Busing in Trenton, NJ circa 1970

If you saw this photo taken in November of 1970, you might think the group is congratulating the two women in the center of the photo, or, maybe just the one with the dark dress as the woman next to her is clapping but looking forward.  Or, perhaps they are watching a parade  and feeling good about the floats and bands or maybe they are watching street performers.  They appear to be coming from a building with columns and a large open door behind them perhaps indicating a public building they have just left. What strikes me about this photo is that several people are not looking forward, towards the photographer who, I am assuming, is from a city newspaper because this is where I found this photo. Their heads are turned to their right as if something was happening up the street or there was another crowd coming towards them from their left and only three people are looking straight ahead; two women and a man who are not looking forward as much as he is smiling at the woman in the dark dress. It is difficult to actually know what is going on from the group’s pose or their expression that they are a happy group.  I did a bit of research using newspaper articles of that time and learned the group is leaving a municipal court house in Trenton in mid-November of 1970 where the lawyer, the man behind the woman in the dark dress, was asking for a delay in a hearing involving the woman(in the center) who had violated the order of the Mayor of Trenton.  The order banned demonstrations against the Trenton School District’s busing plan intended to correct the racial balance in the city’s schools and this group of white parents and grandparents formed a coalition to fight the busing order. The school district had decided to bus 155 students; 100 black and Puerto Rican students and 55 white students and the parents of the white children refused to comply with the plan because they felt that their children would experience a lower quality of education if they went to school with black and Puerto Rican children.  In other words, they felt that their neighborhood schools with a majority white students had the correct standard for education.  Education is white schools is superior to education in black schools. The photo alone would not be able to tell us that, only the narrative could, but what the combination of the photo and the narrative tells us is that white parents will happily use a system, the legal system in this case, to insure their supremacy in other systems; education and access to it.