Taking the Pulse of HBCUs

8/4/2019 Taking the Pulse of HBCUs

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A R T I C L E S

Taking the Pulse of Historically Black Colleges

Sheldon Avery

Published online: 4 July 2009

# Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2009

The federal Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended, defines a

historically black institution of higher education as any historically black

college or university that was established prior to 1964, whose principle mission

was, and is, the education of black Americans.1 They are usually referred to as

HBCUs. Most private black colleges originated in the nineteen southern and

border states after the Civil War during and after Reconstruction (1867

1890).They were started by white northern missionaries and white and black church

groups, aided in the early years by the Freedmens Bureau, and in the later years

by white philanthropic foundations funded by Nelson Rockefeller, Andrew

Carnegie, Julius Rosenwald, and others. Most public black colleges, with the

exception of federally funded Howard University, were started after passage of

the Second Morrill Act in 1890 that provided federal funds for land grant

colleges.

Over time many black colleges closed or changed their mission and

curricula, and others were established. In 1900 only about 4,000 black

college students were enrolled in HBCUs, the great majority in the South.

Because of the prohibition against educating slaves before 1865 and the

meager resources provided for black education during Reconstruction, by

1900 only fifty-eight of the ninety-nine HBCUs had college-level curricula,

Acad. Quest. (2009) 22:327339

DOI 10.1007/s12129-009-9116-8

1Signed into U.S. law on November 8, 1965, the Higher Education Act of 1965 (Pub. L. No. 89-329), was

part of President Lyndon Johnsons Great Society domestic agenda. The act was reauthorized in 1968,

1972, 1976, 1980, 1986, 1992, 1998, and 2008. Before each reauthorization, Congress amends additional

h h l d li i f i i k h h


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and only 10 percent of black students were in postsecondary academic

programs. Between 1900 and 1930 black student enrollment had expanded to

29,000 and HBCUs began to develop into a viable higher education system.

Due to the Souths dual racial education system before the 1950s, HBCUswere the overwhelming source for an educated middle class of lawyers,

doctors, teachers, and leaders to serve the black community.2

Today there are about 103 HBCUs, slightly more than half private, the rest

public, and a few two-year institutions. Together they have graduated about

70 percent of all blacks who have received a college degree since the nations

founding. Although today only about 14 percent of black college students

attend HBCUs, 70 percent of all black doctors and dentists, 50 percent of all black engineers and public school teachers, and 35 percent of all black

attorneys received their bachelors degrees at an HBCU.3 Despite that record,

since the 1950s HBCUs have felt insecure about their future.

On May 24, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court announced its decision in the

school desegregation case Brown v. Board of Education.4 This landmark case

has influenced contemporary American social and political history more than

any other in the last half century by overturning Plessy v. Ferguson,5 the 1896

ruling that made segregated public railway cars (and by extension all public

facilities) constitutional if they were separate but equal in some undefined way.

Plessy and the segregated land grant colleges set up in the South by the Second

Morrill Act gave legitimacy to the white Souths public separation of the races.

Since 1935, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

(NAACP) had been seeking integration of public schools through court cases

challenging Plessy by representing individual black students seeking access to

segregated law schools in Maryland (1935), Missouri (1938), Oklahoma (1948)and Texas (1950).6 Although the NAACP won all these cases, the Supreme

2See Julian B. Roebuck and Komanduri S. Murty, Historically Black Colleges and Universities: Their

Place in American Higher Education (Westport, CN: Praeger, 1993), chap. 2, for a good, brief history of

HBCUs. Another solid synopsis of the history of HBCUs is Walter R. Allen et al., Historically Black

Colleges and Universities: Honoring the Past, Engaging the Present, Touching the Future, Journal of

Negro Education 76, no. 3 (Summer 2007): 26380.3United Negro College Fund, Fact Sheet, revised February 2008, http://give.uncf.org/site/DocServer/

AEOS_about_uncf_factsheet.pdf?docID=541.4Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).

