Busing in Detroit - historical question - how did it not happen in Detroit? (Livonia: crime, neighborhoods)

[RJ17015]

We've recently moved to the south, and I was posed with the question about the segregation in Detroit and suburbs - and how we were not forced to bus for integration the way the south was.

I have to admit I was young at the time - and remember hearing about busing, but don't recall it ever going into effect. Why it was never put in place in Detroit and the suburbs.

I'm not looking for a fight or bashing - this isn't a racial thing for me - I'm just really curious why busing was not enforced in MI - while it was in the southern states?

Again - I don't want any white or black bashing - I'm just looking for information about history.

TIA

[maja]

It DID happen!!!

[RJ17015]

OOPS - I'm bad.

I certainly don't remember any busing when we were growing up. As an adult we lived in Livonia & Northville, and never heard to kids being bused into the district - so where did this take place?

I guess this all stems from a conversation - the south is much more integrated, while Detroit and suburbs are much more segregated - so the question was posed to us Michiganders about busing, and how did that not integrate the city and suburbs.

[enigmaingr]

The purpose of busing was to integrate schools within a district, not to integrate suburbs. Busing did occur up here as it did down south. Most often, districts accomplished integration by gerrymandering district boundary lines. For example, a new line would be drawn through the middle of a traditionally black area, causing some students to be in a different school's attendance area.

The goal was never to bus students from a city into the suburbs or vice versa. In more rural areas, students may have been bussed over town/village/city lines but that would only be the case where the actual school district was composed of multiple entities.

In addition, one of the things that would make your Detroit experience different from many of your southern neighbors is that at the same time of integration, white flight was occurring. The result was that one of the two groups that were supposed to be integrated left.

[RJ17015]

I could be wrong, but I thought in the 1970's there was talk about busing kids from the suburbs to Detroit and vice versa - because I remember my parents discussing it - we lived in Wayne/Westland area. Now it may have only been talk -and I was young - so my memory may not serve me.

I must have misunderstood what was actually happening at the time.

I found this old article - my memory isn't that bad (yet).

There were plans to bus between the suburbs and Detroit in the 1970's.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...6894-4,00.html

[LeavinMI709]

I remember the busing issue also. I was around 12. It was a heated discussion in my household too. But growing up in Northville, the busing issue was far away to me, and I think that is what happened to busing in the Detroit area. there was just to many kids needing to be bus to far for it to be reasonable. After the riots, the composition if Detroit was changing making it impractical to bus.

[jzcrandall]

RJ,

What you need to understand is there is a difference between schools in the Metro Detroit Area and Southern Schools. Each county in Michigan is heavily cut up into different school districts. I grew up in St Clair Shores where we had the Lake Shore, Lakeview, and South Lake districts. On top of that, when I was growing up there was no cultural diversity in the district, so it's not like we had to bus in students from Rogers Elementary to make Violet Elementary more diverse.

Now I am living in Richmond, Virginia, where busing was at one time an issue. After schools in the City of Richmond desegregated in 1970, you still had schools that were all white and all black since neighborhoods were already segregated.

[ckhthankgod]

Here's a good site to check out: the state of public school integration

It shows cases that dealt with integration of the schools across the country. Some major cities didn't need forced busing because some dealt with it internally. For instance, the city I live in didn't have a court case in regards to integration.

Here's the example for Detroit Public Schools: http://www.s4.brown.edu/schoolsegreg.../schoolseg.asp

and for the Detroit Metro area: http://www.s4.brown.edu/schoolsegreg.../msaschseg.asp

[paulmcall]

This was another reason for white flight from Detroit. When this was raised, many families put their kids in private schools or just plain moved out of the city.
After the riots, block busting, crime and plain fear drove out the rest.

[ckhthankgod]

Originally Posted by paulmcall

This was another reason for white flight from Detroit. When this was raised, many families put their kids in private schools or just plain moved out of the city.
After the riots, block busting, crime and plain fear drove out the rest.

Except for SW Detroit and the upscale neighborhoods in the city. Chadsey, Western International and Southwestern High Schools still have decent amounts of White students. Renaissance and Cass Tech are still about 2% White. Besides that, I think there are sprinkles of White students in Detroit public high schools.