Looking back on a 32-year journey. Some saw it as a disappointing experiment. Others saw it as a clear step toward equality. For a group of kids Tuesday, it was a journey with and to friends.
ST. PETERSBURG - At 8:56 a.m., seven black middle schoolers bounce up the steps of Cheryl Holmes' school bus.
"Find your seats and get your seat belts on," Holmes says with a smile, straining to be heard over the din of adolescent exuberance. The next stop is the Wildwood recreation center on 12th Avenue S, where 20 more black kids pile on, stepping over the message that has been painted on the first step: "Have a perfect trip."
A 30-minute trip covering 12 miles.
The Pinellas County school bus is alive with laughter and chatter. The children ask Holmes to kill the 1980s-era songs on the scratchy sound system. Two more quick turns and she is easing into traffic on I-275, headed for Osceola Middle School in Seminole.
It is Tuesday, the last day of school in Pinellas County and the beginning of the end for a social drama that has spanned 32 years.
When court-ordered busing began here in 1971, thousands of parents held demonstrations and threatened to keep their kids out of school. Racially charged fights broke out at Dixie Hollins and Boca Ciega high schools. Then tempers cooled.
As the years wore on, thousands of bus drivers like Cheryl Holmes participated in a mission that some say was a grand, if disappointing, experiment: ferry large numbers of black children to schools in white neighborhoods, and take a smaller number of white kids to schools in black neighborhoods.
School buses became the clunky tool of choice for the delicate operation of racial integration. But no one in the 1960s and '70s could think of a better way to ensure blacks and whites got an equal education.
Now that a federal judge has declared Pinellas schools free of the racial discrimination that spawned busing, educators have launched a system of school choice, beginning Aug. 5, that will ease the district back to a day when enrollments are not determined by race.
But in the vacant space between old and new, questions remain.
Did busing work?
Was it worth the trouble?
Should it have ended?
The black children who ride behind Cheryl Holmes only complicate the answers.
Racquelle Johnson, 12, says she actually enjoys the ride to Osceola Middle. "It gives you time to talk to your friends."
Brittany Kirkland, 13, says the ride is fun and so is school.
Neither they nor the others on board know the term "forced busing." They are perplexed to learn their bus is a tool for integration. They profess no desire to go to school closer to home.
To say that busing yanks kids from their friends misses the mark, for the kids of the Wildwood stop are transported whole - a unit of friends and acquaintances from the neighborhood. Once they arrive at school they can, and do, branch out.
Odeen Walker and Dianna Wilson, both 12, say of course they have white friends at school. They seem bemused that someone would ask.
More harm than good
Their reactions support the view of people like Charles Rutledge, the last surviving member of the six black parents who filed the 1964 lawsuit that brought about busing in Pinellas. Rutledge, 78, believes it was far too early to end it.
"I don't think the timing was right," he says. When it comes to race, people still possess a "hardness in their heart." And when the race ratios disappear by design in 2007, Rutledge sees a return to segregated schools. He fears that predominantly white north county schools will receive the good teachers, the best equipment, while south county schools get "what's left."
The black students who have borne the brunt of the busing load have not wasted their effort, he says. "I think it has helped the poor kids, I really do. . . . I feel that way because I've been through it."
Chrisshun Cox says it required too much sacrifice.
Now a 38-year-old mother and aunt, she remembers being plucked from all-black Jordan Park Elementary in 1975 and bused to predominantly white Westgate Elementary for the fifth grade. The experience left her suddenly conscious of her race.
"That was such a hard year," she says. "I always think of it as the starting point of a nightmare."
Looking back, she says busing "probably did more harm than it did good. . . . I think it critically injured part of a whole generation."
She adds: "I think what the African-American parents were asking for back then wasn't desegregation. I think they were asking for equality."
Leon W. Bradley Sr., the lead plaintiff in the desegregation lawsuit, was seeking only to allow his son to transfer from all-black Pinellas High, which he found inferior. It would not be until much later that the other goals of busing - diversity and closing the "achievement gap" between white and black students - would rise in importance.
That's because it took years for the courts and educators to get beyond the initial shock of mixing the races in schools, says Enrique Escarraz III, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund lawyer who has shepherded the case since 1972.
"We were willing to go there," he says. "We just didn't think anybody was willing to go with us."
A long way to go
Ten years after court-ordered busing began in Pinellas, the St. Petersburg Times commissioned a study that found family income to be a better determinant than race for measuring how well kids do in school. The finding echoed other studies, but the bottom line was that white students achieved at a level roughly 20 percentile points higher than black students in reading and math.
Though the measurements are different today, the achievement gap still exists. It is evident at Osceola Middle School, where the Wildwood bus stop kids go to school. Last year, 16 percent of black students there scored above Level 3 in the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test reading exam. Sixty percent of white students scored above Level 3.
