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“The Schools Are Killing Our Kids!” the African American Fight for Self- Determination in the Boston Public Schools, 1949-1985

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“The Schools Are Killing Our Kids!” the African American Fight for Self- Determination in the Boston Public Schools, 1949-1985 ABSTRACT Title of dissertation: “THE SCHOOLS ARE KILLING OUR KIDS!” THE AFRICAN AMERICAN FIGHT FOR SELF- DETERMINATION IN THE BOSTON PUBLIC SCHOOLS, 1949-1985 Lauren Tess Bundy, Doctor of Philosophy, 2014 Dissertation directed by: Associate Professor David Freund, Department of History This dissertation examines a grassroots movement led by black Bostonians to achieve racial justice, quality education, and community empowerment in the Boston Public Schools during the postwar period. From the late 1940s through the early 1980s black parents, teachers, and students employed a wide-range of strategies in pursuit of these goals including staging school boycotts, creating freedom schools, establishing independent alternative schools, lobbying for legislation, forming parent and youth groups, and organizing hundreds of grassroots organizations. At the heart of this movement was a desire to improve the quality of education afforded to black youth and to expand the power of black Bostonians in educational governance. This dissertation demonstrates that desegregation and community control were not mutually exclusive goals or strategies of black educational activism. I examine the evolution of the goals, ideology, and strategy of this movement over the course of more than three decades in response to shifts in the national and local political climate. This work traces the close ties between this local movement in Boston and broader movements for racial and social justice unfolding across the nation in the 1940s, 50s, 60s, and 70s. Most importantly, my dissertation puts this movement in conversation with a broader national project of various marginalized groups in the postwar period to radically transform the institutions of democracy. This dissertation challenges a well-known narrative of civil rights and school desegregation in Boston in this period. This story of the so-called Boston “busing crisis” focuses on white resistance, a narrow period of time in the mid-1970s, and court-ordered desegregation. In the rare instances in which black Bostonians are included in this narrative it is as victims or apathetic bystanders. The rhetoric of “busing,” particularly the framing of opposition to desegregation as “anti-busing,” obscured and continues to obscure the more complex racial politics driving the opposition to the integration of the Boston Public Schools. My scholarship brings light to a much broader and more nuanced history of racial politics in Boston and demonstrates that we cannot understand the period of court-ordered desegregation without examining the decades of grassroots activism which preceded it. “THE SCHOOLS ARE KILLING OUR KIDS!”: THE AFRICAN AMERICAN FIGHT FOR SELF-DETERMINATION IN THE BOSTON PUBLIC SCHOOLS, 1949- 1985 by Lauren Tess Bundy 2014 Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2014 Advisory Committee: Associate Professor David Freund, Chair Associate Professor Sharon Harley Associate Professor Emeritus Alfred Moss Associate Professor Robyn Muncy Associate Professor Michael Ross © Copyright by Lauren Tess Bundy 2014 Acknowledgments Thinking and writing about the many people who helped me along the way has been one of the greatest joys of this project and a task which I have looked forward to for a long time. My passion for the topic began during my year at Gettysburg College where I first took a course in African American history and discovered an intellectual excitement I never knew I had. I am so grateful to Scott Hancock for encouraging my interests, pushing me to take risks, and believing that I had a future in this field of work when I was just a first-semester freshman. Kenneth Janken provided critical support and guidance during my years as an undergraduate student at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill when this project first began—engaging me in serious and challenging conversation and encouraging me to take risks with my research. He has remained a valuable and very generous mentor over the years. The Department of African, African American, and Diaspora Studies at the University of North Carolina was a wonderful place to study, think, research, and write as a young historian. I found a truly wonderful academic community in the Department of History at North Carolina State University where the support of many kind mentors helped me grow as a historian. Blair Kelley offered sharp and thoughtful feedback on my master’s thesis—pushing me to be more straightforward in my arguments and writing style. Her down-to-earth style as a scholar, mentor, and teacher is so refreshing. I am especially grateful to her guidance on how to think about and collect oral histories—which I ii continue to draw upon many years later. Katherine Mellon Charron has set an incredibly high standard of mentorship