Fifty years ago, furious Black parents set forth a motion making modest demands: equal educational opportunity for their children and good schools in their own neighborhoods. It never happened. When they sued Boston Public Schools for a better education for Black children, they got busing instead.
Kris Hooks, editor of the Money, Power, Inequality team and Melissa Taboada, editor of the Great Divide education team, joined Boston Globe Today host Segun Oduolowu with an overview of “Broken Promises, Unfulfilled Hope” a project exploring the legacy of Boston’s busing era.
“We reached out to the original plaintiffs, many of whom had never spoken publicly about their stories about why they joined the lawsuit,” Taboada said.
The more than 30 Globe journalists involved in the project also spoke to educators, parents and students from then and now, “who essentially all came with the same ideas that they really just want and desire good schools, good quality schools in their own neighborhood,” Hooks said.
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Watch the story above to learn more about how the series was built, what the stories include, and how families then and now have been impacted by a half-century of this failed experiment.
Find the project and Boston’s busing era captured through photos here.
Boston Globe Today airs Monday through Thursday at 5 p.m. on NESN and is available to stream on-demand at globe.com/bgt.