The school-to-prison pipeline is a system designed to funnel kids of color from working-class neighborhoods to the juvenile justice system. It has left severe and, in many cases, irreversible damage to the Black and Latinx community. It’s a pipeline, so that means many moving parts contribute to the deep scars of South LA’s youth. I will break this down in a three-part series I call, Surviving the Pipeline. In this episode, I will be looking at the educational end of the pipeline. And how LA’s forced bussing initiative has fallen short of Dr. King’s Dream. 

I reconnected with a few of my old classmates as the by-products of LA’s mandated integration of schools.

These are our stories.