WPLN News Archive; News Archive 8/23/01-10/23/01; 11 Busing 30 Years Later Part 2 (Dana Pride) 10 16

thirty years ago court ordered busing began in nashville amid protests rallies an anti busing rhetoric black children are bused to suburban schools for grades one through four were white children went to black neighborhoods for grades five and six great seven through twelve were placed equal distant from black and white neighborhoods all schools were supposed to reflect the racial mix of the larger community seventy five percent white and twenty five percent black it was a dramatic change for most nashville students who until then had always attended school with others like themselves change often brings fear this carrying this was not because of any political things are happening it was a seventh grader riding a bus for the first time going all the way across town which i've never been that far away from home that without the parents and so that was an experience of just being scared of a new situation that's catherine who would always walk to school in her all white neighborhood but was suddenly assigned to a school in a predominately black neighborhood but black students were anxious too during carter mcdonald remembers waiting in the dark and her bus stop in north nashville that first day hitting to a white neighborhood far from her own i

was afraid i was very insecure i'm sure i did know someone was going to hurt us i mean you just never know when you venture out of your own circle and your key it was going to happen to you for most students it was a fear of the unknown for some the unknown was the group of fellow students who were different greg bailey with a tenth grader at yale with high school that year and remembers vividly his arrival at school that day the first image that are focused on as i walked off the bus and step down and look straight ahead was a seventeen year old african american woman who was seven months pregnant and it was culture shock and i think that's what really set the tone for the first few weeks years this whole different culture brought into the midst of a school in houses culture going to mash not all students were afraid no patty polonaise was eager because her parents had presented the changes an adventure and an opportunity to meet new kinds of

people busing was intended among other things to end racial isolation and for bunnies it did just that starting the very first day a lateral approach to me and she said to me my i feel your hair and i remember thinking what a funny thing to say but then i looked at her here and i thought of course she wants to feel my hair i had very long blonde hair and my hair was very fine very different from her hair and i said sure and she reached out and she stroked my hair and i remember thinking this is going to be ok the year was not without incident however tragically a hallway fight over your book anthill what high school ended in the accidental death of one of great bailey's friends by that point you had some relationships was an african american kid at that time in that fracture everything i own that advantage you know if he had been to white kids are two african american kids that were just been different but the fact that it was an african american kid a white kid it

really splinter to school and you know i think if they would have had a choice about what egyptian school they often right there and they moved on despite the tragedy relationships between the black and white students began to build again the following year by the time they graduated he says bonds were safe then two years had been able to push the needle into common different direction from apprehension and if it was going to happen here you know to a closeness and some bonds there that were out there were difficult to break when he graduated from high school just like with anybody else it's but the accidental death gave parents who have pulled their children out of public schools validation parents like catherine's who after the first day placed her in a newly formed private school today catherine has strong feelings about the fear her parents had of black children i part that is he feels shamed about eight years later when you realize what happened and why and yet explained to your children

what happened and why end it i don't believe the same things about parents believed and i don't want them to ever feel the way the people in that area felt an atmosphere some ten thousand students left the nashville public school system that year and many followed in their wake court ordered busing was in effect until nineteen ninety eight when the lawsuit seeking an end to segregated schools was finally settled for national public radio i'm going