The Ford Hall Forum at Suffolk University will host a powerful program on November 7 at the Modern Theatre examining the complex legacy of the court-ordered desegregation of Boston’s public schools 50 years ago.
“Children on the Move: The History of Stark Solutions to Address Inequality in Boston Schools” will feature a screening of the GBH News documentary Never Cried: Boston’s Busing Legacy.
Produced by GBH News’ Emily Judem and Stephanie Leydon, the documentary tells the story of two sisters, Leola Hampton and Linda Stark, who were bused starting in 1974 from their home in the predominantly Black neighborhood of Roxbury into the white neighborhood of South Boston. They recount a violent and virulently racist high school experience so scarring that a half-century later, they are only now beginning to discuss it with each other.
Following the screening will be a book talk with Brandeis Professor Susan E. Eaton, author of The Other Boston Busing Story: What’s Won and Lost Across the Boundary Line. Eaton’s book examines the history of METCO, America’s longest-running voluntary school desegregation program, which buses Black children from Boston’s city neighborhoods to predominantly white suburban schools.
In contrast to the infamous rage and opposition that greeted forced school busing within the city in the 1970s, the METCO program quietly and calmly promoted school integration on a local scale. The book examines how the program affected the lives of its graduates, and asks participants if they would choose to do it over again or place their own children on the bus to suburbia. Eaton’s book interviews 65 METCO graduates who vividly recall their own stories and chronicles the benefits and hardships of crossing racial and class lines during each school day.
The program is co-sponsored by Brandeis University Press, the Boston Desegregation and Busing Initiative, and GBH Forum Network. It is free and open to the public.
“Children on the Move: The History of Stark Solutions to Address Inequality in Boston Schools” at 6 p.m. on November 7 at the Modern Theatre, 525 Washington Street.