Boston Busing Crisis

I agree that, in the long run, busing helped Boston because it desegregated the school system, providing equal educational opportunity for minority students, and set the stage for racial healing and an improved racial climate in the twenty-first century.

Regarding school desegregation, a ruling of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in 1987 found that school desegregation had been successful. they based this decision on three factors: that the number of single-race schools had decreased; that good faith had been exercised in the attempts by the School Board to desegregate; and that desegregation had been implemented to the greatest extent possible. On the third point, the court remarked, "Little in the record […] suggests that implementation beyond what presently exists is likely to be obtained." On the basis of the court's observation, we can conclude that desegregation was successful.

The second point is dependent on the first; i.e., successful school desegregation by its very nature guarantees that there will be equal educational opportunity for minority students. While metrics for equal opportunity are difficult to quantify, two statistics offered in the textbook provide some substantiation. First, the dropout rate among Boston high school students decreased to below the national average; second, the college graduation rate among alumni of Boston high schools tripled over the same period. These data provide sound proof of an improved educational situation. If the lack of segregation can be considered proof of equal opportunity, then opportunity not only was extended but actually improved.[1]

Finally, racial healing and an improved racial climate did in fact emerge after school desegregation in Boston. Here, the political career of Mayor Ray Flynn is instructive. As noted in the text, Flynn was able to secure a successful citizen referendum on replacement of the elected school board, which had been the locus of resistance to desegregation during the busing crisis. That voters would approve such a measure is indicative that the worst of bad feelings had passed. Although there are occasional outbursts of racism as there sadly are in most areas of the United States, these incidents are less common, and racial violence has virtually disappeared.

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     [1] Morgan v. Nucci, 831 F.2d 313 (1st Cir. 1987), accessed February 6, 2017, http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/831/313/398470/

The King Assassination and Black Nationalism Ascendant

The effect of the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the civil rights movement was profound because Dr. King was the most visible and most politically "acceptable" of the leaders of the movement to white Americans. There were a variety of consequences to his assassination, which were both immediate and more remote. For instance, in the immediate aftermath of Dr. King's assassination, there were riots in the inner cities across the country, as simmering anger at continuing conditions of racial oppression exploded in rage at the assassination. President Lyndon Johnson mobilized the National Guard the day after the assassination and largely suppressed further rioting, although sporadic violence continued into the following month.

A more remote effect was a shift in the tactics of the remaining leaders in the civil rights movement. Although Dr. King's widow Coretta Scott King and his closest associates urged a non-violent response to the assassination, younger leaders in the movement saw in King's murder the end of civil disobedience and the beginning of armed struggle. The ascendance of the Black Panther Party, which had existed before King's assassination, into a leading role in the struggle for black liberation is a clear effect of the assassination, and the willingness of the Black Panthers to use violence in self-defense arguably caused a dramatic shift in the civil rights movement from that point forward.

Although it is unclear whether there would have been this evolution in the civil rights movement without Dr. King's murder, it is fairly clear that it would have happened more slowly, if at all. As noted, the Black Panthers were already in operation in 1968, and they had been preceded by more militant and separatist organizations willing to use violence, including the Nation of Islam. King himself had warned in his "Letter From Birmingham Jail" in 1964 that the failure of white Americans to embrace a moderate such as himself might result in the ascent of black radicals and nationalists, and he mentioned the Nation of Islam specifically in this context.

Moreover, it is often forgotten that Dr. King was assassinated the night before he intended to support striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. It is therefore often forgotten that the civil rights movement under King's leadership might have moved in a direction of social justice more aligned with a struggle for economic justice. Although this theme was always present in Dr. King's work and in his rhetoric, it is possible that the movement-wing tack after April 1968. Although many in the more militant black nationalist movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s embraced Marxism, they failed to achieve recognition among the older generation of activists who rejected violence even in self-defense.

Finally, I would argue that the rejection of non-violence by the civil rights movement following Dr. King's assassination was a necessary factor in its ultimate successes. Although most of the work had been done in securing voting rights for Southern African-American voters by the time of King's murder, and the Fair Housing Act was signed by President Johnson merely a week after the former's death, the issues of police brutality in the inner cities across the country and particularly in Los Angeles might have remained issues unknown to many Americans without the visible responses of the Black Panthers. Although these are issues that obviously still pertain to the African-American experience in the United States to some extent, the days of military-style assault on black neighborhoods by police are largely a thing of the past, thanks in no small part to the armed resistance of the Black Panthers.

Class as a Factor in Feminist Leadership

The selection from the text that I've chosen to discuss is the following:

The situation was exacerbated, according to Lisa Tetrault, because women could earn a living through the lyceum lecture circuit in the 1870s - 1880s, a popular form of entertainment and adult education featuring traveling lecturers and performers. They came to expect similar payment, typically between $10 and $100 per lecture, for an appearance at a suffrage meeting. Suffrage organizations thus had to compete with the lecture circuit when they paid speakers appearing at meetings or at their annual conventions at the state or national level.[1]

I chose this excerpt to establish the cause and effect, respectively, between the professional lecture circuit of the early 20th century and the increased influence of money on the politics of the women's movement. Although the first impression of the thesis of this article might be that money affected the culture of the women's movement, this passage demonstrates that the relationship ran in both directions. Because women could earn money as lecturers, they expected that, regardless of the cause for which they might be speaking, they would be paid to speak at suffragist meetings. As a result, the infusion of larger amounts of money became necessary to stage these lectures, which were themselves integral to convincing people of the righteousness of the cause.

Beyond this point, the article does not really clarify the economic hardships of women campaigning for suffrage. Rather, the article focuses almost entirely on wealthy women and the impact they had on the movement. The one place in the article I could find that discusses women who were not wealthy was the following: "Similarly, women began to give large amounts to make change for women in society, not simply to assist poor women but rather to broaden women’s educational opportunities, as well as political and reproductive rights."[2]

Money, it seems, was a major factor in identifying targets, devising strategies, and even locating political offices. Class, it turns out, was a major factor. On second thought, however, perhaps this fact is not very surprising. Lenin said that revolutionary parties could only be successful under the leadership of party vanguards of professional revolutionaries of bourgeois background – himself a chief example. Revolutionary as the women's movement was for its time, perhaps we ought not be surprised that this observation of Lenin's held in this case.

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     [1] Joan Marie Johnson, "Following the Money: Wealthy Women, Feminism, and the American Suffrage Movement," Journal of Women's History, 27, no. 4 (Winter 2015): 65-66.
     [2] Ibid, 64.