Earlier, national television as well as the local newspapers depicted the resistance to a court order for involuntary busing of some 24,000 out of 72,000 pupils at the opening of the public schools in Boston in September, 1975. The depth of the resistance was reflected by reports that at that time there were 1,550 city, district and state police and 100 U.S. Marshals, backed by Massachusetts troops, stationed in Boston to assure compliance with the court order. Not as widely publicized have been reports since in the Christian Science Monitor of the drop from about 90,000 Boston public school students (60% white) in 1972 to about 59,000 (26% white) in 1988 after over thirteen years of busing for "desegregation", over deep but ineffective opposition.

The justification for the Boston busing order rested upon the trial judge's finding that Boston school authorities had intentionally segregated their schools and that it was authorized by Supreme Court interpretations of Brown v. Board of Education (Brown I, 347 U.S. 483 (1954); Brown II, 349 U.S. 294 (1955)).

But no such showing of "de jure segregation" was required by Crawford. (This aspect of the Crawford decision was later reversed by an amendment to the California Constitution, Article I, Section 7(a), approved by California voters on November 6, 1979. The amendment was upheld in Crawford v. Board of Education, 113 Cal.App.3d 633 (1980) (Crawford II), which was affirmed by the United States Supreme Court in 1982 in Crawford v. Los Angeles Board of Education, 458 U.S. 527 (Crawford III).

The Crawford I decision on June 28, 1976, had been followed by a trial in Carlin v. Board of Education, San Diego Unified School District, in which plaintiffs' counsel argued a similar expansion of judicial power (that is, ordering students bused on a racial basis to correct "de facto" segregation) be applied in San Diego. Their tone, as reflected by the following excerpts from their argument reported in The San Diego Union on January 25, 1977, was similar to their counterparts in Los Angeles:

(T)he "time for voluntary plans is over... they only postpone the inevitable".... (counsel for plaintiffs).

(T)he court) asked, "Do you think that it is the duty