“Blacks destroy school systems and schools,” read one letter to county officials about the busing plan. “Black families (as a core group) don't value education like other cultural groups,” read another. “The Black Community needs to take responsibility for the behavior of its people,” a third declared, “or the white man will take them back to place where they don't want to go.” Don't worry, though. The writer insisted they were not being racist.
These letters were written in recent months in response to a Howard County (Maryland) Council resolution calling on the county school system to desegregate its schools. The letters' target was a comprehensive redistricting proposal offered by Howard County schools superintendent Michael Martirano. The plan would ease overcrowding and, in Martirano's words, “substantially improve equity and access to the best educational services” in the county's schools. By redistributing students around the district and balancing the number of poor students in the district's schools, the proposal would make the schools more economically integrated, and thus—in theory—more racially integrated.
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