Conclusion

Busing was one of the things the Board and Patterson came up with. This met with a lot of opposition from the white communities (parents and students). Parents were really opposed to busing elementary school students to other neighborhoods. So the proposal was for the elementary level students to stay in their neighborhoods and set up magnets for secondary school. Students complained about this but most of them used buses to get to schools. So this is the proposal the board came up with: (1) they reduce the number of elementary schools they were to pair up, (2) limited the number of junior high students that would be moving from one school to another, and (3) the information was vague about secondary schools. Patterson lasted only until he had a showdown with Schaefer in the fall of 1974.

Now you will have to agree the Baltimore City Schools never really desegregated their school system. When Patterson took over his office things should have already been in place for a desegregation plan. It seems that city officials and the school board failed to do the jobs they were hired for. Instead they tried to maintain the white tax dollars that where left in the city. If improvements had of been made to the school system prior to the Brown case maybe so many whites would not have moved to the county. The state never really took a stand before the Civil War, yet after it was over and more freed slaves arrived in Baltimore it became a problem. They didn’t want to live with them or correct the errors they made with allocations for a school system that was already failing them. At least this was one of the reasons why they moved to the county.

Brown v. Board of Education caused Baltimore City Public Schools to open on a desegregated basis. Some Desegregation was already in effect at Baltimore Poly Institute being forced to admit African-American students on its prestigious "A" course in 1952. In September 1954, the School adopted the "Free Choice" method provided that no child shall be required to attend any particular school." Under the freedom-of-choice plan approved by the school board, the number of black students attending formerly white schools in September was not large. The Superintendent of schools interprets the free choice transfer policy as the unlimited right of students to transfer, except into district schools and some special programs. Parents were discouraged from transferring their students from predominantly Negro school. Some White parents were also discourages from sending their children to school with substantial Negro enrollments.