Mayor Kevin White calls for a safe opening of Boston public schools in 1975

Video clip, click here.

Time Magazine

Time Magazine covered the busing crisis extensively in several issues of the magazine. The magazine cover shown above is from a 1975 issue, although the coverage started as early as September of 1965 with this article, an interview with Louise Day Hicks. In the interview, Hicks states that she feels that busing will not solve problems with education. Instead, she proposes "compensatory education" in which students get more "individualized attention" and "remedial instruction." 

At the time the article was written, Boston had a policy of "open enrollment" that meant any student could transfer to any school in which there was room. However, schools remained racially unbalanced, which the article attribute partially to Hicks' policies. A law recently enacted at the time required schools to correct racial imbalances or forfeit state funding. At the time of the publication, U.S. Commissioner of Education Francis Keppel had begun to investigate the Boston schools as to whether or not they still qualified for $2,000,000 of federal funding.