The hourlong film “Can We Talk?’’ captures 15 voices stamped indelibly by the events of Sept. 12, 1974, the first day of school under the court-ordered plan to provide racial balance in classrooms.
“The original struggle was to produce high-quality schools,’’ said Donna Bivens, coordinator of the Boston Busing/Desegregation Project, underwritten by the civil rights nonprofit Union of Minority Neighborhoods. “But,’’ she said, “it still comes back to ‘busing.’ ’’
That is why the Superintendent Carol R. Johnson sought to reacquaint district staff with the past in a separate effort overseen by her office.
Johnson said her staff often confronts the legacy of busing during conversations with parents, many of whom were students forced to move from one school to another in the 1970s. Given that experience, she said, it’s not surprising that parents would be concerned about the district’s ability to educate their children today.
“People who live in the community all their lives, some of them are still talking about these issues,’’ she said, including teachers and administrators who started careers or were students during that era. “Our schools are better. But the truth of the matter is, we have far too many students who are not achieving at high levels.’’
So she convened a one-time, multicultural panel of educators in April to share their experiences at a districtwide staff meeting and watch footage from “Eyes on the Prize,’’ a documentary that depicts America’s civil rights struggle and chronicles desegregation in Boston.
“I wanted to educate the school leaders who had not been here in Boston, or who were too young, so they could understand the emotional complexity of the issue,’’ Johnson said. “And for those who lived here, I wanted to give them space to express how it felt.’’
The experiences shared - disrespect, fear, and strife - parallel those spoken in the Union of Minority Neighborhoods documentary, which has no grainy news footage of seething protesters attacking school buses or riot police patrolling neighborhoods. Instead, more than a dozen people - black and white, young and old - share their stories.
