Common Ground, Part 1 on AllMovie

J. Anthony Lukas' 1985 Pulitzer Prize winning book Common Ground served as the basis of the two-part TV movie Common Ground. Jane Curtin plays Alice McGoff, and CCH Pounder plays Rachel Twymon, two Boston housewives and mothers on opposite sides of one of the city's bitterest racial battles. In 1974, the decision is made to improve the level of education received by Boston's black youth. The solution: bus black kids to white schools, and vice versa, on a quota basis. Spearheading the movement is idealistic Harvard-educated attorney Colin Diver (Richard Thomas). Nobody emerges the winner of this debacle, as newly integrated Charleston High School becomes a battlefield. Part one of Common Ground premiered March 25, 1990 (see separate entry for details on part two).