Common Ground (book)

Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families is a nonfiction book by J. Anthony Lukas, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1985, that examines race relations in Boston, Massachusetts through the prism of desegregation busing. It received the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. The book traces the history of three families: the working-class African-American Twymons, the working-class Irish McGoffs and the middle-class Yankee Divers. It gives brief genealogical histories of each families, focusing on how the events they went through illuminated Boston history, before narrowing its focus to the racial tension of the 1960s and the 1970s. Through their stories, Common Ground focuses on racial and class conflicts in two Boston neighborhoods—the working-class Irish-American enclave of Charlestown, and the uneasily integrated South End.

Each family is directly involved in the busing crisis. The McGoffs are proud residents of Charlestown who see an attempt to change the dynamics of their school as an assault on their families. The Twymons have long endured sub-standard education and are hoping that busing will finally change this. Colin Diver, a Harvard Law School graduate and assistant to Mayor Kevin White, and his wife Joan Diver, director of The Hyams Foundation, move into the gentrifying South End, a block from one of the Twymon sisters, who lives with her children in the shoddily constructed Methunion Manor housing project. The Divers are in favor of busing, but the effects hit home when they learn that it may result in their own son being bused to a foreign neighborhood. After six years of combating racial and class tension and street violence, the Divers leave the city for suburban Newton.

...
Wikipedia