The Moral Geography of Busing: Prince George's County, Maryland, 1969–1973

• In Event: 31.093 - Sheraton Roundtable Three - Osgoode Ballroom
  In Roundtable Session: 31.093-2 - Interdisciplinary Approaches to History of Education

Abstract

This paper uses a genealogical approach to historical questions and draws upon concepts of moral geography in order to unearth the way in which busing for racial integration was discursively constructed in national and local media, and in interviews with black and white community members in Prince George’s County, Maryland, in the early 1970s. I argue that busing, as a policy, had an implicit morally regulative goal of forcing equality through the movement of bodies across unequal spaces. The moral geography of busing revolved around three overlapping themes: naturalizing the neighborhood unit as a moral community, white entitlement to educational freedom, and judgments about the suitability of Black schools.

Author

• Deirdre Mayer Dougherty, Knox College