MAKING HISTORY TODAY: Media and U.S. Politics - Matthew Delmont on Why Busing Failed

Making History Today, produced by the History program at Fitchburg State University, connects the classroom to historians working in their fields. In these conversations, students discuss works assigned in class and develop questions for the authors, which are then posed in these episodes.

The first series of conversations emerges from Prof. Katherine Jewell's graduate course in Fitchburg State's online Master's program in History in summer 2023 on Media and U.S. Politics.

In this episode, students engage with Dr. Matthew Delmont, the Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Professor of History at Dartmouth College.  A Guggenheim Fellow and author of four books, Professor Delmont is an expert in African American History and the history of the civil rights movement, and his work explores these histories as they intertwine with media history, including his most recent book, Black Quotidian: Everyday History in African-American Newspapers (Stanford University Press, 2019).

In this episode, students raised questions regarding busing, with a focus on Boston, and how media enters this story that often focuses on policy and urban history. They discuss Delmont’s book, Why Busing Failed: Race, Media, and the National Resistance to School Desegregation (University of California Press, 2016).

Episode transcript can be found here.

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This episode was edited and sound mixed by Adam Fournier, a member of the Perseverantia staff and a student in the Communications Media department.

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