In the late 1970s and early ‘80s, busing defined the experience of a younger group of schoolchildren, and it dramatically changed the demographics of the Memphis City Schools student population.

50 years after busing began, the area’s early school integration efforts are still shaping modern Memphis

The founding of a large number of private schools, both inside and outside the city’s limits, also was part of the atmosphere. Neighborhoods were shifting, and busing was increasingly being used for Black students while white students found other schools.

This is the fifth chapter in The Daily Memphian’s oral history series marking the 50th anniversary of Plan Z busing.

O.Z. Stephens

Stephens was the MCS director of planning and research and the school system official who drew up Plan A and Plan Z — the two busing plans enacted by federal court order in 1973. Three years after court-ordered busing began in Memphis City Schools, Stephens took stock of busing’s impact. From Stephens’ 1976 study:

“Consistent evidence does exist in the Memphis City School System to support the contention that recent court-ordered desegregation decisions and the subsequent implementation of desegregation plans have contributed to rapidly increasing resegregation of the public school population, thus thwarting efforts to achieve the goal of meaningful integration. … The white children of Memphis … have become a part of what has been termed the largest segregated ‘school system’ in the South – the Memphis Private and Parochial School System.”

Nearly 50 years after the report, Stephens had a copy of that report with him as he talked with The Daily Memphian for this series.

“Every Baptist and other denomination churches opened their doors, started schools. And white kids simply did not get on the buses to go to their assignment at a formerly Black school.

“I pre-attempted to project what the racial composition of the school system would be. And I did it by individual schools. At the end of that three-year period, I was right on the money. I hit almost every one of them with a margin of error of less than 5%.

“I got the message real quick that they did not want any more studies released like I had just released. I did it on my own. I had the permission of nobody to do it – not the superintendent, not the board. And it caused somewhat of a controversy.”

Five years into busing, the school system had lost 40,000 white students, according to Rhodes College political science professor Marcus Pohlmann’s 2008 case study of busing, “Opportunity Lost: Race and Poverty in the Memphis City Schools.” Of that number, 17,000 had left in the seven months before the first buses rolled in January 1973 with Plan A.

In August of that year, Plan Z’s set of assignments to racially integrate the city’s public schools took in 39,000 students total, Black and white. The school system the school year before busing began had 146,000 students.

Chapter One: Desegregation before the buses

Two groups opposing busing – Citizens Against Busing and Frayser Against Busing – started a set of 24 unaccredited private schools with a total enrollment of about 5,000 when the 1973-74 school year started, by Pohlmann’s accounting.

The number dropped rapidly – to about 650, according to Pohlmann – by the end of that year. Most of the students moved to other private schools while some returned to the public system.

According to Pohlmann’s book, 16 Memphis private schools — most aligned with churches — were founded at the dawn of busing, including Briarcrest Christian School, which is now the area’s largest private school. Seven more church-based schools opened outside the city.

Some of the churches claimed they had long-standing plans to form private Christian schools and denied the schools were a specific reaction to integration.

The city already had 21 private schools well before Plan A and Plan Z were drafted and another 15 Catholic schools, which were integrated in the mid-1960s, including a consolidation of previously all-Black Catholic schools. Some of those institutions said they didn’t want to be seen as a haven for students fleeing Memphis City Schools.

Roshun Austin

Austin is a founder of The Works Inc., a community development corporation. She is also a planner who works as a developer in some of the communities affected the most by the impact of busing. She grew up in the Hyde Park section of North Memphis.

Austin is also on the board of Memphis Fourth Estate, the nonprofit behind The Daily Memphian.

“I came into the school system in the mid ‘70s, and for kindergarten, I was able to attend my neighborhood school. So that was Shannon Elementary. But first through third grade — right in the middle of the experiment, I suppose — I was bused ... a few miles away to Grandview Elementary (in Frayser).

“I knew I was going farther away from home, and I had older siblings. I had two older siblings who were also bused. But the oldest was able to attend Shannon because I guess she had to be in the sixth grade or seventh grade. So she ended up at Shannon and then Cypress (Junior High), which was in our neighborhood or nearby.

“She could still walk to school, but we were now getting up earlier. We had to get up earlier because we had to catch a bus to Frayser, and we had to make several stops to pick up other kids in the neighborhood. But as a young kid, you don’t really think about busing in that way.

“It was the first time I probably was around white people at all. It was probably my first experience with anyone white because there was no one white in my neighborhood.”

Chapter Two: Busing begins

Predominantly white Frayser was the epicenter of opposition to busing. Much of the violence, walkouts and conflict were at the high school level, including riots at Trezevant and Westside high schools.

Frayser was a white, blue-collar area next to North Memphis, which was a Black blue-collar area. As a result, the exit of white children from what had been all-white schools in Frayser was more gradual because white children who weren’t bused stayed, to some degree, in MCS. 

