Before Brown: The Racial Integration of American Higher Education

Abstract

Before Brown: The Racial Integration of American Higher Education DAVID W. LEVY I. The landmark case of Brown v. Board ofEducation of Topeka' is known, at least in its general outline and result, to millions ofAmerican citizens. It may, in fact, be the most univer­ sally recognized of all of the decisions ever handed down by the Supreme Court of the United States. No reputable high school or college textbook in American history fails to mention it as one of those monumental determinations of the High Court that changed forever the fabric of American life. And there can be no doubt that the Brown case—followed as it was by spirited debate, invigorated efforts on behalfof integration, and bitter resistance by many whites—fully deserves the notice it has received since 1954. How is it possible, after all, to overestimate the importance of the decision that declared unconstitutional the long-established practice ofracial segregation in elementary and high school pul But while the Brown case resulted in a flood ofcommentary and debate and anger and violence, and while the Brown case has been retold many times and from numerous perspec­ tives by historians, participants, textbook writ­ ers, and others, the prior episode, centering around the legal attack on racial segregation in higher education, has been relatively little stud­ ied. Perhaps because the demolition of segre­ gation in the nation’s colleges and universities education?2 was accepted rather more calmly by the gen­ eral public, it has tended to be given much less attention. But that story too was an important one. It was a dramatic and profoundly signifi­ cant episode in the history of race relations in our country. It too was characterized by enor­ mous courage and heavily freighted with im­ plications and lessons about the complicated connections between law and social change. In the battle to rid American colleges and univer- RACIAL INTEGRATION 299 sities ofthe injustices ofsegregation, moreover, the Supreme Court played a decisive role . . . and one which paved the way for the Justices’ monumental opinion of 1954. II. In the late 1930s, when for practical pur­ poses the effective attack on segregated higher education began in earnest, the availability of post-secondary education for African Ameri­ cans was largely a matter of region. In the North, no state university prohibited the en­ trance of black students. Once they were on campus, however, they were subjected to vari­ ous sorts of discrimination, often connected with the university’s social and extra-curricu­ lar life. Some of that discrimination was for­ mal, but most of it was unwritten, quietly un­ derstood, and traditional. Northern private schools had varying policies, but Gunnar Myrdal, in his classic study of 1944, An American Dilemma, offered this generaliza­ tion: “Private universities in the North restrict Negroes in rough inverse relation to their ex­ cellence: the great universities—Harvard, Chi­ cago, Columbia, and so on, restrict Negroes to no significant extent if at all. . . . Most of the minorprivate universities and colleges prohibit or restrict Negroes. Some of these permit the entrance of a few token Negroes, probably to demonstrate a racial liberalism they do not feel.” Probably there were fewer than a dozen or so African-American faculty members in all northern colleges and universities.3 In the South, of course, things were very different. At the outbreak of World War II, seventeen states and the District of Columbia maintained, by law, separate school systems at all levels. The post-secondary education of African Americans in Southern states was car­ ried out in 117 all-black colleges. Thirty-six of these were public schools; ofthe private ones, only seven were not church-related.4 Atten­ dance in these black Southern colleges had been growing steadily: they had 2,600 students in 1916, 7,600 in 1924, 34,000 in 1938, and 44,000 in the 1945-46 academic year. Although this was an impressive rate of growth, it must be remembered that by 1940, one out ofevery twelve Southern white youths received some college education, while only one out ofa hun­ dred Southern black youths did. Just as impor­ tant, moreover, is that despite theirhealthy rate ofgrowth, and despite the myth that...