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THURSDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2022 tuftsdaily.com

half a century since the lawsuit that shook the city: reexamining boston school desegregation

by Sam Berman and David Van Riper

Contributing Writers

“Boston made me feel that I didn’t have a chance, and that’s what racism does to you,” Beverly Crockett-Taylor said as a Black woman who grew up in the Dorchester neighborhood in Boston amid the tumultuous events preceding and during the desegregation of the Boston public school system that began in 1974.

Linda Norton, a white woman who concurrently grew up in the white, working-class part of Dorchester about a mile away from Crockett-Taylor, reflected that at the time “any Black person coming into our neighborhood would be in terrible danger.”

During the 1960s and 1970s, Boston was a de facto racially segregated city, as was reflected in the demographics of the city’s public school system, according to Steve Cohen, senior lecturer in Tufts’ Department of Education.

“So [to] make a long story short, from ’65 to ’72, the number of racially imbalanced schools in Boston went up. Because they didn’t do anything about it. In fact, they did less than nothing about it,” Cohen said. “By 1972, there were over 60 racially imbalanced schools just in Boston.”

To combat such injustice, civil rights lawyers with the NAACP filed a class-action lawsuit in 1972, known as Morgan v. Hennigan, against the Boston School Committee, in which Beverly Crockett-Taylor and her family members were listed as plaintiffs. The lawsuit resulted in Judge Wendell Garrity’s landmark 1974 decision to order the integration of Boston public schools, which precipitated bitter racial conflict that would become known nationally as “Boston’s busing crisis.”

With this context in mind, Cohen elaborated on the racial tension that had existed in Boston, even prior to the 1974 decision.

“It’s not as if the judge made the decision in ’74, and then suddenly, there was racial animus. Many of the white families sort of saw it that way because they never thought about what Black kids were going through in those schools,” Cohen said. “Boston was also a very turf bound, neighborhood city. So kids from Southie, [for example], didn’t go to Charlestown. … They stayed where they were, for the most part.”

With the beginning of desegregation busing and the 1974 school year came an onslaught of heightened retaliatory violence from the white, primarily working-class demographic of Boston. Images of the violence were broadcast nationally, Cohen added, which sensationalized the issue, without contributing much to the situation on the ground.

“Because we were trying to overthrow a system that has been intact for over 100 years of unfairness based on race. so you don’t change things overnight,” Cohen said. “And I think what media often did by looking at particular spokesmen [was] to inflame situations by getting people who make good TV. … But it [was] often not very helpful to understand the issues, at least in the complexity they deserve. I mean, there’s a reason that virtually all urban school districts have troubles.”

Out of the coverage came the prevailing title, “busing crisis,” which caught the nation’s attention, Norton explained.

“[At the time] people my age who saw the popular media, there were only three channels … so everybody saw the same stuff. People my age and older … if you say ‘Boston busing,’ the images are right there [in their mind],” Norton said.

But what was the educational impact of desegregation on the Bostonian students, particularly on Black students? On the one hand, Black students were given the opportunity to attend more well-funded schools than they had previously. Some of those educational benefits, however, were undercut by the ever-present conflicts.

Crockett-Taylor shared her family’s difficult experiences.

“I think for my siblings, it was incredibly painful, because they were older, and they had gone through the violence in the [bus] riding. And I have a brother who just left town as soon as he graduated. He wanted out of Boston and has never returned to live there,” Crockett-Taylor said. “I did the same. … My scars were so deep and the wounds still felt fresh after high school, and I left and moved to Washington D.C. and never returned.”

On top of the violence many Black students experienced, Cohen cited many problems with the city’s public school system. He explained that the poor quality of even the formerly majority-white schools limited the positive effects of integration on the ground.

“At the end of the bus line … whether it was a school that was formally all Black, or a school that was formerly all white, they mostly were not good schools,” Cohen said.

The lack of a substantive, concerted effort by municipal leaders to make the desegregation effective along with the poor quality of Boston’s public schools led to an interrelated array of educational problems and racial tension.

Despite the integration’s challenges and issues, CrockettTaylor expressed that for her, the desegregation did have significant benefits in her life. She went to an integrated magnet high school in Dorchester called Madison Park, which was announced in 1966, but Crockett-Taylor believes would never have existed if not for the tide of desegregation that took root during the 1960s.

Crockett-Taylor recounted the benefits of Boston’s public school desegregation efforts, despite its limitations.

