CAAS & AACEE Speaker Series: Bob Forrant

This is a story about Southeast Asian and Latino parents in Lowell, MA who confronted the Lowell School Committee in the late 1970s and 1980s, demanding that schools be desegregated and that their children have equal educational opportunities. While the school struggle unfolded, acts of anti-Asian and anti-Latino violence were perpetrated in Greater Boston and around the country, including the tragic death of Vandy Phorng, a 13-year-old Cambodian American in 1987. Following his death, the federal lawsuit that Southeast Asian and Latino parents had filed moved through the federal court for two years before the city settled. However, further racism was exhibited when opponents of desegregation placed a nonbinding question to make English the official language of Lowell on the ballot and it passed easily. Though it may not seem like it at first, this is a story of possibilities, of how a coalition of parents stood up to bigotry and entrenched political power and won. At great personal risk, they improved their children’s schools and, by extension, all schools in the city.

To read the publication, please visit: https://scholarworks.umb.edu/iaas_pubs/53/

Lunch provided

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Host or Publisher UMass Lowell Asian American Center (AACEE)