Susan E. Eaton, in conversation about her book, The Other Boston Busing Story: What’s Won and Lost Across the Boundary Line.
METCO, America’s longest-running voluntary school desegregation program, buses children of color from Boston’s city neighborhoods to predominantly white suburban schools. In contrast to the infamous violence and rage that greeted forced school busing within the city in the 1970s, the work of METCO has quietly and calmly promoted school integration. But how has this program affected the lives of its graduates? Would they choose to participate if they had it to do over again? Would they place their own children on the bus to suburbia? In The Other Boston Busing Story, sixty-five METCO graduates who are now adults answer those questions and more, vividly recalling their own stories and assessing the benefits and hardships of crossing racial and class lines on their way to school.
Susan Eaton will be in conversation with Stephanie Leydon, executive producer of digital video at GBH News.
The book talk will be preceded by the screening of the GBH News documentary Never Cried: Boston's Busing Legacy and a talkback with the filmmaker Emily Judem.
More about the film here.