“The people in my neighborhood were probably pretty blue-collar. My dad, when he left Sears Crosstown, he worked in carpentry. He even worked in carpentry at Sears Crosstown. And at some point after like the fourth child, by the time my mom had her fourth daughter, it made more sense for her to stay home. So for 10 years of my childhood, in the early years of my childhood, my mom was a stay-at-home mom.”

Edith Akbare

Many students had enough credits in their junior year to graduate after three years of high school instead of four. Abakare was among them. She was bused to Westside High School from North Memphis in the 1973-74 school year, part of an influx of Black students who in the span of a summer changed the white school into a school that was roughly 50-50 racially with the start of Plan Z in August 1973.

In her second year at Westside, Abakare was the school’s first Black Miss Westside.

“I wouldn’t say (it was) a better education because I went to elementary school at Grant and then I went to Humes. Those years gave me what I needed to go ahead and excel through high school, and that’s why I was able to come out early. But Westside was not a bad experience for me.”

Roderick Richmond

Richmond also started at Shannon Elementary School as his neighborhood school at a time when busing as well as private schools were changing the definition of neighborhood schools in the public and private systems.

For the first grade, he was bused to Wells Station Elementary School, which racially was a school in transition.

His time as a student came as longer-term patterns in the reaction to busing were taking root.

Richmond is today an educator and executive director of student support services for Memphis-Shelby County Schools.

“Miss Bledsoe was my first-grade teacher. What sticks out with Miss Bledsoe is I think we were going through the Winter Olympics and she exposed us to skiing and I was introduced to slalom.

“I had never heard of slalom, but she introduced us to slalom.

“And we were also going through a presidential election, and I can remember having to debate and actually being Jimmy Carter and a close friend of mine was Gerald Ford.”

While at Wells Station, Richmond and his mother moved to Frayser, and because of where they lived, he was bused to Gordon Elementary School in North Memphis where he attended fourth, fifth and sixth grade.

Chapter Three: Plan Z busing begins

“When we first moved to Frayser, I walked to school. We lived in the Village Apartments. I remember the address was 3665 Tyler Drive. And I walked to Brookmeade (Elementary). Brookmeade, at the time, was my assigned school. Then, my mom purchased a home, and we moved to 3755 Coral Drive and I rode the bus to Gordon. They were busing whites, too, which when I look back now, there weren’t a lot of whites in that neighborhood getting on the bus and going to Gordon.

“I met a lot of new people when I was in the fourth grade and we moved to the new community. We would get on the bus. We’d go to school. I remember my fourth-grade teacher was Miss Watkins. And what was interesting about Miss Watkins is she had grown up in the North Memphis — Smoky City, Klondike area. So she knew many of the kids who resided in that area. She knew their parents so forth and so on.

“And then in fifth grade, Miss Matthews was my teacher, and in sixth grade, one of my favorite teachers was Miss Bishop. She later became Mrs. Reynolds. She was my sixth-grade teacher, and she’s the one that really introduced me to literature and a fondness for literature.”

Austin

In the second grade at Grandview, Austin’s teacher spotted what she thought was a disability and what Austin saw as an assumption.

“I was very shy and quiet, and so she assumed that that meant I had a learning disability. And probably one of the only times my mom came to the school because of her work schedule (was because) that teacher wanted me to be tested for Special Ed. And so I was tested, and I was in Special Ed. But I was in the gifted program. I just didn’t talk, but I was bright. And so she had some assumptions that she said to my mom that, you know, ‘Your child needs some special attention.’

“My mom was thinking, ‘She’s extremely bright. She just doesn’t talk a lot.’

“It still felt separate because I have friends from my early childhood. I work with someone who went to kindergarten with me, and we walked to school together for years. And we even attended high school together later on. But she’s Black. I can’t remember establishing friendships outside of the core group that I rode the bus with from my neighborhood.”

Richmond was living in a new neighborhood and riding a bus to a new school as an elementary school student, a transition Pohlmann said began to happen early on as white flight left Black schools in the inner city with lots of space because Black children in the same neighborhood were riding buses in greater numbers. Black families were also making decisions.

Pohlmann

“You had middle-class Black families moving away from what they perceive to be poor Black communities and Black or predominantly Black schools. So it gets complicated quickly. But the end result for those children left behind in those low-income, predominantly minority schools was tragic. That’s the opportunity lost.”

Chapter Four: Busing’s turbulent first year comes to a close

Richmond

“All of those teachers loved children. I can’t recall a time that any of them mistreated me or any other student. Even though, again, Miss Watkins was African American. Mrs. Reynolds and Miss Matthews weren’t. But, again, they were nice to all of the kids as far as I can remember.

“My mom taught me a lot of lessons, and the one most important lesson was anything you start, you must finish. So my mom was a big stickler for making sure you finish what you start. But she was also a stickler for me making sure that each and every evening I was doing something productive.”