“I [had] never had a conversation with a white person until high school. I had interactions such as ‘I’d like to buy that item, could I see it please?’ in a store. But that was the extent of my interaction with the white community,” she said. “So when I got to high school at Madison Park, my first conversation was with a young, [white] man, and he was in my media class, and … it opened [up] a lot of doors just to be able to pass that threshold of having a conversation to having a friendship to staying connected.”

In addition, Crockett-Taylor shared an anecdote to illustrate other social benefits of the desegregation that she perceived in Boston.

“About four years after I left Boston … I did return, and I was walking down the street with a niece. And I saw a Black man holding hands with a white woman on the Commons, and I got really afraid. I said to my niece, ‘Oh my God, that’s dangerous, he shouldn’t hold her hand.’ … I was fearful of violence. And my niece said to me, ‘It’s okay Beverly, things are different now. That’s okay now,’” Crockett-Taylor said. “The city grew, it healed, it changed, because one aspect of the city changed, and that was the schools and it started to have a reverberating effect in other institutions and other social norms. … Boston’s not perfect but things [have] changed.”

As for making a decisive judgment on the success of the integration, though, Cohen noted that current evidence is insufficient in his view.

“[It is] too early to tell. … There hasn’t been desegregation. I mean, let’s put it that way,” Cohen said. “Desegregation is a dream that we have not tested yet.”

As Cohen suggested, while it is easy to think of segregation in Boston as a thing of the past, the city remains racially divided to this day, as one of the most racially segregated cities in the nation, according to a report by the Othering and Belonging Institute at University of California, Berkeley. There is still a long way to go to achieve racial equity in Boston’s educational system, Cohen explained.

In light of the 1974 decision, Natasha Warikoo, professor of sociology at Tufts, also added that busing was not a complete solution in her view.

“I think maybe at the time of busing … we had this idea that if we just do this, then everything will be great, without also recognizing what gets lost when kids of color move from predominantly minority spaces to integrated spaces in which they’re no longer part of the majority,” Warikoo said.

On such a view, busing was merely one component of a multitude of requisites for the quality education of Black and all Bostonian students. Today, we need a more well-rounded approach, Warikoo explained, emphasizing a wide range of factors that contribute to a strong academic environment for all.

“We need to think about … educational opportunity more holistically … educational opportunities, health care, all of these things shape children’s access to quality and ability to make use of quality education,” Warikoo said.

Echoing Warikoo’s sentiment, Cohen called for a more nuanced and comprehensive approach to the issue, going forward.

“I think it’s our failure as society to recognize complexity,” Cohen said. “When they say the ‘busing,’ it’s almost always negative, as if it was [about] the bus. … There were Black kids in Boston … who carried signs saying, ‘It’s not the bus, it’s us.’ The bus became a symbol that came out of shorthand, but it wasn’t about how the kids got to school.”

To challenge the narrative around the public school desegregation efforts, Cohen elaborated on what, in his view, can and should be done in the United States.

“We’ve never done a really good job with poor kids, ever. … And it’s not going to be, I suspect, a single curriculum. … It is not going to be a particular pedagogy. You need teachers, parents, kids, administrators working together to make schools places that really work,” Cohen said. “What’s astounding to me is how many U.S. schools work so well. But they’re almost always in places with resources. That should tell us something.”

Crockett-Taylor emphasized that investment in schools, grounded in principles of equity and fairness, can be life-changing for many students.

“When people invest in you, you feel worthy of the investment. When your surroundings are not up to par, and you’re in a place where everything’s broken and raggedy and underfunded, you feel that, and you begin to see yourself that way. Investing in people makes them feel that they are worthy,” she said. “The impact of changing these negative racial institutions is [that] you can start to chip away and make a real difference in a person’s life by recognizing that they deserve to get everything they’re getting.”

Now, half a century since the NAACP filed the lawsuit that would forever change Boston, there is much to take away from the complex, layered story of the city’s school integration. Within that intricacy, the story fosters an understanding that so many students like the young Crockett-Taylor were not concurrently “invested in” across the southern and northern United States, and still are not today.

COURTESY BEVERLY CROCKETT-TAYLOR

Beverly Crockett-Taylor’s 1976 integrated junior high school class is pictured.

by Jillian Collins

Features Editor

In 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the interstate highway system into existence — forever changing the country’s built environment and social infrastructure. Wealthy white families could now live in suburbs and commute to cities. While highways bridged suburbs and cities, they built straight through urban communities of color.

Garrett Dash Nelson, president and head curator at the Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library, explained the role highways played in forming this racial divide.

“The introduction of highways into U.S cities allowed white affluent communities to flee the historic industrial centers of cities, leaving behind oftentimes a Black and Brown population stuck in challenging circumstances,” Nelson said.

