Here's the thing about opposing "forced busing"

[hlthe2b]

16. Good piece, but I have to correct the statement: "But most of them weren't upset about the buses

since there was no requirement that their (white) kids ever get on a bus to get to school.

Not true. While we relocated at least 4 times from elementary to high school in three states of the Deep South during my youth, (including time also spent overseas), I was "forcibly" bused as were both white children in my neighborhoods and black children further away, to schools seeking to equalize the most segregated schools in the district. In only one of those experiences did we encounter the kind of ugliness experienced elsewhere across the country though clearly there would have been some "white flight" masking some of the discord. Given African Americans were frequently bused from very long distances, their parents were not always happy either. Those kids were the ones I felt for as there genuinely were both unwelcoming (but also surprisingly positive) responses to their arrival. Kids can be intensely mean and they DO project the attitudes and fears of their parents.

My sister and I never minded--we'd been raised children of very progressive (for the time) parents who had already given us the tremendous gift of getting to live overseas among children of all kinds of cultures, races, and ethnicities. As a result, I think my parents tamped down some concern from white parents in the neighborhoods that felt at least initially quite differently. For that, I am intensely proud of them looking back.