WPLN News Archive; News Archive 8/23/01-10/23/01; 10 Busing 30 Years Later Part 1 (Dana Pride) 10 15

three years after the nineteen fifty four supreme court ruling in brown vs topeka board of education national initiated a plan to integrated schools one greater year until then black and white children in nashville had always attended separate schools with black children often bust long distances to do that nashville's one great year plan was hailed as a model in the south but it never worked a decade later almost half the system schools had only token desegregation if any at all in nineteen seventy a federal judge ordered school officials to redraw zone lines and reassigned students to create a unitary nonracial school system when schools opened in september of nineteen seventy one under a court ordered busing plan there was fear or confusion and continued resistance my superintendent had carson me that i might have real trouble that day because we were starting price than blessing i went askew really a little tempo because i didn't know what was going to happen any sue harvey was principal of paragon meals elementary school when she arrived she found picketers crossing

the driveway where her a person's were to arise but then those people were marching back and go back in poland bought shipping do nothing serious happens that day but i'll never forget i got in from an orphanage i just said to know that if they will fall from home and i had to take care of him while they were with me you know the voice of former metro council and he's teaching has echoed through the grandstand at a fairground speedway in nashville more than fourteen thousand people were there to protest the school busing that had begun that morning jenkins who was orchestrating a picket and boycott movement was the lightning rod for white parents who

feared black children black neighborhoods and black culture despite jenkins rhetoric schools open to successfully though not without trouble carlile beasley with the director of transportation who suddenly had fourteen thousand additional students to transport with his fleet of buses don't think it's really didn't bother us a real problem where there were numerous nails attacks around in the driveway and then work we have over a hundred less powerful buses offer a few days of sue school buses were kept in for compounds guarded by off duty metro police officers trying to prevent what happened in pontiac michigan that's where some fifty buses had been bombed prior to that city's school opening no buses were blown up in nashville your were armed guards needed to ride the buses as in boston the first place to one of the greatest problems we encountered was rocks in fact we had an instructor drivers was very hot it was right after labor day to leave the windows from paris

ross it took nearly a month for the picketing rock throwing and protests to subside busing opponents realized they couldn't stop what was happening so they pulled their children out of the city school system the so called white flight began in earnest jane hill former principal of palmer elementary near belle me on one man who came in he was a minister of a little girl with him and she's dated maybe today or three days and this minister of a personable my aunt came back and he said i'm leaving my child to a private school but he said i'm going to pray for me and while i'm always standing in the made prior i wanted so to say that's fran and well and good but put your foot to surprise you wear your prayers are stay with us in this thing and help us get it done but many did not nearly ten thousand of the ninety three thousand students expected that year did not enroll including marty taylor son i just did not want to invest into a black neighborhood

on even know where warden was and it was just the defining i didn't like the idea of how in the neighborhood that we all everybody was just not willing to accept their prior to the nineteen fifty four supreme court decision national hit sixteen private and parochial schools today it has forty seven including a team founded by local protestant churches since the mid nineteen sixties often called sigg academies in those days they absorb a good portion of the students who fled from across schools but an even greater number of families move to neighboring counties communities such as brett wood in hendersonville blossomed in the years of white flight it was the beginning of a movement that would significantly alter nashville's educational landscape for national public radio i'm tana pride