328 Avery
http://give.uncf.org/site/DocServer/AEOS_about_uncf_factsheet.pdf?docID=541http://give.uncf.org/site/DocServer/AEOS_about_uncf_factsheet.pdf?docID=541http://give.uncf.org/site/DocServer/AEOS_about_uncf_factsheet.pdf?docID=541http://give.uncf.org/site/DocServer/AEOS_about_uncf_factsheet.pdf?docID=541


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Court had not overturned Plessy because none of the states involved had

provided anything remotely resembling equal facilities for black students. In

Brown, the Court dealt with a situation in Kansas where conditions for black

studentsschool buildings, equipment, teacher preparation, training, andsalarieswere close enough to those conditions for white students that the

judges had to rule on the constitutionality of the separate but equal doctrine

itself. Based in large measure on the testimony of black psychologist Kenneth

Clarks contention that requiring the separation of black and white students in

schools (and potentially in institutions of higher learning) created a sense of

inferiority among minority blacks and violated their Fourteenth Amendment

right to

equal protection before the law,

the Warren Court unanimouslyoverturnedPlessy and announced that racially separate schools were inherently

unequal and therefore unconstitutional.

The Brown decision was hailed by most blacks and whites who opposed

what were called Jim Crow laws, but a number of HBCU presidents and

others with connections to these southern and border state institutions were

concerned that the Courts decision to desegregate all elementary and

secondary schools could also be used to integrate or eliminate HBCUs. They

feared the Court would extend the rejection of the separate but equal

doctrine to all public colleges and universities in the South and that many

black students at public and private HBCUs would choose or transfer to

predominantly white public universities (PWIs) because of their superior

facilities, program offerings, and comparable tuition costs.7

The United Negro College Fund (UNCF), an association of most of the

private HBCUs, anticipated the Courts decision and was ready to challenge

any attempt to shut down HBCUs. Formed in 1944 by twenty-seven privateaccredited four-year HBCUs to coordinate fundraising from white and black

supporters of black higher education to raise money to provide scholarships,

improve facilities, and use the media to promote HBCUs, UNCF could speak

as one voice for some of the best known and most respected HBCUsFisk,

Morehouse, Spelman, Dillard but faced a dilemma following the Brown

decision. For ten years it had promoted its member colleges and HBCUs in

7See M Christopher Brown II Collegiate Desegregation and the Public Black College: A New Policy

Taking the Pulse of Historically Black Colleges 329


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general as superior to PWIs for black students academically, socially,

psychologically, and culturally. But now the Court was saying that

segregated schools were inherently inferior for minority students. How could

UNCF spokesman reconcile these messages? Would white business leadersstop supporting UNCF? Would black students abandon HBCUs? If UNCF

members and public HBCUS began actively recruiting white students to

compensate for likely diminished black enrollment, would that alter the

HBCUs social and academic environment and undermine their basic mission

to provide black students quality education and racial uplift?8

UNCFs solution was necessarily pragmatic. Seemingly accepting the

inevitability of desegregated higher education in the South, they argued that,given the southern states historic opposition to desegregation, the transition

would take an indefinite period of time to complete, echoing the Warren

Courts ambiguous call in 1955 for the states to use all deliberate speed to

carry out desegregation of the schools.9 This tactic worked for a while.

Corporate donations to UNCF held steady and few blacks successfully

enrolled in southern public PWIs. But in the 1960s conditions dramatically

changed in U.S. race relations. Under the leadership of Lyndon Johnson,

Congress responded to southern states resistance and delaying tactics to civil

rights reforms by passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Higher Education

Act of 1965, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.10

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 gave the executive branch tools needed to

enforce the Brown decision, including Title VI, which allowed the

government to withhold federal funds from colleges and universities that

were resisting desegregation. The Higher Education Act of 1965 provided

federal funds to help economically disadvantaged students attend college.During the same period, the slow rate of social change brought major race

riots; the emergence of radical black groups like the Nation of Islam and

Black Panthers demanding black power; and students on HBCU campuses,

like North Carolina A & T, Fisk, and Jackson State, staging protests against

Jim Crow laws and the Vietnam War, but also demanding more of a voice on

8Mary Beth Gasman, Rhetoric vs. Reality: The Fundraising Messages of the United Negro College Fundin the Immediate Aftermath of the Brown Decision, History of Education Quarterly 44, no. 1 (Spring

2004): 70 94

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campuses and in black communities. Even the Student Nonviolent

Coordinating Committee, founded in 1960 mostly by black students from

many HBCUs in support of Dr. Martin Luther Kings non-violent civil rights

movement, eventually turned to greater militancy and public protest beyondtactics supported by Dr. Kings Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Many HBCU presidents followed their students lead and became more

militant, supporting black studies courses and demanding greater equity in

funding for black colleges from state legislatures and the federal government.

