Were you part of busing in Boston? Tell us your story.

It has been 50 years since the Boston Public Schools desegregation busing order on June 21, 2024. On that day, Federal Judge W. Arthur Garrity ruled in Morgan v. Hennigan that the Boston School Committee had been intentionally segregating public schools and ordered busing to desegregate the district. The order required busing students to schools across the city to more evenly distribute racial diversity. 

The federal order was meant to integrate the district, and the Black families who filed the lawsuit had hoped integration would produce better and more equitable outcomes for their children. But that hope was never realized – not then, and not now. 

In a sweeping, multi-part series, “Broken Promises, Unfulfilled Hope,” The Boston Globe explored the legacy of Boston’s busing era and found little has changed since the 1974 court order. For all of its effort to desegregate, Boston’s public schools remain intensely segregated today and the academic outcomes of the students they serve are staggeringly unequal. 

“Boston’s children, especially its most disadvantaged, bear the consequences of that history of failure. It is the biggest broken promise in the city’s modern history,” Globe reporters wrote.

Beginning even before the first day of school on Sept. 12, 1974 under the busing court order, and continuing for two years after, a series of racial protests and riots engulfed the city. The violence even brought national attention to the issue. From September 1974 through the fall of 1976, at least 40 riots occurred in the city.

Stones and racial slurs were hurled at buses carrying Black children into white neighborhoods. Fights broke out between students and the police were an ongoing presence at schools for years to quell or interrupt the violence.

As we enter the start of the school year – 50 years since the first day of school under the busing desegregation court order in September of 1974 – we want to hear from students, families, and others involved in busing. 

If you were a student who was bused, tell us what it was like going to school. How did busing impact you or your loved ones? What can we learn from Boston’s busing history?

If you’d like to share with us, please fill out the form below or e-mail us at [email protected]. We will not publish any part of your submission without contacting you first. We may use your contact information to follow up with you.