Austin

“Elementary (school) people establish relationships, and they have their friends. And if there’s a sleepover, I know that would have been interesting. They may want to go, even if they are not allowed to go to that sleepover. I don’t recall that ever being offered. And I don’t have any memory of the children who are not like me or not from my neighborhood, from elementary school. Although I know tons of people from every other part of my life in school.

“I remember in 1977 when Elvis died because it was like the first day of school, it was Aug. 16. And I know that because my birthday is Aug. 17. And I remember certain teachers crying. I remember it was a sad time for them — was really a sad time for the city, but particularly for certain people.”

Austin and Richmond also noticed, looking back on the experience, that there were some differing thoughts about teachers handling students with different learning levels in the same classroom. A classroom might be divided into groups with names that were supposed to mask from others that those divisions were based on reading or other academic levels. The groups were often named for birds.

Austin

“I remember mocking of some kids that were typically the black birds. You associated a black bird with the kids that were a little further behind, and a Blue Jay was a kid that was bright. And so there were not very many Black children that were Blue Jay. They were always labeled as black birds.”

Richmond

“Mrs. Reynolds, I would say was really kind of a what you would call a reformer. She was very innovative. She was somewhat younger. I can remember reading ‘Sounder’ and ‘A Wrinkle in Time.’ … I can also remember in Mrs. Reynolds’ class us moving into talking about what you would say now would be tracking or the grouping of students. We were being introduced to what you would call enrichment. It’s now called Clue.

“I can also remember her having certain students like myself stay after school and working with us and, and really trying to tell many of us that we should consider going to what then would have been called an optional or magnet school.

“She was going to drive us home afterwards and was talking to us about possibly going to Snowden and attending Snowden and being in the optional program. She saw a lot of promise in us and just trying to reach out and connect with us on a personal level as a teacher and seeing the value in us as students. When I look back at all of the teachers, I think all of them always had a love for teaching.”

Richmond ultimately decided to stay in Frayser and start junior high school at Trezevant.

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“I explained to my mom I wanted to attend school in the neighborhood. She explained to me that if I had gone to Snowden, I was going to have to wake up extremely early, catch the city bus to and from school, so forth and so on.

“When I first arrived at Trezevant, it was probably at that time majority white. It was probably about 60-40. I started Trezevant in 1981. So in 1981 it was still somewhat majority white, particularly in the high school. The junior high was changing significantly but in some of your higher grades, you still had a great deal of white students still attending.

“We did have some racial issues when I was there. We had students from the North Memphis area in and around the Northside area who were bused in to Trezevant, and occasionally, on some days, we would have some racial incidents. Never to an extremely high magnitude, but you did occasionally have some racial incidents to flare up.

“High schools are bigger places than elementary (schools). I didn’t ever see administrators or teachers taking sides or saying anything that would make you feel the teachers weren’t treating each and every student with love and respect.”

Richmond

While Richmond passed on an optional school forming at Snowden, Austin went to the optional program at East High School.

Both went to college, although Richmond says he and his mother had to figure that out largely by themselves. He also credits Trezevant’s band director for taking his band students to University of Arkansas Pine Bluff football homecoming parades and Tennessee State University events.

“I played at Trezevant on the first undefeated football team and we always had great football teams. But just when I reflect back, I can’t think of a time that anyone just was deliberate about saying, ‘Hey guys, you can go to college, you can be successful. There’s a life waiting for you in college after football. And many of you all can either go to college and play football or you can just go to college and get a good education.’

“Really, what I used to go on to college was I was also in the band. I went to Tennessee State and ended up being in the band. But again, just kind of reflecting back, I can’t recall a time of meeting with a counselor to discuss a four-year plan or to discuss applying and going to college. Much of it I did on my own.”

Optional schools were part of MCS Superintendent Willie Herenton’s bid in the early 1980s to reverse white flight to some degree as families continued making larger changes in where they lived.

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Austin

“Does anything this audacious, do you think, ever wind up doing what it set out to do? I’m trying to think of an occasion when it happened in American history because I went to pretty segregated schools my entire time. Even in high school when I rode two city buses to get to my high school, I still lived in Hyde Park but I attended East High School.

“I could name the five or six white people who graduated with me whose parents, you know, took a chance on this school, which was a very affluent white school before. I was the first wave of kids in the optional program.

“You only drew very few (whites) back into that system because it was a separate Shelby County system and the Memphis City school system, and it looked very different. So Memphis City Schools for the most part, outside of Central and White Station and the five people at East, were Black. It was a Black system.”

What Austin saw in the daily transition between Hyde Park and East High confirmed the lessons to come in college and beyond about how communities live and die in Memphis.

“You start to see this decline in population, decline in how the governments are investing in infrastructure. So the conditions in public parks, and the roads are bad. There’s no reinvestment. Their houses are becoming vacant and abandoned and then you start to see, especially in the early ‘80s and throughout the ‘80s – crime.

“I watched us going from a safe neighborhood in the ‘70s to a very high-crime neighborhood, and a lot of that was related to drug sales. If a house burned out, nobody was knocking it down. It was just there.”