In support of these financial demands, black scholars began to publish research

on conditions at HBCUs, especially on how black HBCU students fared in

comparison to black PWI students. Their research generally found that in mostquantitative and qualitative outcomes (e.g., retention and graduation rates,

transfers to graduate and professional schools, positive interaction with

students and faculty) black students seemed to be doing better at HBCUs

despite insufficient financial support from southern state legislatures.11

During the stormy late 1960s and early 1970s the issue of desegregat-

ing HBCUs seemed to fade into the background. The federal government

was not pressuring southern PWIs to do more than introduce race-neutral

admission standards, and allow a small number of high-achieving black

students to desegregate PWIs. But HBCUs were experiencing another

threat to their survival. A series of actions by the federal government was

dramatically altering black enrollments in higher education and at

HBCUs. Black higher education enrollments significantly increased when

black war veterans took advantage of the G.I. Bill and others joined the

second black migration from the South to northern cities for better paying

jobs and escape from southern-style racism. Outside the South publicPWIs were integrated and generally welcomed qualified black students

even before affirmative action took root. In parts of the South public

PWIs were beginning to accept more black students. As a result, although

black enrollments in higher education grew, the percentage of blacks at

11See, Harold Wenglinsky, The Educational Justification for Historically Black Colleges and Universities:

A Policy Response to the U.S. Supreme Court, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analyses 181 (Spring1996): 91103; Laura W. Perna et. al., The Status of Equity for Black Undergraduates in Public Higher

Education in the South: Still Separate and Unequal, Research in Higher Education 47, no. 2 (March



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HBCUs dropped dramatically. In the early 1960s, more than 70 percent of

all black students attended HBCUs; by 1968 that number dropped to 36

percent, and by 1976 to just 18 percent.12

In addition to declining enrollments, a number of the smaller HBCUs,those averaging less than one thousand students, were suffering from

administrative mismanagement, aging facilities, and accreditation problems.

There was still reason to fear that federal courts would use Brown to force

HBCUs to merge with nearby public PWIs or be closed down to speed up the

desegregation process. For example, even before the Brown decision, the

University of Kentucky had in 1951 opened all its programs to qualified

blacks, and Louisville Municipal College, a black college nearby, was shutdown and all but one of its eighteen black faculty dismissed.13

Frustrated with the slow pace of school desegregation in the South, the

Supreme Court ruled in Green School Board v. New Kent County in 1968

that the countys freedom of choice planwhereby parents could send their

children to either the black or white elementary and high school in that rural

eastern Virginia countywas ineffective in ending segregation because no

white parents had chosen the black schools and very few blacks had chosen the

white schools. The Court was now demanding that school boards do their

affirmative duty to desegregate their dual school systems. In Green, the Court

made clear that freedom of choice plans satisfied Brown and Brown II only if

they did not produce a white or a black school, but just a school.14 HBCU

supporters were concerned that the Court would apply Greens endorsement of

full integration to higher education and insist that southern states merge their

public colleges and universities, possibly resulting in the loss of many HBCUs.

In 1969 the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) notifiedten southern and border states that they were still in violation of the Civil

Rights Act of 1964 and called for each to submit desegregation plans.

Because newly elected president Richard Nixon dropped use of the threat to

suspend federal funds to states that did not comply, most of the ten states

ignored HEWs request. In 1970 the Legal Defense and Education Fund

(LDF), which had become independent of the NAACP in 1957, forced the

12Kenneth E. Redd, Historically Black Colleges and Universities: Making a Comeback, New Directions

f Hi h Ed ti 102 (S 1998) 33 43

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issue by suing HEW for failing to enforce Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. In

Adams v. Richardson (19701973), a class action suit against HEW for

permitting a dual racial system of higher education in the states,15 the LDF

was joined by the National Association for Equal Educational Opportunity inHigher Education (NAFEO), formed in 1969 by black public and private

college presidents working together for the first time to lobby for greater state

and federal funding for HBCUs.16

The Adams cases did not resolve any of the outstanding legal issues but were

important for two reasons. First, it revealed deep differences about integration

within the black community, which the conflicting positions taken by the LDF

and NAFEO briefs in theAdams cases reflect. Second, it became clear in Adamsthat the federal courts were treating desegregation in higher education differently

from elementary and secondary schools, partly because a students choice of

school was more a factor in higher education. On the first matter, the underlying

difference between the positions of the LDF/NAACP and the NAFEO was that

the former were committed to full integration while the latter was more

interested in protecting HBCUs and preserving a viable black culture. The

NAACP/LDF leadership did not believe HBCUs would ever get the funding

necessary to compete with white colleges. NAFEO leaders feared integration

would lead to the demise of HBCUs.

