"We're fighting for our civil rights now!"
—Antibusing sign in Pontiac, Mich.
TO millions of white Americans, there is a new "yellow peril" on the nation's streets and highways this fall. It consists of caravans of that familiar homey vehicle, the yellow school bus. This year, however, the school bus has become a symbol of one of the most controversial developments in American life: the forced transportation of children away from neighborhood schools to distant classrooms, in obedience to court-ordered desegregation plans.
Until recently, judicial rulings that schools must integrate were largely limited to the South, where Jim...