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“Look, okay, if you want to be against busing, fine, I'll join you, except that we will stop all busing. We will not transport children to private and parochial schools.” Well, at first they thought I was joking. But I wasn't joking. And I said to them, “You can't be against busing for purposes of desegregation and maintain busing for purposes of subsidizing parochial and private schools.” Well, we never got around to any further discussion of the busing issue among my colleagues on the Board of Regents, because they knew I wasn't joking. And I was prepared to join with civil rights organizations and what not to say, all right, let's stop all sort of busing. See, that would have been catastrophic.

When the white backlash occurred against busing, primarily for the purpose of integrating schools, I guess the emotions of the whites involved were pretty obvious, some of it pure racism. I think some of them who went into a black area thought also-- and this perhaps was a minority of whites, race probably was the bigger factor-- thought that there might be a decline in educational quality.

Which was not inevitable. They could raise the educational quality in those schools, the way they maintain them or raise them in white schools.

You're anticipating another question of mine, but let me finish