In 1964, Bostonians attempted to desegregate schools in city's 'true civil rights movement'

In 1964, Wendell Arthur Garrity was the United States’ attorney for the District of Massachusetts, not yet a judge on the District Court of Massachusetts. Ruth Batson was a frustrated parent and civil rights activist, not yet director of Boston’s Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity, or METCO, the voluntary desegregation program. And Louise Day Hicks was a member of Boston’s School Board, not yet the leader of ROAR: Restore Our Alienated Rights or the face of white opposition to the integration of Boston Public Schools.

Ten years later, they would all be major players in the battle to desegregate Boston Public Schools.

The 1960s activism from Black parents and community organizers is often overshadowed by two major court cases that sandwich it in history: Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and the 1974 Garrity decision. But Dr. Zebulon Miletsky, associate professor of Africana studies at Stony Brook University and author of “Beyond Busing: A History of Boston’s Long Black Freedom Struggle,” says this was the decade Boston had its own civil rights movement.

“Jim Crow and segregation actually don’t have their origins in the South,” Miletsky said. “They actually have origins in the North, and specifically in Boston, due to some of the earlier cases around school desegregation actually going back to the 19th century.”

Miletsky said the issue of failing schools for marginalized communities in Boston started with Irish immigration.

“[The Irish] claimed that they were punished more often, maybe more suspensions, the dunce cap, those kinds of things,” he said. “The ruling class — who had a Protestant background, generally speaking, not Catholic — they let the schools kind of be neglected in the late 19th century. That’s why some of the schools that African American kids end up going to in the ’50s and ’60s are those buildings that had not been updated since the 19th century.”

But the schools’ infrastructures weren’t the only concerns for parents. Some textbooks included stereotypical falsehoods about the Black community and other marginalized groups, and racist books were often included in the curriculum, Miletsky said. Plus, many parents felt like their children weren’t challenged in school or were neglected by the education system.

All of this is what spurred parents like Ruth Batson to become outspoken activists alongside grassroots organizers, community leaders, civil rights activists and religious officials. And in 1964, as a mass protest, Black students walked out of Boston schools.

“You had about 10,000 students who walked out, marched out singing freedom songs, reporting to their ‘freedom schools’ where they’re learning Black history lessons. They’re talking about the Southern [civil rights] movement, critical lessons about how to build a better society, a more equitable society. And boy, that got people’s attention,” he said. “This was reported on nationally — that there was a strong Black educational movement in Boston.”

Miletsky said that although the 1974 Garrity decision and the busing that occurred afterward is often viewed as a dark stain on Boston’s history, he thinks that is a mischaracterization. Instead, he wants to reframe the decades leading up to the 1974 decision as a more precise, thoughtful wave of civil rights activism.

“This was not some random collection of things, people who are just complaining,” he said. “This is a carefully calibrated movement that was staring down that kind of hatred and commitment to a white sort of sense of things — if you want to call it white supremacy — that needed to really be challenged and was against the Constitution and really un-American in a lot of ways.”

Guest:

• Dr. Zebulon Miletsky, associate professor of Africana studies at Stony Brook University and author of “Beyond Busing: A History of Boston’s Long Black Freedom Struggle.”