Segregation, Separatism, and Sectarianism: Ohio Blacks and Wilberforce University's Effort to Obtain Federal Funds, 1891

Abstract

A problem posed by the efforts of the last few years to integrate the faculties and student bodies of the nation's previously, almost exclusively, white colleges and universities is the fate of scores of smaller Southern black institutions of higher education now threatened with declining enrollments and a shortage of qualified faculty. Historically the victims of discriminatory funding and general neglect by Southern legislatures, or affiliated with the relatively poor black churches (and in both cases lacking a body of affluent alumni), many of these schools have remained financially marginal up to recent years when the Federal Government and the foundations began to take serious interest in them. Furthermore, racist notions of the uneducability of Blacks and of the place of Blacks in the social order, which have influenced the allocation of funds and the planning of curricula, have been responsible in the past for deemphasizing the liberal arts and the sciences in favor of industrial and vocational training. Thus, these institutions have been limited in their ability to offer the range and depth of education and the spacious, carefully planned learning environment available at the more amply endowed white institutions. It is not surprising, then, that no one has given serious thought to integrating these traditionally black institutions. Indeed, their black and white critics have seemed willing to allow those that cannot compete for students, staff, and resources in today's educational market to die a quiet, natural death. Ironically, however, if race has been a factor working to the detriment of these schools, whether in the past because of discrimination or in the present because of an attempt to end discrimination, it may also be the most