Vol. 81/No. 14      April 10, 2017

 

Ky. workers defeat state attack on desegregation

 
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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