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Vol. 81/No. 14 April 10, 2017
Ky. workers defeat state attack on desegregation
BY ARLENE RUBINSTEIN
AND GALE SHANGOLD
Over four decades after civil rights battles in the streets won
court-ordered busing to desegregate schools to combat grossly inferior
education for Blacks, working people in Louisville, Kentucky, forced the
defeat of moves in the state legislature to end the county’s busing
program.
Facing broad opposition to the assault in Louisville, proponents of
“neighborhood schools” — code words for segregation — failed to meet the
deadline to bring their bill up for a vote in the state senate. Similar
bills failed in 2011 and 2012.
The fight for desegregation in Louisville has gone on since the 1970s,
when supporters of Black rights seeking to dismantle Jim Crow
segregation won a court order for busing. A similar battle was fought
out in the “Battle of Boston,” where defiance of court-ordered busing
organized out of City Hall was met with mass, national street
mobilizations. Volunteers rode the buses to defend Black children from
attack.
This year’s debate in Louisville was marked by support for 42 years of
school desegregation and how the fight for it helped change social
relations in the area, advance the rights of Blacks and transform the
working class, making it stronger. The Jefferson County Teachers
Association prominently featured on their website a statement opposing
the bill and defending desegregation by NAACP President Raoul Cunningham.
“We cannot go back to prior to 1975,” Amy Shir told the bill’s sponsor,
State Representative Kevin Bratcher, at a meeting Feb. 26 in Fern Creek,
Jefferson County, whose participants were majority Caucasian. “It is
unacceptable for Black students living in segregated neighborhoods. They
will not have access to the equal opportunities that families where I
live … have.”
After the bill failed, Sen. Dan Seum pledged he would push another
neighborhood schools law next year. He’ll face the opposition of the
majority of working people in Jefferson County. In 2012 half the
candidates running for the county school board ran on a platform of
getting rid of busing. All of them lost.
“I was for busing in the ’70s and I still am,” Karl Wisman, a retired
pipefitter from Louisville, told the Militant in a March 14 phone
interview. “Busing had a positive effect on Kentucky, helping to change
attitudes and relations among whites and Blacks. In the workplace and
the unions, it was the fight for affirmative action.”
“When I first started on the job in 1979, there were few Blacks, and a
lot of racism evident,” he added.
Before busing, Louisville schools were more than 90 percent Black, and
schools in the county approximately 95 percent Caucasian. Until the
1960s, Blacks attended one public high school, Central High, and one
private school, Catholic Colored High.
The racist uproar against “forced busing” began at once when a schools
desegregation plan was implemented in 1975. Racist opponents of busing
enjoyed the backing of the school board. A section of Louisville’s
organized labor movement joined the fight against the order. The
governor — himself an opponent of desegregation — felt compelled to
order the National Guard out when schools opened.
Countermobilization for busing
Working people fought back. The Socialist Workers Party organized a
branch in Louisville in 1976 out of these battles. Party members were
part of the leadership of countermobilizations against racist attacks on
busing, standing side by side with many other working people, including
against the Ku Klux Klan. Socialist workers joined the debate on the job
and urged their unions to take a stand and participate in the fight. The
party’s candidates used their campaigns to explain that busing was a
victory for the working class.
The desegregation forces won out.
As part of the rulers’ backlash against affirmative action across the
country, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in 2007 that Louisville’s
efforts to desegregate the schools violated the Constitution because it
used race as a factor. In response the school district came up with a
plan that used income rather than race as a standard to maintain a
countywide busing program. “This community really values an integrated
school system,” Superintendent Sheldon Berman told the Louisville
Courier-Journal.
“Louisville is one the few cities nationally that has not retreated,
where peoples’ experiences lead them to desire diversity because it
benefits the entire community,” Cunningham told the Militant March 19.
“This fight will come back at us, so we’re starting now to prepare for
the next round.”
Arlene Rubinstein and Gale Shangold were members of the Socialist
Workers Party branch in Louisville in the 1980s.
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