Immigrant History Trail to Document Half Century of Boston Busing Struggle

The Immigration History Trail, a multimedia-based initiative known for highlighting Chinatown’s immigrant stories, will be holding an event at the outdoor Tufts Community Common. The event will be led by photographer and filmmaker Daphne Xu on July 30, and bring together former parents, students, and teachers of Chinatown who organized against Boston busing, marking 50 years since Chinese parents issued a list of demands to the Boston School Committee. The project is funded by Mayor Michelle Wu’s Office of Arts and Culture as a part of its “Un-Monument” initiative.

According to longtime educator Vivian Wu Wong, who has been part of the team behind this project, the busing boycott project will allow an opportunity for stories of Chinatown’s history to be more widely shared. The project aims to create a living and photographic “un-monument” that will provide an opportunity for those who fought for injustice in the past to connect with those fighting injustice today.

“At the end of the month, we are looking forward to connecting with some of the former Chinatown mothers who organized around the busing issue, their children who were bused out of Chinatown, and the Chinese American teachers who were working in the BPS system, when busing was being rolled out,” Wu Wong said.

Boston busing began in the fall of 1975, when elementary school students were bused to different schools as part of a desegregation initiative that was met with major public backlash. Boston busing is primarily perceived as an issue that affected Boston’s black and white communities, but the Chinese community was also caught up in it.

This project will explore the efforts of Chinese immigrant mothers during the Boston busing period who were able to organize a successful school boycott, where they demanded safety and educational rights for their children. According to Wong, today’s several modern activists of the Chinese community credit their mothers as major inspirations for them.

For the 50th anniversary, the Chinatown Community Land Trust has been working with the Immigrant History Trail to document stories from the busing period, such as this boycott, in an effort to put together publicly accessible archives. It’s been a struggle, however, to recover photos from this era. The project will serve as an opportunity to create new photos, said organizers. The event will hold reenactments of photos containing community members who were involved in the fight against busing, and the Immigrant History Trail will also propose a series of activities that will explore the legacies of the boycott.

This project will continue in September, as the Immigrant History Trail will partner with Pao Arts Center and the Rose Kennedy Greenway to put together an exhibit featured throughout Chinatown’s Greenway space. According to Wu Wong, this exhibit will include historic and contemporary photographs and words with viewer reflection opportunities, all in an effort to bring a new understanding of how Boston busing affected the Chinatown community.

There will also be an outdoor opening reception, alongside an indoor cross-community discussion about the Boston Desegregation and Busing Initiative. The discussion will be held at the Josiah Quincy Elementary School.

“We hope that everyone will stay tuned for more details about our September photo exhibition on the Rose Kennedy Greenway, followed by a public reception and a community conversation about the legacy of Boston busing,” Wu Wong said.