ABSTRACT
In Seattle, Baton Rouge, and Chicago, William Bradford Reynolds pointed the Reagan administration away from forced busing. White flight loomed large in Reynolds's thought. In the 1970s, integrationists had downplayed the gravity, and sometimes even the existence, of the phenomenon, but by 1980 the importance of white flight was generally acknowledged, although there was no consensus about the reasons for it. The Bakersfield City School District served children from kindergarten through eighth grade, with high school students assigned to a separate countywide school district. When Bakersfield balked, the lawyers made plans for a lawsuit. The black member of the Bakersfield school board supported the plan, as did a former president of the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), but there was criticism from national civil rights leaders. In Bakersfield, the Reagan administration did not go far enough to satisfy most civil rights activists. The same cannot be said about Yonkers.
