Race war in high school; the ten-year destruction of Franklin K. Lane High School in Brooklyn.

Adobe OCR, slightly larger file:PrefaceAsthis book is published, we are getting ready to witness the greatAmerican spectacle that we will later call “The Making of aPresident—1972.” While the economy and Vietnam would appear to holdcenter stage, there simmers barely beneath the surface that other issue—theburning question of forced busing as a tool to integrate the nation’spublic schools. In the early years of this decade, no conflict touchedthe sensitivities of more Americans, and more confounded, angered,frightened, and divided us, than did the struggle over mixing childrento achieve racial balance in our schools.FromGeorge Wallace’s Alabama to Nelson Rockefeller’s New York; from Pontiac,Michigan, to San Francisco; in Richmond and in Boston, Detroit, andIndianapolis; north and south, east and west; in the cities and in thesuburbs; Americans are torn between Supreme Court rulings legitimizingthe forced busing of children and presidential edicts that would forbidthe use of federal funds to carry it out. And our national conscience istested as never before as we strain to reconcile what we know is rightwith the realities that tell us it is so very wrong.What have been the realities of integration? Andwhy have so many decent law-abiding Americans gone to extremes toprevent their children from being bused to achieve some nebulous goalcalled racial balance? 1960s problems in America's secondary schools are discussed, focusing on Franklin K. Lane High School in Brooklyn, NY.