority such acts as residential relocations was most
frequently cited. Only a few of the individuals claimed
they would not adhere to the law and even then, they
usually followed that stand with alternative action such
as enrolling their children in a parochial school. This
expression was more common among males.

Generally the population indicated they would
follow the law, take the necessary action to guarantee
the safety of students and the organization of the school,
they admitted, would be the focal point of their scrutiny

to secure their needs.

Hypotheses and Implications
There are a number of hypothetical suggestions
that have been screened out of the findings of this study.
It is now the intent of the author to build the following
hypothetical assumptions from those findings and submit

them to further research in the area of quantification

166

methodology for the avowed purpose of enhancing social
stability in times of transition.

The hypotheses, as well as the implications, will
be gathered and presented objectively from the salient
aspects of community perspective as formulated out of the
issue of cross-district busing.

Both educational personnel as well as parents in
the Risk community readily deny that the topic of cross-
district busing is a typical issue for discussion, yet,
in each instance all interviewees agreed that the com-
munity as a whole opposed it. Their assumption of total
community opposition to the issue is not being in any way
invalidated. What is the concern, is the fact that
virtually everyone disclaims the commitment of dialogue on
this seemingly relevant tOpic. Once more, on the basis of
the findings, this researcher cannot assume sufficient
arrogance to discount that contention.

What is assumed by this researcher on the basis of
the findings is that the issue of cross-district busing
per se is merely a system of the issue normally discussed
among the community residents, and that common issue of
discussion is integration.

Cross-district busing is merely a system of the
real issue among whites. The real issue is blacks and
whites and it is usually in this context that the com-

munity is heard. It is solely on the basis of rational

167

deduction that people assume, or logically extrapolate

from dialogue in opposition to blacks in general, that they
find assurance in claiming the community opposes cross-
district busing.

It is, therefore, assumed by the author that this
absence of discussion in relation to the specific issue of
cross-district busing is merely one of semantics. A
research hypothesis may read:

Hypothesis 1: In a white suburban Risk Community it is
not the issue of cross-district busing
that citizens primarily oppose, rather,
it is the larger social issue of black
and white commingling.

The other man syndrome hypothesis was developed by
the researcher as a result of overwhelming negative
responses to the issue of cross-district busing, all
seemingly supported by the respondent's contention that
the adversaries involved in the issue (blacks) also Opposed
the issue. For example, all respondents who vocalized any
degree of opposition would frequently support their
feelings by interjecting at the conclusion of their
remarks, that the blacks do not want it either. "They
don't want busing," or "the ones I talk to aren't for it
either," and "they would rather have their own schools
too."

Such self-supporting testimonials it was noted,

always accompanied each negative response opposing

168

integration. An interesting note is that at no time in
all of the interviews was this syndrome employed by an
interviewee to support feelings favoring the issue. When
positive feelings were made known, they were not supported
by the other man.

Along with the other man syndrome, hypothesis
utilized by those opposing the issue is another often
repeated criterion of defense which deals with the lack of
exposure. This Lack of Exposure Criterion was employed by

teachers as well as parents frequently when they dismissed

the notion of cross-district busing. "I'm opposed to
integration and busing. I never knew them." "I came
from an area where there weren't any negroes." "I never

knew any, and what's the sense of knowing them now."

This defensive justification for opposition to the
issue generally depicted a sense of situational avoidance
above and beyond the individual's ability to direct his
own life. In rationalizing such, the persons assumed no
personal guilt for their opposition, rather they squarely
placed the blame or justification for their current views
on forces in society beyond their ability to manipulate.
For them their situation was created by others and they
admitted little personal control over their destiny.

In taking this position the respondents admitted
in a sense "that the die had been cast," and the lack of

early exposure to blacks preclude any later forms of

169

exposure. The indication herein is that the lack of early
exposure to stimuli (at childhood) will create an avoidance

pattern in adults.

Hypothesis 2: In a white suburban school community,
such as the Risk area, citizens opposing
busing were less logical in the defense
of this view than were those who did

not oppose busing.

The unsolicited denial of bigotuy by practically
each individual interviewed, in spite of their admittances
of hatred in some instances for the blacks, brings to
point some interesting thoughts on the meaning of bigotry.

Bigotry simply is not socially acceptable in the

white culture. Many individuals are bigoted, yet few will

admit it.

