Excerpt
September 12, 2024, Opinion: "Fifty years ago on September 12, 1974, yellow school buses rolled up Dorchester Heights to South Boston High School. It was the first day of court-ordered desegregation of public schools in Boston. What ensued was ugly, violent, and traumatic. Busing was Boston’s Selma or Little Rock — an event which stained our city’s reputation around the world and a turning point that signaled a long-overdue series of changes that have radically reshaped Boston, for the better. From those dark days of desegregation, when the school buses were hit with bricks and when the Black children on them were greeted with angry jeers and racial slurs from a threatening mob on the schoolhouse steps, 50 years later Boston has emerged as a different place and a different city – more tolerant, more diverse and more embracing of change."