Carole Porter lived in a little yellow house, a few doors from Kamala Harris who lived in a duplex on Bancroft street, in their ‘diverse Berkeley Flats, driver of social change neighbourhood, filled with black working class families’. Harris and Porter were part of a school integration program – they were ‘bussed’ to Thousand Oaks Elementary in Berkeley hills, an ‘affluent, white area’.
Being bussed to school meant being transported to schools in different neighbourhoods as a means to address racial segregation. The practice that was prevalent for years would shuttle students from rural areas to larger schools, where white students would be transported to minority schools and Black and Latino students to white-majority schools.
“We all sang, we loved music. The song Rocking’ Robin from the album Got to be There had come out. It was pop and easy to sing along,” reminisces Carole about her daily bus rides to school with her childhood friend, Kamala.
It was in 1970…