Hypothesis 3: In the white suburban culture of the
Risk area it is socially acceptable to
act, or think in a bigoted manner,
however, it is socially unacceptable to
admit personal bigotry.

 

Another assumption this author has screened out of
the findings is that those who hold ideological justifi-
cation for their views tend to be given to violence in
support of those views.

Most of the respondents and particularly the edu-
cational personnel were devoid of any ideological
assumptions to support their views but among the parents,

usually the elder parents and those given to seemingly

170

fundamentalist religious sects, ideological principles
were often voiced as the basis for opposition.

Usually their arguments centered around notions
such as state's rights, local control, "freedom," courts,
confiscatory legislation, liberal do-gooders, and occasion-
ally an antipathy for the "anti-Christ professors."

For these people there were no vocalized alterna-
tives to the issue. They, of all respondents, seemed most
adamant to maintain what they believed to be their
constitutional rights, even to the point of civil diso-
bedience. Frequently they claimed that the only compromise
was absolutely no compromise on the issue.

Hypothesis 4: In the community of Risk which faces
cross-district busing the catylist
for violent civil disobedience will
be lead by those espousing ideological
principles. The issue of black and
white will not be the topic, rather
the "rights of man" as interpreted by
ideological zealots.

As suggested from the earlier findings, the
community school under study is in relation to cross—
district busing and integration a "closed system."

A system is closed if there is no import or export
of energies in any of its forms such as information,
heat, physical materials, etc., then, therefore, no

change of components, an example being chemical
reaction taking place in a sealed insulated chamber.94

 

94Robert Dubin, Theory Building (New York: Collier
Macmillan Limited, 1969). p. 135.

171

When such a system is under attack from an outside
force, and the demand from the outside force is unequivocal,
the system will tend to "open," by way of compromise
measures.

In alternative reaction to cross-district busing,
the system will, as indicated from the interviewees,
sponsor incremental changes, but changes far short of the
goals sought by the outside forces. For example the
NAACP (Higgins v. Board of Education) seeks cross-district
busing, in reaction to that singular goal, white citizens
are willing to accept limited open housing, one-way busing,
and/or increase economic aid to black areas.

Operationally this researcher lables such maliabi-
lity as the "swinging door concept." What is assumed by
this author is that the white community could be compromised
while litigation is in process, but if the goals of the
NAACP are nullified, as in this case by a court ruling
opposing cross-district busing, the white system, that was
partially "open" in the interim will withdraw all compro-
mises and return to the "closed system."

Hypothesis 5: When the white suburban school community
of Risk is under attack from an outside
entity it will immediately seek alterna—
tive compromises but once the threat
has dissipated all negotiations will

cease and all compromises will immedi-
ately be withdrawn.

 

172

The researcher feels that instructive within this
hypothesis is the fact that those entities attacking
closed systems should take advantage of the art of com-
promise. This particularly should be recognized by
minority persons who are frequently the least powerful in
making social changes, aside from revolutionary tactics.

Some of the compromises frequently offered by
educators and parents were compensatouy aid, one-way
busing, and Open housiug.

Compensatory aid, as interpreted by this author,
is an attempt by whites to buy separation of the races.
Regardless of the increase in taxes, or the priority
established in the distribution of federal and state funds,
the people of the Risk area are ready and willing to make
any necessary monetary adjustments to buy the continuance
of separation from blacks.

An interesting assumption within this concept as
perceived by the researcher is the fact that this gum:

pensatory aid concept goes beyond the old legal concept

 

of separate but equal. Whites are willing, if necessary,
to aid blacks even to the point of having blacks in better
schools, rather than accepting them in theirs.

One-way busing, an additional alternative to the
issue of cross busing is essentially a device for maintaining
white control. It is also a means of preserving the com-

munity values and conformity to them. In this respect

173

black children would be indoctrinated into the white
culture, and white children would be protected from the
black sub-culture.

Qpen housing, like one-way busing is a tactic to
preserve the status-quo as much as possible in a white
community. The assumption implicit in the findings as
interpreted by this writer is that the white compromise of
open housing is a resort aimed at scattering or dispersing
the blacks to minimize their sub-culture reinforcement.
"Every neighborhood will get one," and the dominant white
culture will eventually metamorphasize them.

