Reynolds Backs End to ‘Yoke’ of School Busing

Assistant Atty. Gen. William Bradford Reynolds on Tuesday encouraged school systems that have achieved court-ordered desegregation to lift the “yoke” of cross-town busing.

At a press briefing, Reynolds said a Feb. 6 federal appeals court ruling involving the Norfolk, Va., school system is another step on the road toward moving away from cross-town school busing for systems that have complied with court-ordered desegregation plans.

Reynolds said the Justice Department is involved in 120 court-ordered school desegregation cases where the systems subsequently have been found by courts to be unitary, or free of the remnants of racial segregation, yet desegregation plans remain in place.

The department is involved in another 30 to 50 school busing cases where courts have declared the systems to be free of discriminatory racial segregation and have dismissed the cases, said Reynolds, the head of the department’s civil rights division. He was uncertain how many of the 30 to 50 subsequently have modified their desegregation plans.

Reynolds said that there is no “grand strategy” at the Justice Department and that the department has not “targeted” cities to persuade them to move away from cross-town busing.

In the Norfolk case, the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a school board plan that would end busing of elementary schoolchildren for desegregation, while continuing it for older students.

The NAACP Legal Defense Fund argues that the Norfolk decision could unravel 30 years of efforts to integrate and equalize the nation’s schools.

The Norfolk schools had 56,000 students in 1971, 60% of them white. The 35,000-student system today is nearly 60% black.

The Norfolk case was the first instance in which the Reagan Administration endorsed abandoning previously ordered busing.