Since Drummer boarded that bus, decades of white flight have chipped away at the gains made by desegregation efforts. Today, Boston’s schools are even more segregated than they were before busing began: 86 percent of its students are nonwhite and, as of the 2014-15 school year, 78 percent are low income. In Boston and across the country, this trend toward resegregation is compounded by waning teacher diversity: Classrooms filled entirely with black and Latino children often have a white teacher at the blackboard. These realities are underscored by structural fault lines outside the classroom. Incidents of police brutality have prompted communities of color to question the narrative of civil-rights progress. Downward mobility threatens even those black families that have gained some financial stability, and racial discord is at one of the highest levels it’s been in decades.

Although segregated educational experiences only deepen these fault lines, many advocates have abandoned desegregation as a viable instrument for achieving greater equity. Federal court orders mandating desegregation remain on the books in more than 300 districts, but they are largely ignored or forgotten­. Instead, many urban school districts are charged with educating student populations that are overwhelmingly black, Hispanic, and poor as they navigate the unique psychological trauma that is specific to communities of color.

Civil-rights activists and policy wonks have long debated which is a more effective method of advancing social goals: changing hearts or changing laws? Does one lead to more authentic, enduring change? In Boston, it took a court order to seat black students next to their white peers—but it took people like Drummer and Linehan to show that true interracial solidarity was possible. The story of integration in Boston is defined by the lag between the legal change and the cultural shift: Did Boston, as Drummer has often wondered, “sacrifice a school district to save a city?” As both Drummer and Linehan retire this year, after a lifetime of service to Boston’s students, their story toggles between changing laws and changing hearts—the delicate balancing act at the core of all social progress.

Boston’s busing plan represented a judicial remedy for what was—at its core—an emotional divide that separated communities along racial lines. As policymakers meticulously drew up busing routes that crisscrossed the city, people like Drummer and Linehan were left to deal with the emotional fallout in schools across Boston. They describe their first few years at South Boston High, or “Southie,” as intense and filled with violence—embodying the broader conflict surrounding the effort to integrate de facto segregated school systems across northern cities. As community members protested outside the school, tensions escalated inside. According to Drummer and Linehan, most of the older staff members avoided interactions with colleagues of a different race and, at times, would even incite more violence among the students. “Every time the bell would ring, it was like a boxing match,” Drummer recalled. “Round one! Round two!” Much younger than most of the other school employees, the two women gravitated toward each other, finding solace and companionship amid the chaos. “They would put a black aide and white aide together,” explained Linehan. “The older ones didn’t get along—the kids saw it. But we got along so well. We were there to support each other.”