Going to School in L.A. in the 1970s

The photograph shows the first black US-American students to attend Plymouth Elementary School in Monrovia (Los Angeles County, California) arriving by bus on 10th of September 1970.

School desegregation and busing sparked protests in Los Angeles in the 1970s - more than two decades after the Supreme Court had outlawed segregation at schools - leading white middle-class families fleeing from the L.A. Unified School District and moving to more homogeneous suburban districts devoid of busing. Mandatory busing was seen as a means to integrate and remedy the harms of segregation since the black population was kept from living in so-called white neighbourhoods and, as a result, from attending schools in these neigbhourhoods. 

In 1979, forced busing was ended and L.A. shifted to a voluntary busing system under court supervision which became the so-called "magnet" programme. The programme aimed at becoming so attractive in academic terms that white students would be drawn to schools they would otherwise not attend. Another approach was to allow ethnic minority students from low-income South L.A. to take buses to scholls in traditionally white areas in the San Fernando Valley. Los Angeles has kept its magnet programme and white students attend some of them. Generally speaking, however, their number is rather low: 73.4% Latino, 10.5% white, 8.2% black American, 4.2% Asian (via).

- - - - - -
photograph (Fitzgerald Whitney/Los Angeles Times) via