The Adams cases were dismissed when the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of

Appeals in Washington, DC, ordered the states to submit desegregation plans

to HEW. In 1974 HEW accepted most of the plans. In 1975, a group of black

Mississippians dissatisfied with the inconclusive outcome of Adams filed a

class action suit against the Office of Civil Rights of the federal Department

of Education. Over time, Adams evolved into United States v. Fordice, alandmark case in desegregating higher education that took more than two

decades to be resolved.17

Mississippi was one of ten states challenged by Adams to present HEW

with a workable desegregation plan for higher education. The state had

the worst record of response to Brown. Although by 1870 Mississippi had

two private black colleges (Shaw University, later renamed Rust College,

and Tougaloo Normal and Manual Training School) and was the first



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southern state to create a black public land grant college (Alcorn

University in 1871), when whites regained political control after

Reconstruction in 1877 Mississippi reduced Alcorns status to a

vocational college and drastically cut its funding. By 1900 blacksrepresented 60 percent of Mississippis students at all levels, but received

only 19 percent of state funding.

Alcorn was Mississippis only black public college until the World War II era,

when Jackson State University (1940) and Mississippi Valley State University

(1946) were established. After the Brown decision in 1954 Mississippi became

the first state to create a segregationist Citizens Council and use interposition, a

modern form of state nullification of federal law, to resist school integration.Mississippis five public white universities resisted accepting any black students

until James Meredith won access to the University of Mississippi in 1961.

Meredith had to be escorted to campus by 16,000 federal troops, and ensuing

riots led to several deaths and hundreds wounded.18

When HEW accepted Mississippis desegregation plan in 1974, a group of

Mississippis black leaders in the Black Mississippians Council for Higher

Education were greatly dissatisfied with the states limited reforms. They

filed a class action suit, Ayers v. Waller, in January 1975.19 The plaintiffs in

Ayers were primarily interested in two legal issues raised by Brown not yet

resolved by the courts: Were Mississippis HBCUs legal, and if so could they

demand major financial enhancements from the state and federal government

to catch up with the states PWIs? The answers to these questions would

likely affect black higher education throughout the South.

The state of Mississippi claimed it had come into compliance with Brown by

increasing funding for the HBCUs, introducing race-neutral student admissionstandards at all public universities by using American College Test (ACT)

scores, and raising mission designation for Jackson State to allow it almost as

many masters and doctorate programs as the three PWIs. The U.S. Department

of Justice, which had joined the private plaintiffs in negotiating with state

authorities, agreed that the Mississippi plan did not meet HEWs criteria for

desegregating higher education. In 1987 the case came to trial and the federal

district court ruled that Mississippi was in compliance. On appeal to a full FifthCircuit Appeals Court in 1990, the district court decision was upheld, but in

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April 1991 the Supreme Court agreed to hear appeals to the Ayers case, now

named United States v. Fordice.20

In 1992, thirty-six years after Brown, the Rehnquist Supreme Court

overturned the Appeals Court and ruled that Mississippi had not taken adequatemeasures to desegregate higher education in the state and sent the case back to

the federal district court with suggestions for what had to be done to be in

compliance. In his majority opinion, Judge Byron White said, [A] State does

not discharge its constitutional obligations until it eradicates policies and

practices traceable to its prior de jure dual system that continue to foster

segregation.21 White pointed out that neither the ACT race-neutral admissions

standard nor the revised mission designation resulted in significant desegrega-tion of Mississippis eight public universities. He suggested the state facilitate

desegregation by merging or closing some of the schools.

Although the High Court had not ruled that desegregation of higher

education required the full integration of colleges, the Black Mississippians

Council was very disturbed by Judge Whites merger suggestion. They were

reminded again of HBCUs insecure status after Brown. Judge Clarence

Thomas, the only black member of the Supreme Court, was also concerned

by Judge Whites remark. In a concurring opinion, he emphasized the

positive impact HBCUs had on blacks through more than a century since the

Civil War. It would be ironic, to say the least, he added, if the institutions

that sustained blacks during segregation were themselves destroyed in an

effort to combat its vestiges.22

Judge Thomas did not join the Black Mississippians Council in criticizing

the Court for rejecting the plaintiffs demand for financial enhancements.

