Researching Black History at the BPL
Introduction
In 1798, an African American abolitionist in the city named Primus Hall opened the “African School,” at his home in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Boston. Hall opened this school as an alternative means of education for African American children of the city who did not wish to be around the prejudices and discrimination associated with the schools white children attended. The school remained in Hall’s house until 1806 when it moved the basement of the African Meeting House, a recently built Baptist Church in Boston at this time. The school remained in this location until the establishment of the Abiel Smith School (image right) in 1835. These two buildings are still standing in Boston today. Starting in 1815, however, the African School
fell out of private hands and under the jurisdiction of the Boston General School Committee. At this point, the School Committee began the construction of schools for African Americans throughout the city, leading to the practice of segregation in the Boston Public Schools.
In 1849, the Boston General School Committee denied Sarah Roberts, a five-year-old African American student, admission into the public school closest to her house. Instead, the Committee assigned her to the Abiel Smith School, which had become a poorly funded school composed of other African Americans across the city. Sarah’s father, Benjamin F. Roberts, sued the Boson General School Committee on the behalf of Sarah, claiming that the Committee deprived his daughter of an education when they sent her to, in his view, an inferior school. The Massachusetts Superior Court heard the case Roberts v. City of Boston and handed down their decision in 1850. The Court ruled in favor of the Committee, saying that, since a substantial equality of resources existed between white and black schools, the committee was acting within its powers. Roberts eventually petitioned the state legislature to take action, and in 1855 Massachusetts passed a law banning segregated schools. At this point, however, the damage was already done. The Roberts v. City of Boston decision was cited heavily in the 1896 Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson, which established the standard of "separate but equal." (From Stark & Subtle Divisions)
While segregated schools were banned by law, de facto segregation continued. This system came to a head during the Boston Busing Crisis in 1974, where Boston public schools attempted to integrate via a court-mandated busing plan only to be met by violent resistance, especially by white residents in South Boston.
On This Page:
- Overviews of the history of education for Black students in Boston
- Resources about African American education in the 1800s
- Resources about the school desegregation busing crisis
Education in Boston Overviews
An online virtual exhibit from Northeastern University. Activism for educational civil rights in Boston began well before 1974, when the “Garrity” decision mandated busing to fix de facto segregation in Boston schools. This exhibit introduces key people, groups, and events in Boston from 1964–1974, describing the community effort that led to the desegregation decision that still affects Boston today.
This site showcases materials from various Boston archives selected by graduate students in the History and American Studies departments at UMass Boston. As part of the History course, “Transforming Archives in a Digital Age” (taught by Marilyn Morgan, during the three years she directed the Archives Program at UMass Boston), students conducted archival research on the broad topic of de facto segregation in Boston and the integration of Boston Public Schools while learning to construct a collaborative digital archive and exhibit.
An online exhibit from the Massachusetts Historical Society about court decisions in Massachusetts related to education and public schools.
A timeline from the National Park Service about the history of Black educational activism in Boston.
Reforming Boston Schools, 1930 to the Present by Call Number: LA306.B7 C76 2011ISBN: 0230111459Publication Date: 2008-02-15Boston’s schools in 2006 won the Eli Broad Prize for the Most Improved Urban School System in America. But from the 1930s into the 1970s the city schools succumbed to scandals including the sale of jobs and racial segregation. This book describes the black voices before and after court decisions and the struggles of Boston teachers before and after collective bargaining. The contributions of universities, corporations and political leaders to restore academic achievement are evaluated by one who observed Boston schools for forty years.- Black Sisyphus: Boston schools and the Black community,1790-2000 byCall Number: LA306 .B7U559 2003axPublication Date: 2003Photocopy of thesis. Also available through the Dissertations and Theses database.
Education in the 1800s
Primary source set from the Massachusetts Historical Society on segregated schools in Boston.
- Equal School Rights Meeting Among the Colored Citizens by Edward R. Lawton
Call Number: 4265.409
Publication Date: 1850 - Equal Schools for All Without Regard to Color or Race by Jonas W. Clark
Call Number: 4265.407
Publication Date: 1851
Petition addressed "[t]o the Members of the Legislature of Massachusetts" concerning a bill on segregation of schools.
Sarah's Long Walk : The Free Blacks of Boston and How Their Struggle for Equality Changed America by ISBN: 9780807050194Publication Date: 2006-02-01In 1847, a five-year-old African American girl named Sarah Roberts was forced to walk past five white schools to attend the poor and densely crowded all-black Abiel Smith School on Boston's Beacon Hill. Incensed that his daughter had been turned away at each white school, her father, Benjamin, sued the city of Boston on her behalf. The historic case that followed set the stage for over a century of struggle, culminating in 1954 with the unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education.
Boston Busing Crisis
Boston Public Schools Historical Research: Busing Crisis
BPL research guide dedicated to the Boston busing crisis with a wealth of resources.
- Beyond Busing : Boston School Desegregation Archival Resources
The Boston Public Schools Desegregation Collection is a digital library of scanned archival materials documenting the desegregation of Boston’s public schools. The collection brings together materials from numerous Boston-area institutions and covers the time period beginning with the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and focusing on the Morgan v. Hennigan case (1974) and the court-ordered plan to desegregate the Boston Public Schools (BPS). The collections document the implementation of busing students to different neighborhoods to rebalance the racial makeup of schools, the resulting citywide unrest, and developments in Boston school desegregation efforts in the following decades.
- Busing in Boston: A Research Guide
A Suffolk University guide to collections related to the busing crisis in Boston
An article from WBUR about Freedom Schools in Boston. This article is part of a series on the 50th anniversary of the Boston busing crisis.
An overview of the busing crisis done by the Boston Research Center.
Article on student activism during the busing crisis.
Boston Against Busing: Race, Class, and Ethnicity in the 1960s and 1970s by Call Number: LC214.523.B67 F67 2004ISBN: 0807842923Publication Date: 1991-03-26In 'Boston Against Busing' Formisano explores the sources of white opposition to school desegregation. He sees white resistance as an example of reactionary populism, a social movement mixing both populist and conservative elements.
The Other Boston Busing Story by Call Number: LC214.523.B67 E38 2020ISBN: 9781684580293Publication Date: 2020-10-23METCO, America's longest-running voluntary school desegregation program, buses black children 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. As courts and policymakers today are forcing the abandonment of desegregation, this book offers an accessible and moving account of a rare program that, despite serious challenges, provides a practical remedy for the persistent inequalities in American education. This new edition puts the original findings in a contemporary context.
The Busing Battleground: The Decades-Long Road to School Desegregation
Using eyewitness accounts, oral histories and news footage that hasn’t been seen in decades, the PBS documentary The Busing Battleground pulls back the curtain on the volatile effort to end school segregation, detailing the decades-long struggle for educational equity that preceded the crisis. It illustrates how civil rights battles had to be fought across the North as well as the South and reckons with the class dimensions of the desegregation saga, exploring how the neighborhoods most impacted by the court’s order were the poorest in the city.