The Boston Busing Crisis: Black Mothers in the Civil Rights Movement

From the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, the city of Boston was in a state of constant ebullition. Attempts to desegregate public schools caused outrage among white parents, protesters were met with vicious police brutality, and city officials simply failed to protect and provide for their citizens. Despite, or perhaps because of these difficulties, African American mothers took it upon themselves to intervene in the political quagmire. Adopting strategies used by their own mothers during political struggles in the 1920s, they founded grassroots organizations and took action against a discriminatory system.

In this paper, I will argue that by using their positions as mothers, Boston’s Black working-class women pursued a more radical agenda not only in the 1960s, but throughout the entire twentieth century. In this sense, they pushed for the desegregation of Boston’s public schools, proposed welfare reforms, created job training to help other mothers gain better work opportunities, secured access to quality child care and health care services, protected their community and opened a dialogue on police brutality, and created community-led economic development organizations.

This paper will explore why Boston’s Black mothers had greater success than their male counterparts in affecting political change in the city. This article will complicate the narrative on the busing crisis, will identify the important political role played by working class mothers, and will demonstrate the effectiveness of grassroots organizing within Boston’s Black community.