"Has the education of black children improved? No," says Darryl Rouson, president of the St. Petersburg branch of the NAACP. "The achievement gap for black children still screams loudly."
Why couldn't busing solve the problem?
"Nobody really wrapped their arms around it; they did it grudgingly," says Marsha Carter, former chair of the NAACP's education committee and a member of the biracial panel that monitors the district on desegregation issues. "You can write all the laws that you want, but you can't mandate that somebody changes their heart. And if somebody's heart isn't in something, it's not going to work."
Much to be done
Escarraz says busing wasn't perfect, but it was an improvement. Blacks and whites in Pinellas communicate more and are less insulated from each other than they were in 1971.
But much remains to be done, he says.
"Part of it has to do with the fact that . . . blacks feel they have been making sacrifices and they haven't been getting anything in return," Escarraz says.
At Osceola Middle, principal Bob Vicari worries that the choice plan will seriously erode gains made over the last 30 years. With black students selecting schools closer to home, Osceola's 30 percent minority population will drop to 20 percent next year.
"Diversity's going - it just is," he says. "And that was one of our strengths."
Vicari presided Tuesday over a whirlwind of pictures and hugs. White and black students in Brenda Dannewitz's advanced choral class sang a song called Keep the Candle Burning. Dannewitz had to hold back tears.
Most cafeteria tables were segregated by race, but others were mixed - a testament to the uneven attempts at racial harmony outside the school walls.
Black students from the Wildwood stop finally said goodbye to white friends, and once again boarded Holmes' bus.
They rumbled east on Bryan Dairy Road, which became 118th Avenue, which spilled onto I-275. The children sang rap songs in voices too sonorous for their years. Soon, the Wildwood recreation center came into view.
"Listen up," Holmes said over her microphone. "I just wanted to say thanks for being a great bunch of kids. I've enjoyed it. Have a great summer."
With that, they reached into her bag of Tootsie Pops, hopped onto the curb and fanned out to the places where they live.
Pinellas school desegregation: A chronology
Significant events in the history of Pinellas County's school desegregation case.
1954: U.S. Supreme Court outlaws segregation in public schools.
1961: The first desegregation of Pinellas schools occurs when black students are admitted to St. Petersburg Junior College, then operated by the Pinellas School Board.
1964: A group of black parents, along with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, files suit against the School Board. They note that only 200 of the county's 10,000 black students are attending schools with white students, and demand an end to segregated education.
1965: U.S. District Judge Joseph P. Lieb orders the desegregation of Pinellas County schools.
1971: The Pinellas School Board votes 5-2 to desegregate schools countywide. Judge Lieb accepts the School Board plan and orders that no school be allowed to have a student population more than 30 percent black. By then, a Bi-Racial Advisory Committee had been created to help monitor progress toward desegregation.
1989: The court authorizes the creation of the first magnet school programs to encourage voluntary integration.
1998: After several years of making modifications to race ratios and overseeing nearly every aspect of pupil assignment, the court directs the School Board to identify areas in which the district has achieved the goal of providing equal opportunities to minority students. NAACP Legal Defense Fund agrees that Pinellas has complied with the court order in the areas of transportation and opportunities for administrative staff, but disagrees that the district treats blacks the same as whites in other areas. School Board and Legal Defense Fund attorneys agree to a nine-year plan to end court-ordered busing.
1999: U.S. District Judge Steven D. Merryday refuses to approve the agreement between the parties. He criticizes the plan for being too vague and appoints a mediator to move the parties toward a more concrete agreement. Merryday agrees that Pinellas has achieved "unitary status" by treating blacks and whites alike in the areas of facilities and resources, transportation and administrative staff assignment. The School Board approves an agreement with the Legal Defense Fund on all other outstanding issues, including student assignment.
Jan. 31, 2000: The parties seek dismissal of the lawsuit.
Aug. 10, 2000: Merryday accepts the settlement agreement providing an end to court-ordered busing and dismisses the lawsuit.
Oct. 25, 2000: The School Board approves a choice plan that will end traditional school zoning in the 2003-04 school year. It votes to split the county into four areas for elementary schools, three areas for middle schools and one for high schools. Students will apply to attend a school in their area.
Sept. 16, 2002: The school choice application period begins. Parents have three months to decide whether to keep their children in their current schools, seek spots in countywide magnet or fundamental programs or apply for a school in their area of the county.
Feb. 20, 2003: A computer program matches students with their chosen schools, and nine out of 10 receive their first pick of schools for the 2003-04 year.
Feb. 25, 2003: School officials acknowledge that during the first year of school choice, hundreds of African-American children in St. Petersburg will be bused out of their neighborhoods, leaving behind new schools that are only two-thirds full.
Compiled by Times news researcher Kitty Bennett from Times files.
Where are they now?
Leon W. Bradley Sr.
