User:Ayr2bry/sandbox

The Roxbury suburb of Massachusetts during 1970’s endured severe racial tensions and a lethal social climate. The Roxbury neighborhood and surrounding neighborhoods, where the African-American victims were found, were in the middle of social movements that started with the desegregation of public schools. In 1974, this desegregation led to numerous of events such a riots, protests, and violent actions that occurred on both sides and led to a number of hospitalizations and deaths. Initially, the neighborhoods surrounding Roxbury belonged to certain racial groups such as Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans, and African-Americans. As Judge Garrity ordered that the school and buses be desegregated, people from different backgrounds were forced to intermingle and co-habitat. With raised tensions, there were many people that suffered various attacks. Examples include, but are not limited to, the stabbing of an African-American attorney, the public beating and death of a white male, a group of African-American high school students being trapped in the school for hours by an angry mob, and the brutal attack on an African-American football player.

Sources: Harris, Duchess. Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Clinton. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Print.

Formisano, Ronald P. (1991). Boston Against Busing: Race, Class, and Ethnicity in the 1960s and 1970s. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press.

*Stick this to the Boston busing desegregation page on wiki.