METCO begins operating.

Officially the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity, the voluntary, one-way, integration program, it enables African-American students from Boston to attend suburban schools. The program grew out of a discussion by Boston area school superintendents in Brookline on December 14, 1965, founded by the Massachusetts Federation of Fair Housing and Equal Rights at MIT’s Kresge Auditorium on March 24, 1966, and approved by the Boston School Committee on March 28, 1966. In its first year, it buses 220 students to seven suburban school districts, expands over the years to include more than 3,000 students in Boston and Springfield by 2008, and continues today.