The following is a transcript of an October 1975 NPR interview between host David Ensor and then-Sens. Joe Biden, D-Del., and Edward Brooke, R-Mass.:
ENSOR: Anti-busing vote in the Senate late last month was a historic first that leaves a number of questions about the future. The usual opponents of busing were, for the first time, joined by half a dozen liberal Senators to approve by 50 to 43 language that was designed to cut back HEW’s role in the use of busing to achieve racial desegregation of schools. There’s disagreement about what the language means in practical terms, but Assistant Secretary Stephen Kurzman says he’s reading it to prohibit the department from requiring the implementation of any desegregation plan involving transportation of students unless transportation is required by court order. But HEW officials say that, while they do require desegregation plans of some school districts with the threat of loss of federal money, they don’t require busing per se, so redistricting, use of magnet schools, rearranging classes, and the like can be used, and if they get classes integrated enough to satisfy the courts without the use of busing then that’s fine with HEW. So department officials don’t think the new Senate language changes all that much. But even if what the Senate passed never becomes law or has little or no effect itself on the number of schoolchildren bused, the vote is significant. If the new anti-busing coalition holds together, there will be more votes like it. Practically every opportunity they get the House passes anti-busing language of one kind or another, and President Ford takes every chance to utter it, all of which raises the possibility of constitutional tests to come and, to jubilant anti-busers at least, the possibility of a constitutional amendment banning busing. But most observers agree with Massachusetts Republican Edward Brooke, who led opposition to the language during the Senate debate, that there’s no real chance of a change to the Constitution. Brooke thinks the vote was a fluke in many ways and came at a particularly bad time.
