Bogie, Bradley and Busing

The Story of Pinellas County School Integration

By James A. Schnur

Pinellas County Schools

Fifty years ago, Gulfport residents paid close attention to a lawsuit in Tampa’s federal courthouse. Judge Joseph Lieb spent over five years deciding Bradley v. Board of Public Instruction of Pinellas County as Black families battled the school board to desegregate schools.

Boca Ciega High experienced some desegregation by 1971, but a U.S. Supreme Court decision involving schools in North Carolina changed the tone and approach this process would take, both in Florida and elsewhere in the country. The same school buses once provided to send children to segregated schools would now help integrate schools

Anger followed. In Pinellas, “Parents Against Forced Busing” formed to protest the decision. A former Florida governor became its spokesperson and tried to amend the U.S. Constitution to prevent “forced busing.” The chair of the school district encouraged parents to keep their children out of school.

For the next nine weeks, we will remember how the controversy over school busing affected Gulfport and Pinellas County. We’ll start by commemorating a brief period in the mid-1880s when a one-room schoolhouse in South Pinellas became the first and only integrated school for more than 70 years. We will learn about the Brown and Bradley decisions that transformed Boca Ciega and other Pinellas schools.

James A. Schnur graduated from Boca Ciega High as a member of the inaugural class that experienced Pinellas school desegregation from first through twelfth grades. To comply with court-ordered busing, he rode the bus for four of those years. He’s written five books about Pinellas communities and has also lectured and published about Florida and Florida education history.

10 theGabber.com | June 24, 2021 - June 30, 2021