Education: A Lesson in the South

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"I never thought I'd be going South for a lesson in racial relations," said Linda Lawrence, a senior at Boston's troubled Hyde Park High School. But last week Linda and three other Hyde Park students flew to Charlotte, N.C., to learn what they could from that city's four-year experience with court-ordered busing and school desegregation.

The idea for the trip came from Charlotte students themselves. After reading about the demonstrations and boycotts that have plagued the busing and desegregation program in Boston, students at West Charlotte High wrote letters to the Boston Globe, telling how integration had worked at their school.

The letters snowballed into an invitation for Boston students to come down for a firsthand look—and the Charlotte students raised $600 to finance the trip.

Showcase School. Once in town, the Bostonians (two whites, two blacks) talked with student leaders from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg County high schools and spent much of their time at West Charlotte High, formerly an all-black school that is now 60% white—and a showcase. "We want help," said Bostonian Barbara Steer, 17, and the Southern kids seemed eager to give it. "We want you to know we've learned a lot about judging anybody, black or white, as an individual," said Charlotte Student Dwight Covington.

"It just took time." The Bostonians seemed particularly envious of the environment in which the apparent racial harmony was flourishing: the spacious West Charlotte campus is in sharp contrast to the packed atmosphere at Hyde Park, a three-story brick structure built in 1928.

Charlotte seemed an appropriate spot for the Northerners to visit. It became a landmark in school desegregation in 1970, when a federal judge ordered crosstown busing, which originally affected about one-fourth of the district's 75,000 pupils (some 46,000 out of 77,300 students now take a bus to school, half of them bused for desegregation). But busing was no more popular in Charlotte than it is in Boston. In fact, only four days before the Boston contingent arrived, racial fighting forced the closing of one of the district schools, Olympic High. Seven students were arrested and two others injured. Generally, however, the racial climate has calmed down. Says West Charlotte Principal Sam Haywood: "There are a lot of people who are not in favor of busing, but there are a lot of people in favor of making the situation that we're in work."

The Charlotte visit did not sit well back in Boston. Even as the four students were ending their stay, the Boston school committee passed a resolution ordering them to return home. Committee Chairman John Kerrigan waved a newspaper account of racial violence in the Charlotte schools. "I wouldn't have approved this trip if I had known what was going on down there," he said. "I feel that Boston has been painted as being barbarian. The whole thing was a public relations effort to embarrass Boston."