Content Description: Catherine Clark was a student during Denver's busing program.
Physical Description: 27 minutes. Digital file available on SoundCloud.
Project Description: These oral histories were collected by History Colorado and KGNU for a project on busing in Denver Public Schools. They were aired on KGNU’s Sound Alternatives. Busing in Denver began in 1965 and was designed to make the school system more equal, instead of having schools that were predominantly White, Latino, or African American. In 1973, the Supreme Court ruled that the Denver Public Schools had deliberately segregated schools. The court ordered forced busing in an attempt to remedy the situation. While more than 20 years of busing brought some success in achieving racial balance, massive “White flight” led to a dearth of White students to be bused by the early 1990s.Today the school district is arguably more segregated than ever before.
Thanks to the generosity of the John W. Emery Family, in 2018 History Colorado hired an Assistant Curator of Oral History to manage all aspects of History Colorado’s oral history collections. In October of 2018, an initial survey of the 700 + recordings identified as oral histories began. The goal of the project includes adding the material to the Argus database and increasing its exposure and access.