and advising. She has been a model of generosity and compassion—lending her time, and advice, and meticulous editing skills long after her role as my advisor officially ended and consistently going far above and beyond to offer her help in countless ways. She has set an example for what it means to blend a commitment to social and racial justice and scholarship which I have tried to follow over the years. It has been such a pleasure to have her as a mentor and friend. This project has received financial support from a number of different sources which has literally made it possible. A number of grants from the University of Maryland History Department made it possible for me to devote myself full-time to researching and writing this project. The Ann G. Wylie Dissertation Fellowship at the University of Maryland provided key support in the final year of the project for which I am especially grateful. The Department of History at the University of Maryland has provided an incredibly supportive, challenging, engaging academic environment. I have grown as a scholar thanks to the incredible support of a wonderful group of scholars including Ira Berlin, Elsa Barkley Brown, Julie Greene, and Saverio Giovacchini. My work has been deeply informed by wonderful conversations with fellow graduate students who have opened up new ways of seeing history and the world. I am also grateful to Michelle Rowley and the Department of Women’s Studies which opened up totally inspired me to bring a new lens to my research and writing and embrace creativity as part of scholarship. Thank you to both Catalina Toala and Jodi Hall who helped me navigate my way through graduate school and out of lots of logistical challenges inside and outside of the iii department and provided lots of laughs and fun along the way. It would not have been possible to successfully make my way through this process without the encouragement and constant advice of Mary-Elizabeth Murphy and Melissa Kravetz. I have been very lucky to have two such wonderful friends and colleagues who have so generously shared their wisdom having gone through this ahead of me. It has been such a joy to become friends over the past several years. I owe the largest gratitude to the members of my committee who have provided invaluable feedback and support along every step of the way. My understanding of African American politics, race, and gender has been deeply shaped by my work with Sharon Harley. I am immensely grateful for her willingness to share her time and offer her insights on my scholarship. Al Moss has generously offered his comments on this project and expressed his enthusiasm for this research and my career from its early stages. Robyn Muncy has been a model of positivity and generosity in scholarship. I have benefitted tremendously both from her comments on my work and in observing her work in the classroom with undergraduates. It is hard to imagine a more genuine, engaged, and kind teacher. Michael Ross has been wonderful to work with and learn from along every step of the way—always willing to share his time with good humor. I am especially grateful for the many long conversations we had about the law and nineteenth century politics. David Freund has been a wonderful advisor during my time at the University of Maryland—patient, generous, understanding, down-to-earth and always a pleasure to share ideas with. His comments on my work and our conversations have pushed me to think more critically about the operation of racial protest and politics and the state. I am iv so grateful for the hours he spent pouring over drafts identifying places to cut and make my points clearer and simpler which have improved this project immeasurably. Even as he pushed me to refine my scholarship, he also offered much needed reminders to take time to enjoy life outside of work, for which I am very appreciative. I am tremendously appreciative of the insights, support and friendship of a group of other Boston scholars who I have met along the way in this journey—Lyda Peters and Zebulon Miletsky, who generously welcomed me into their fold. They have offered so many key introductions that have enriched this project immeasurably and provided an intellectual community for me in Boston. Your understanding of Boston and this movement are truly invaluable and something no book or archive alone could provide. A number of people provided comments on various chapters which have been enormously helpful in refining my arguments. Jon Shelton, Jon Franklin, Polly Welts- Kaufman, and Vincent Cannato generously shared their time to read chapters in various stages of this project. Their comments and questions pushed me to refine my thinking, sharpen my analysis, and most of all, to keep moving ahead. This dissertation has brought me into contact with many other scholars who have offered their thoughts on my project and academia more broadly including Millington Bergenson-Lockwood, Martha Biondi, Zoe Burkholder, Jon Hale, Tikia Hamilton, Christopher Loss, Crystal Sanders, William Sturkey, and Jeanne Theoharis, among many others.
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