Viewing these ten large-scale photos in the park led me to learn more and realize what I had never understood before. This power of public art now leads me to share the following quotes and resources, especially the important booklet “Boston Busing in Chinatown, 1975 -2025″!

Daphne Xu: “Boston Busing in Chinatown, 1975”, 2026: aluminum prints mounted on komacel; February 2026 – May 2026 Rose Kennedy Greenway – Auntie Kay & Uncle Frank Chin Park

“Boston Busing in Chinatown, 1975 is a photo exhibition highlighting the mothers, students, and teachers who organized for educational equity during Boston’s court-ordered school desegregation. In 1975, when Boston Public Schools began busing elementary students to other neighborhoods, Chinese immigrant families faced a critical challenge: while desegregation aimed to provide equal access to quality education, the district had not addressed concerns about safety, communication barriers, and representation for Chinese children being bused into predominantly white neighborhoods.” ( quote from The Greenway Public Art, Daphne Xu)

“In response, Chinese immigrant mothers organized to demand safety and educational rights for their children, culminating in a highly successful school boycott that brought the Boston School Committee to the negotiating table. Their victory was an early example of working-class immigrant women wielding collective power within Chinatown and at the city level—a story that has been largely absent from mainstream narratives about Boston’s busing crisis.” ( quote from The Greenway Public Art, Daphne Xu)

“In July 2025, the Immigrant History Trail team gathered former teachers, parents, and students involved in this historic moment for a reunion picnic at Posner Hall, where Chinese parents issued their nine demands fifty years earlier. The gathering created a living, photographic “un-monument”—an opportunity for reflection, conversation, and intergenerational connection.”( quote from The Greenway Public Art, Daphne Xu)

“Boston Busing in Chinatown, 1975 juxtaposes photographs from the July 2025 reunion with rare archival images from 1975, celebrating the resilience of this community while inviting broader reconsideration of busing’s legacies across Boston.”( quote from The Greenway Public Art, Daphne Xu)

“The Parents Association victory was an early successful example of participatory democracy, the demand for fair treatment, and greater visibility. Working class immigrant women had also successfully articulated their voice within Chinatown’s social structure. Outside of Chinatown, the BCPA forced institutions to acknowledge the Chinatown neighborhood. The parents also built new bridges to other city populations – Latino parents, Black educators and politicians, the Boston Teachers Union – carving a new role for Chinatown in Boston city politics.” ( quote from Boston Busing in Chinatown,1975-2025 booklet )

“Daphne Xu (Canada/China) is an artist and filmmaker who explores the politics and poetics of place. Her works unfurl from cities in flux, tracing the interior lives of women and diasporic subjects caught between displacement and belonging, erasure and myth. Xu moves between 16mm and digital formats, using the camera as an instrument for embodied improvisation and encounter.” ( quote from Daphne Xu website )

KEY RESOURCES:
The Greenway Public Art, Daphne Xu: https://www.rosekennedygreenway.org/daphne-x

Boston Busing in Chinatown,1975-2025 booklet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sTAQXk6ncVOmmCmx_mV_axGWva4ou8c5/view

Daphne Xu website: daphne-xu.com/about