In the 1970s there was no tougher educational issue “pressing on the public’s nervous system,” as then Cleveland Foundation director Homer Wadsworth put it, than the federal lawsuit filed in 1973 by the NAACP (National Association of Colored People) that charged the Cleveland public schools with segregation. In response, the foundation formed a civic study group in 1975 that examined similar cases in other districts and concluded that court-ordered desegregation was the suit’s inevitable outcome.

In the hope of preventing the violent protest that had erupted in Boston when the buses finally rolled, the foundation poured more than $1 million into a community-wide awareness campaign. Despite the discomfort certain political and business figures felt over the foundation’s leadership on this volatile issue, the board withstood the heat and maintained its support of three years of activities promoting peaceful desegregation sponsored by the Greater Cleveland Project, a coalition of nearly 60 community groups. The city remained calm when court-ordered busing began in Cleveland in 1979, setting an important precedent for the foundation to act as a moral leader in the future.