Air pollution, congested automobile traffic and unattractive aesthetics can make highways unpleasant to live near. Nelson explained that these negative externalities are often forced upon marginalized neighborhoods through urban planning.

“The cities that felt that they needed to accommodate themselves to highways did so oftentimes by placing highways in some of the most vulnerable parts of town,” Nelson said. “Those were the areas where it was relatively cheap to seize land … that had pretty little political power [and] pretty little ability to say no to the people in power.”

According to the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, less than 30% of white residents in the Greater Boston region live in areas with the top 20% of air pollution intensity. At the same time, these severely polluted areas are home to 45% of Black and Asian residents and over 50% of Latino residents. These inequitable outcomes were caused by many decision-makers in U.S politics.

“It was made by governments, it was made by industries [and] it was made to some extent by ordinary people to really reorganize the nation’s geography along automobile travel,” Nelson said.

As a city, Boston has been both a catalyst and an inhibitor in the development of highways.

Massachusetts Turnpike (I-90) and Interstate 93 (I-93) run directly through the city. There is a deep history of environmental justice activism against highway expansion projects in order to prevent future destructive impacts on communities of color.

“Boston actually historically has been a leader in this, both the famous story of the campaign against the Southwest Corridor [and] the Southwest Expressway, which [were] planning to run essentially through Roxbury, Jamaica Plain and eventually Cambridge, which was stopped by the early 1970s,” Nelson said.

Chinatown is in an area of Boston that has been extremely affected by highway development; it is also a majority Asian and lower-income population. Penn Loh, a senior lecturer in the Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts and previous executive director at Alternatives for Community & Environment, discussed the grassroots organization in Chinatown that occurred in response to the development of the Central Artery, a section of highway in downtown Boston.

“Chinatown itself is a neighborhood that had been basically cut in half by the Mass Pike and I-93. So both those highways built in the ’50s and ’60s took away land from Chinatown,” Loh said.

The City of Boston began planning in the 1980s for the Central Artery or “The Big Dig” — a three-decades-long project that totaled to be the most expensive public works project ever completed in the United States. The project involved undergrounding Interstate 93 in tunnels through downtown Boston. According to Loh, Chinatown had to continually fight for its urban space during this project.

“When the Big Dig was still being built, one of the planned proposals was to build an offramp from the Big Dig into Chinatown,” Loh said. “The reason for that was the hotels in the convention center in the Back Bay wanted a way for people to get off the Central Artery and make it over to their area.”

Chinatown was already suffering from harsh environmental and traffic conditions from other major roadways to the point where it was a safety concern. The proposed ramp into the Chinatown neighborhood would have exacerbated its existing issues and cause more displacement of communities of color. In protest of the ramp, a coalition was formed.

“The groups in Chinatown … had already identified pedestrian safety as one of the big issues,” Loh said. “It’s a public health issue, it’s an environmental [issue], and a built environment issue. So they fought back, and [Alternatives for Community & Environment] joined that coalition.”

Over the next two years, this coalition mobilized and organized people to disrupt the development of the ramp into Chinatown. Many different institutions came together — immigration organizations, the church, the Chinese Historical Society and the Tisch College Community Research Center, Loh explained.

At Tufts, former Professor Doug Brugge organized students in a research project in 2002 to capture the reality of pedestrian safety in Chinatown. Brugge and students looked at accident data from the Boston Police Department to determine the most dangerous intersections in the area. Then they went to those streets with video cameras and filmed them at all times of the day. When analyzing the footage, they discovered that there were many “close calls” of automobile and pedestrian collisions.

“Chinatown was one [where] traffic was bad all day long and all night, and that there were dangerous situations happening virtually 24/7,” Loh said.

Alternatives for Community & Environment also hired a transportation engineer to look into alternative routes for the ramp that would allow those hotels in Back Bay to have access to the new highway.

“[The transportation engineer] spent hours and hours pouring through all these plans [and] came back to the coalition and said, ’You know what, I think there’s another way for them to do what they want to do without going through Chinatown,’” Loh said. “He presented that to the folks at the Central Artery, and their engineering people said, ’Maybe this could work.’”

At the end of the two years, Boston decision-makers did not follow through with the construction of the ramp into Chinatown.

“That, to me, was a really nice example of how community organizing and coalition-building paired up with this kind of technical assistance that really made a difference,” Loh said.

Loh explained the duality of the Big Dig in that it expanded urban green space through the Rose Kennedy Greenway — Boston’s contemporary linear park — but did so at such a high cost to the public. It leaves society to question how public money could have been directed differently.

