Boston Busing in Chinatown, 1975 is a photo exhibition highlighting the mothers, students, and teachers who organized for educational equity during Boston’s court-ordered school desegregation. In 1975, when Boston Public Schools began busing elementary students to other neighborhoods, Chinese immigrant families faced a critical challenge: while desegregation aimed to provide equal access to quality education, the district had not addressed concerns about safety, communication barriers, and representation for Chinese children being bused into predominantly white neighborhoods.

In response, Chinese immigrant mothers organized to demand safety and educational rights for their children, culminating in a highly successful school boycott that brought the Boston School Committee to the negotiating table. Their victory was an early example of working-class immigrant women wielding collective power within Chinatown and at the city level—a story that has been largely absent from mainstream narratives about Boston’s busing crisis.

In July 2025, the Immigrant History Trail team gathered former teachers, parents, and students involved in this historic moment for a reunion picnic at Posner Hall, where Chinese parents issued their nine demands fifty years earlier. The gathering created a living, photographic “un-monument”—an opportunity for reflection, conversation, and intergenerational connection.

Boston Busing in Chinatown, 1975 juxtaposes photographs from the July 2025 reunion with rare archival images from 1975, celebrating the resilience of this community while inviting broader reconsideration of busing’s legacies across Boston.