In view of the fact that this suburban community
is under "attack" from a force within the larger society,
tentative compromises have been offered to stay the goal
of the outside entity. Prior to the emergence of this
force, however, the residents and educational personnel
adhered to the norms of the community which included the
notion of black-white segregation.

Within all communities there are a number of uggm.
busters and reaction to those who dare violate norms.
Within this community, and in relation to blacks there are
no norm busters which has led this writer to make some
basic assumptions about community reprisal tactics that may
be one of the primary causes for inhibiting norm violation

regarding blacks.

174

It is assumed by this writer that the typical
"norm buster" can personally afford reprisals against his
personage without too much difficulty. Because this issue
is perhaps more emotional and multi-dimensional than
others, community reaction would go beyond typical reprisals
against typical norm busters.

For example, based on the findings respondent's
claimed that community reprisal for advocates of cross-
district busing would place grave restriction not only
upon them, but their children, relatives, and property as
well. Even if community reprisal became so virulent that
the proponents of busing relocated into another area, the
fear of displaced reprisal and ostricization on remaining
friends, or relatives compromised sufficiently any such
notions favoring busing.

Hypothesis 6: In the Risk suburban community there
is operating a norm-value "grass-
roots dictatorship" and it is the
strongest form for compelling popular
conformity.

It was noted in the findings by this researcher
that the respondents referred time and time again to the
principal of neighborhood concept in opposing cross-district
busing. Frequently interviewees voiced fear that the

neighborhood concept would be undermined if busing were

ordered.

175

Essentially the neighborhood concept simply means
on the surface, that children attend school within the
geographical-residential boundaries of settlement. These
boundaries are artificially contrived specifically for the
purpose of administering schools.

Beneath the surface of the administratively
contrived neighborhood concept are the undeniable facts
that such a contrivance is aimed, either intentionally or
residually, at segregating undesirables and this is based
primarily on the basis of income.

The neighborhood concept is the extension of local

 

control and local control is the excuse for maintaining
and perpetuating the status-quo. There is really no aura
around the concept of the neighborhood, as noted, most
people in this community do not commingle, they are not
close, merely acquaintances within a geographic boundary.

Their neighborhood schools do not concentrate on
the community life but the world. The neighborhood school
is more often looked upon as an institution for preserving
values and only secondarily, providing education.

At no time was the issue of black scholastic
ability discussed by respondents. Most concern centered
on values.

Hypothesis 7: Local control and the neighborhood
concept of education is a method
sanctioned by the state and used to
protect the values of the bounded

citizens, and tribalize people on the
basis of economic mobility, or lack of it.

176

In summation of this research project, it is a
well known fact that neither parents or teachers are
favorable to the busing issue. Most of both groups said,
however, that they would abide by the law of the land and
in the final analysis do whatever they could to make the
educational situation a healthy experience.

Both groups are apprehensive. Parents, primarily,
for the safety of their children, and teachers because of
a felt ineptitude to deal with the new classroom environ-
ment.

On thegpart of both groups there are admittedly
mixed emotions over the entire social issue of blacks.
Throughout the findings of each group there was a genuine
awareness that black Americans have not been fairly treated
in the American scheme of things but, with that recognition,
both groups still basically felt that they should not have
to be the people, in the history of time, to pay for the
neglect of blacks. Generally they felt the legacy of
inequality and deprivation imposed upon blacks should not
be their burden of rectification, nor their childrens.

The issue of cross-district busing and integration
and a resultant environmental change has created in the
Risk area a rather deep sense of resentment. This antipathy
is partially the result of psychic tension caused generally
by an inability of people to articulate from the present

state of affairs to future status.

177

Rgcommendations for
Further Research

Within the limitations of this study, the following

recommendations seem warranted:

1.

A similar study should be replicated in a black
area which also faces the issue of cross-district

busing.

Since this study is an exploratory study aimed at
building theory, a follow-up research study should
be attempted to test the correspondence between
the statements and the results of empirical

research.

A similar exploratory study should be conducted

including students in the sample.

Because beliefs and behavior are given to change

(with the advent of time and new situations, a

study of this nature should be accomplished in an
area that has been involved with the issue of

cross-distruct busing.

This study should be replicated in other white
areas involved with the issue of cross-district

busing.

A similar study should be undertaken within an
entire school district so that the views of
parents, secondary teachers, and students can be

incorporated into the findings.

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185

649 (1944).

402 U.S.

281 (1970).

627 (1950).

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