“Some of the biggest and most expensive developments are right along that Greenway now. They’re the ones that reaped a lot of windfall benefits from that public project,” Loh said. “Ultimately, at the end of the day, there were 15 billion dollars in public money spent on several miles of underground highway.”

The construction of highways has fueled society’s dependence on automobile transportation. In order to decrease the expansion of highways, other transportation solutions need to be discussed. Nelson explained that it is critical that equity plays a role in planning future travel.

“We’re going to have to think about how to prioritize investments in alternative forms of transportation and prioritize those investments in a way that really puts the most exposed communities first,” Nelson said. “I think a good example of what not to do is … the current effort around moving people to electric cars [because it] benefits the most privileged first. Almost all of Massachusetts subsidies for electric vehicles have gone to people living in wealthy suburbs.”

When thinking about alternate forms of transportation, senior environmental engineering student Emika Brown brought up the need for walkability, bikeability and public transportation in Boston. She argued that solutions need to be catered to the unique needs of specific areas of Boston.

“It allows people to have access to important services and reduces this area’s overall carbon footprint,” Brown said.

“Brickbottom [has] really horrible bikeability and walkability, but it’s still in Somerville … [yet] Davis [Square] on the Somerville Community Path has really good walkability,” Brown said. “I’ve learned that it is important to prioritize solutions that are geared toward specific communities in this area.”

Brown also explained that the divide of highways can be very hindering to an area’s walkability which feeds into a good public transportation system.

“It’s a more physical barrier than I think people realize … [It becomes] challenging [just] to cross,” Brown said. “Especially if your community relies on public transportation more than others. That’s really horrible because walking and biking are inherent to public transportation. You can’t have it without that, so if you’re creating a huge divide it almost doesn’t matter if you do have good public transportation.”

Equitable investment in public transportation is one solution to dealing with the harms of highway expansion in Boston, Brown summarized.

Reflecting on the history of highway expansion in Boston, it becomes clear that there needs to be intersectional solutions.

“There’s no way we can think about the environment or environmental questions without also dealing with people and the issues of power, politics, justice and injustice which are intimately connected to how people create their societies,” Nelson said.

Tufts and local community members react to impending davis square renovation project

by Maya Katz

Assistant Features Editor

Originally published Dec. 7.

Due to its close proximity to campus, Davis Square has been a place for many Tufts students to spend time and enjoy a variety of local businesses in the area. But according to recent local news reports, Scape Development plans to construct a four-story lab building that would displace beloved businesses including When Pigs Fly bakery, McKinnon’s Meat Market, Sligo Pub, Kung Fu Tea, Martsa on Elm Tibetan Cuisine and Dragon Pizza. On Sept. 22, the City of Somerville’s Planning Board officially approved the renovation plan.

Justin Hollander, professor of urban and environmental policy and planning, provided the context behind the developing renovation project in Davis Square. He explained that different interest groups and the city government shape and influence real estate projects such as the one by Scape Development.

“There are not only individuals but organizations, pension funds, that are looking to grow their money, and they look at Davis Square,” Hollander said. “The city right now looks at that block and the kind of cash revenue they are generating … so the city sees this as an opportunity to increase their tax base [through the renovation project].”

Hollander added that real estate projects, such as the Scape Development plan, can increase the value of local properties, which the city of Somerville sees as financially beneficial.

“It’s hard for them to raise taxes, and so if you can increase the value of properties [through this new lab building], then you can bring in more revenue without actually passing a bill that says everyone has to pay more taxes,” Hollander said.

Hollander cited that Harvard Square had changed from when he was in college, with the added presence of larger companies. Davis Square, he noted, appears to be undergoing a similar transition in his view.

“When I went to college, the center of Harvard Square was really cool, and there were all these interesting shops and stores at that core center. Now, there’s a bank on every corner of the center of Harvard Square,” Hollander said. “It’s much more of a place where big companies are looking to make investments to try to get solid returns, and so that’s what Davis Square has become.”

While the renovations could change the culture that many Tufts students value in Davis Square, Hollander cited that there are many other commercial centers in the area such as Teele Square and Ball Square.

“I would not shed too many tears,” Hollander said. “I think, it’s, of course, hard for Tufts students that maybe came here because Davis Square is this cool, hip place, but now with the Green line that will eventually come … there are all kinds of other places in this region that are now easily accessible to Tufts students that have the same kinds of independently owned businesses.”

That said, Hollander says that the displacement of these businesses at Davis Square is likely to be permanent in light of nationwide economic trends.

