Fraser, James W., 1944-....

In June 1974, Judge W. Arthur Garrity, Jr. found the Boston School Committee guilty of willful segregation and called for forced busing of students from Roxbury and other predominantly African-American neighborhoods, to predominantly white schools, including Hyde Park, South Boston, and Charlestown High Schools. Before the ruling, students were assigned to schools based on where they lived. As a result, schools were segregated based on the population of the students in the area. While in many schools the integration process went relatively smoothly, in Hyde Park, Charlestown, and South Boston, Garrity's integration plan resulted in anti-busing rallies and marches, as well as incidences of violence. In October 1974, after African-American students reacted violently to the stabbing of André Yvon Jean-Louis, Massachusetts Governor Francis W. Sargent called in the National Guard. School boycotts, anti-busing marches, and violence continued. James W. Fraser is Professor and Dean of the School of Education and Director of the Center for Innovation in Urban Education at Northeastern University. He was a bus monitor and rode the buses the first day of the desegregation of Boston public schools in 1974.