PBS spotlights ‘The Busing Battleground’ in Boston

On Sept. 12, 1974, Boston stepped into the nation’s spotlight when Black and white students were, for the first time, bused between neighborhoods as ordered by a federal desegregation court.

As “The Busing Battleground,” a 2-part, 2-hour documentary airing Monday on “American Experience” on PBS (GBH) vividly recounts, the intense and violent reaction saw protestors heaving rocks and epithets and children unfortunate targets.

Directed by screenwriter Sharon Grimberg and Cyndee Readdean, “Busing” illuminates how Boston’s school integration issues went back decades.

It begins on national TV in August 1963 as President John F. Kennedy declared civil rights a moral issue and being Black meant you were never given an equal chance. For decades, the all-white Boston school committee never made an effort to upgrade segregated Black schools. That court order was a last resort.

“It’s a very resonant coincidence that there was that school meeting and JFK on television at the very same moment,” Grimberg said in an interview. “It is a great framing moment for the film because it sets the school committee, which I think is one of the villains of the story, up against this vision that Jack Kennedy has, urging the country to do better.

“And the school committee refuses to do that. It really deliberately refuses to do that and at every opportunity turns against the right path towards equality and justice for Black children.

“It’s definitely a depressing story,” she acknowledged. “What gave me a little hope is that we gave a lot of attention to listening to everybody. I’m trying to tell the story from many viewpoints, many different communities. My hope is that people with half-a-century distance will be able to talk about it in a better way.”

Early screenings – in Provincetown and at the NAACP conference in Boston – generated positive reactions.  “A woman from South Boston said she had had a huge amount of resentment and anger for what happened. ‘But,’ she said, ‘I knew the judge had ordered this desegregation order. I had no idea about the 20 years of civil rights struggle before that. I just didn’t have an appreciation of that.’

“At the NAACP conference, a woman who’s now in her 60s and was bused to Charlestown in fourth and fifth grade and was traumatized by that, said that she had never had any empathy for that white community. Then, watching the film, she understood a little bit more about what made people so angry.

“My hope is that as we hear at the end of the film, ‘If we just slow down, all of us and step back, take a deep breath and listen, maybe things would be different.’

“That’s an optimistic view maybe. But I hope this will allow for conversations.”

“American Experience: “The Busing Battleground” airs Monday at 9 p.m. on GBH

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/kDf6Vcj