“It’s going to be hard for independent businesses to come back,” Hollander said. “The way that lending works is [that big national corporations] can get lower rates on their loans if they bring in national chains.”

With this renovation project, Hollander noted that homeowners and renters will likely be affected differently by this project as well. Homeowners tend to fare well because these projects often improve the real estate market. However, renters are likely to suffer from the rising prices and might be forced to move, Hollander added.

“For renters, it’s a different story,” Hollander said. “Rents are really high now, and they’re not likely to go down anytime soon, so all of this continued investment — national and international capital — into the neighborhood is making it much harder for renters to be able to stay there.”

Somerville residents Andrea and Carl Axelrod live just a block from Davis Square. They have lived in Somerville for about five years and have enjoyed living in the area.

“We had rented in Cambridge for eight years, and I loved it there. I had never even come out to Somerville and Davis Square,” Andrea Axelrod said. “When we found this place, it was like a whole new world so I have really embraced it and really have enjoyed it, and it’s unique and I would like to have it maintain its uniqueness.”

Carl Axelrod also sees Davis Square as being special because it is easily accessible and has a wide variety of local businesses.

“I think the variety of restaurants … the number of different places to grab a cup of coffee,” Carl Axelrod said. “It’s a neighborhood that is easily walkable.”

Carl Axelrod said he will be disappointed to lose the local businesses with the Scape Development project, and he is concerned about what the years of construction will look like for the businesses being displaced.

“My main concern is with the retail establishments — that even if there’s an effort to bring them back, what’s going to happen in the year or two years of construction?” Carl Axelrod said. “They’ve got to exist in some fashion, they just can’t go out of business for what will be, I’m sure, at least a year and a half to two years. So, I assume Davis Square is going to lose [certain] businesses.”

The Axelrods shared that they appreciate the personal feel of the local businesses in Davis Square and believe they contribute deeply to what makes the area a special place. They will particularly miss the pizza at Dragon Pizza and the baked goods from When Pigs Fly.

“There’s just something very personal, if you can go into stores and sort of see the people that own a place,” Andrea Axelrod said. “My concern is that the uniqueness begins to become not so unique. I mean look at what’s happened in Harvard Square.”

Tufts senior Katya Silverman-Stoloff has been working at Dragon Pizza since July and has enjoyed working at the restaurant. She has found that working there helps remind her of the presence of the surrounding Somerville community.

“I really like the energy, it’s very casual [and] informal and I like my coworkers,” Silverman-Stoloff said. “It’s mostly local people … who just live in the area, and I like being connected to the Somerville community outside of just existing in this Tufts bubble.”

Silverman-Stoloff shared that she has discussed the renovation project with her boss at Dragon Pizza. Her understanding has been that the impacted businesses have known about the future displacement for a few years, but they had not known exactly when it would happen.

“It’s all fairly vague,” she said. “I think my boss doesn’t know that much so it’s hard for him to relay information to us.”

Since there has not been real movement with the project yet, Dragon Pizza has been continuing with business as usual, although they will have to find a new location at some point. Furthermore, despite the future displacement, Silverman-Stoloff said that Dragon Pizza currently plans on expanding into the space next door. The expansion would allow for more seating space for restaurant diners, provide a pick-up space for food delivery apps and function as an event rental space.

“I think [my boss is] eager to expand the business, and so he’s moving forward regardless of the renovation,” SilvermanStoloff said.

Overall, Silverman-Stoloff is concerned that the renovation project will impact the small town feel of Davis Square in the future.

“I do feel sad because it reminds me of something that’s happening in my own town, which is they’re building these big apartment buildings right in the center of these small towns,” Silverman-Stoloff said. “I feel like it loses this feel of small communities.”

Even as the presence of a large lab building could change the feel of Davis Square, Silverman-Stoloff thinks that Tufts students can help preserve the essence of Davis Square and its spirit.

“I think part of what makes Davis Square special is its energy and the existence of young people there and the desire for people to want to keep it very lively and very happening,” she said.

Silverman-Stoloff sees Davis Square as unique because it has the feel of both a bustling center and a small town, and she hopes that this spirit will be preserved in the future.

“[Davis Square] feels very lively and energetic, but at the same time kind of feels like a small town,” Silverman-Stoloff said. “I feel like few towns that I have been to have both of these qualities of feeling like there’s a lot happening, but also it feels very local and small [and] community-focused.”

Stores located along Elm Street in Davis Square are pictured on Nov. 12.

ELIN SHIH / THE TUFTS DAILY