His name is on the case that changed the racial makeup of Pinellas schools for more than 30 years. Bradley, a former Clearwater police officer, was convinced his son would not get a good education at all-black Pinellas High School. But the School Board denied his petition to transfer his son to John F. Kennedy Middle School. Thus was born the 1964 lawsuit known as Leon W. Bradley et al vs. the Board of Public Instruction of Pinellas County, filed in U.S. District Court in Tampa by Bradley and five other parents: Charles Rutledge, Alexander Green, Dan Bones, Sam Devine and Emma Lee Barton. The lawsuit's final order is the mechanism that spawned the Pinellas school choice plan. Bradley died in 1989.
Charles Rutledge
Rutledge, now 78 and living in Clearwater, is the only living plaintiff in the desegregation case. His youngest daughter - Janice Mobley, an award-winning Pinellas schoolteacher - benefited from the court fight. She was bused her senior year to newly integrated Dunedin High. Rutledge and his wife, Geleater, celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary last year. He is a retired building contractor.
Lou Brown
He was one of the first black students to be bused in 1970, first to previously white Boca Ciega High and then to Dixie Hollins. He remembers the crowds of angry white adults meeting the buses with hostile words, the fistfights and the rumors of riots. He played on the Dixie Hollins football team, whose school song was the Confederate anthem Dixie. "We supported desegregation," Brown said in 1992. But "I think we really felt like we were victims more than pioneers." Brown, 47, is a St. Petersburg Realtor and civic leader.
The Rev. H. Robert Gemmer
After the 1971 federal court order that required busing for desegregation of schools, Gemmer, an NAACP official and civil rights activist, was instrumental in mapping out the plan for Pinellas County students. He died in 1992.
Joseph Carwise
He was the associate county school superintendent who coordinated the busing plan. He kept the district in compliance with the federal court order by adjusting zoning lines and making sure schools didn't exceed the 30 percent black student cap. He took insults from parents and was under frequent pressure from colleagues and School Board officials. He died in 1990. A middle school in Oldsmar is named for him.
James B. Sanderlin
He was the young St. Petersburg lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund who took the Bradley case and won it in 1971. He became a county judge the next year. He was later elected a circuit judge and appointed to the 2nd District Court of Appeal. He died in 1990.
Floyd T. Christian
He was superintendent of Pinellas schools from 1948 to 1965 and typified white officialdom's early resistance to desegregation. But within a few years, Christian had a change of heart. He became state commissioner of education in 1965 and a staunch defender of desegregation. Christian's career ended in disgrace in 1975 when he spent several months in federal prison for income tax evasion. He lived in Sarasota for two decades until he moved to a St. Petersburg retirement community in 1997. He died in 1998 at age 83.
Gus Sakkis
He became deputy Pinellas school superintendent in 1972 during a period of strong anti-busing sentiment. He defended busing, promoted a number of black administrators and met frequently with parents of both races. Members of the local Nazi Party posted a proclamation on the front door of his house and left threatening messages on his answering machine. He retired in 1981 after 31 years with the Pinellas schools. After leaving the schools, he was a consultant for other school systems and spent a year as the interim head of the Juvenile Welfare Board. Sakkis is 81 and lives in St. Petersburg.
Enrique Escarraz
He is the lawyer who took up the desegregation case for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund after Sanderlin became a judge. He is 58, and practices law in St. Petersburg.
Joseph P. Lieb
An Eisenhower appointeeto the federal bench, Lieb presided over the first desegregation of Pinellas schools and two other counties. He scrupulously followed the lead of higher federal courts when school desegregation cases began to come his way in the middle 1960s, even though his decisions were sometimes at odds with his own conservative leanings. When he died in 1971 at the age of 70, the desegregation case passed to Judge William Terrell Hodges.
William Terrell Hodges
In 1999, he stepped down from full-time judicial status after 28 years on the federal bench. He is still working as a federal judge in Ocala, where he has been involved in an age-bias lawsuit by former Florida Power Corp. employees. Hodges is 69 and lives in Gainesville.
Steven Merryday
The U.S. District judge overseeing the choice plan, Merryday was appointed to the federal bench in 1992. His order in August 2000 formally ended the 1964 lawsuit. He lives in Tampa and is 52.
Charles J. Crist
He was a prominent physician who served on the Pinellas School Board for 10 years, stepping down in 1977. He threatened to resign rather than approve court-ordered desegregation, and voted to appeal the order to the U.S. Supreme Court. His views moderated considerably during his board tenure. He is 70 and lives in St. Petersburg. He is the father of state Attorney General Charlie Crist.
Sam Buice
He was chairman of Parents Against Forced Busing in the early 1970s. The group held rallies attended by thousands of parents, asked President Richard Nixon to investigate the desegregation plan and advised parents on ways to keep their children from attending public schools. The group's slogan was "No! No! Ours won't go." Buice died in 1996 at age 78 in Belleair.
Compiled by staff writer Thomas Tobin and news researcher Kitty Bennett from Times files.
