Class divisions fractured the white antibusing movement in Charlotte.

Evidence

After 1971, the CPA faded from the scene as a political force, but it would take three more arduous years and a new grassroots movement by ordinary white and black citizens to overcome the legacies of the antibusing uprising and break the impasse between the district court and the municipal leadership. … In the wake of the Supreme Court defeat, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board adopted a new formula that concentrated the busing burden in the black and white neighborhoods on the north side and west side and that effectively exempted the affluent families in the southeast suburbs from two-way integration. … Judge McMillan observed that the “class discrimination” in the busing plan created neighborhood schooling “protectorates” in Myers Park and other politically connected and economically powerful areas, but he suspended judgment on the question of whether obvious socioeconomic inequality would produce unconstitutional racial resegregation. — Matthew D. Lassiter, The Suburban Origins of “Color-Blind”…, 101 (#expands, via linked claim)

Their withdrawal was physical, of course, as working-class whites abandoned the city for the still-segregated suburbs. But their retreat also took place in a larger sense, as working-class whites withdrew their support—financial, social, and political—from a society that they felt had abandoned them. Just as the desegregation of their neighborhoods had led them to reject the concept of “community,” the desegregation of the public spaces around those neighborhoods led them to rise up against Atlanta’s plans for progress, too. — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 252 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The antibusing revolt openly fought to protect suburban residential and consumer privileges. — Matthew D. Lassiter, The Suburban Origins of “Color-Blind”…, 51; Defeated at court, antibusing forces reframed resistance as class favoritism against working-class neighborhoods. — Matthew D. Lassiter, The Suburban Origins of “Color-Blind”…, 101; Desegregation of public spaces drove working-class whites to reject civic community and city progress — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 252

Related

• Defeated at court, antibusing forces reframed resistance as class favoritism against working-class neighborhoods. (similarity 0.92)
• The antibusing revolt openly fought to protect suburban residential and consumer privileges. (similarity 0.90)
• 1990s suburbans rebranded desegregation opposition as color-blind neighborhood protection (similarity 0.85)
• Court-ordered busing fought a class-and-race divide fused into the urban-suburban landscape. (similarity 0.85)
• Desegregation of public spaces drove working-class whites to reject civic community and city progress (similarity 0.84)
• White flight accelerated when working-class whites bore busing costs the affluent escaped. (similarity 0.83)
• A losing local antibusing revolt still rewrote national integration policy to protect suburbs. (similarity 0.83)
• Black working-class parents rejected one-way busing as unequal integration (similarity 0.83)
• The courts’ one-way model of integration shaped white suburban resistance to mutual busing. (similarity 0.82)
• The antibusing movement reframed a legal defeat as a political-popular fight that must extend. (similarity 0.82)
• White suburban parents reframed segregated schooling as earned rewards of individual merit (similarity 0.82)
• Antibusing forces framed their cause as upholding Brown’s color-blind principle rather than as resistance. (similarity 0.82)
• Forced into retreat, segregation rebranded itself in the language of choice and local autonomy. (similarity 0.82)
• A pro-integration countermovement actively mobilized to support Charlotte’s desegregation (similarity 0.82)
• White middle-class parents framed suburban privilege as earned individual reward, erasing government-sponsored segregation (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Defeated at court, antibusing forces reframed resistance as class favoritism against working-class neighborhoods. #expands (0.85) — Matthew D. Lassiter, The Suburban Origins of “Color-Blind”…, 101
• Desegregation of public spaces drove working-class whites to reject civic community and city progress #qualifies (0.75) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 252