Judge White had made clear that if the plaintiffs demand for upgrading thethree black universities was so that they may be publicly financed,

exclusively black enclaves by private choice, we reject that request.23

Whether such an increase in funding is necessary to achieve a full

dismantlement under the standards we have outlined he added, is a

different question, and one that needs to be addressed on remand. Judge

20

Samuels, Is Separate Unequal? 98

102. United States v. Fordice, 112 S. Ct. 2727 (1992); the Ayers caselasted so long that its name changed several times. When it finally reached the Supreme Court, Kirk

Fordice was governor of Mississippi.



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Thomas agreed with Judge White, but made the important point that the

states could provide greater financial enhancements if they wished.

Although many supporters of civil rights celebrated Fordice as a landmark

victory in the struggle to desegregate higher education because it put greaterpressure on the states to comply with affirmative reform, black educators and

their supporters were disappointed with three aspects of the decision. First,

the Court had sent the case back to the federal district court without very

specific instructions. Second, the Court had not made clear that HBCUs were

constitutional and had hinted at the need for merging or closing some of them

to move desegregation forward. Third and most important to the private

plaintiffs, the Court had rejected the argument for requiring financialenhancements, or reparations, to compensate HBCUs for generations of

underfunding. HBCU supporters were not optimistic about the long-range

impact of Fordice on black higher education.

The High Courts that dealt with Brown and Fordice thirty years apart had

very different personnel and perspectivesthe Warren Court more liberal on

social issues, the Rehnquist Court more conservative but both shared an

important view of the Courts role in the legal and political life of the country.

Both Brown and Fordice decisions broke new ground in responding to

deeply rooted racial beliefs and attitudes, and both refrained from pushing the

changes they had wrought too quickly. The Warren Court called for all

deliberate speed, knowing that the South would resist strongly and possibly

violently and that the federal government would have to move forward

cautiously to bring improvement in race relations. The Rehnquist Court made

the same decision in sending the case back to the district court. Knowing that

what happened in Mississippi would influence other southern states and thatthe High Court could not impose a uniform list of desegregation criteria for

all noncompliant states, the district judge working with state officials and

leaders of the black community would be in a better position to reach

agreement on how to bring about desegregation and improved race relations.

It would take another fourteen years for that consensus to develop.

In October 1992, four months after the Fordice ruling, the Mississippi higher

education Board of Trustees filed a report with the federal district court listing anumber of ways the state could comply with the desegregation order. One of the

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Mississippi State, and by merging two white institutions, Mississippi University

for Women and the University of Southern Mississippi. Black educators saw this

as a move to eliminate all public black colleges in Mississippi except for Jackson

State, or as a scare tactic to get blacks to drop their demands for financialenhancements, open admissions enrollment, and other changes in the

desegregation plan being considered by the district court. In 1994 the district

judge rejected the merger idea and ordered Mississippi to create new programs

for Jackson State and Alcorn State and provide both with five million dollars for

educational advancement and racial diversity, including providing nonblack

scholarships to recruit white students. The court rejected open admissions but

ordered that high school grade point averages be added to ACT scores for race-neutral admissions to all eight universities.

Relieved that the immediate threat of shutting down two HBCUs was

removed, the black plaintiffs appealed the district courts plan to the Fifth Circuit,

claiming the money was insufficient and that without open admissions 40 percent

of academically disadvantaged black applicants would be denied access to higher

education. The appeals court upheld the lower courts plan and, in January 1998,

the Supreme Court denied the plaintiffs petition for writ of certiorari.

Since the 1980s, Mississippi, like most of the deep southern states, was

being slowly forced to accept the end of the most obvious vestiges of

segregation. Many white businessmen saw the unresolved Fordice case as a

barrier to economic expansion. In June 2000 newly elected governor Ronnie

Musgrove brought together blacks and whites involved in the case to work

on a settlement. In April 2001 an agreement was reached, which, if the

district court approved, would give the HBCUs most of what they had

demanded, including more than $500 million over seventeen years infinancial enhancements, making it the most expensive higher education

desegregation in American history.24 Specifically, the state would commit to

give Mississippis three HCUs $246 million for new programs, $75 million

for new facilities, a $70 million endowment (if the three schools achieved 10

percent nonblack enrollment for three consecutive years), and a $6.25 million

scholarship fund for low-income families. Jackson State would receive

several new Ph.D. programs and would join Mississippis three predomi-

nantly white universities as a top-tier comprehensive institution.25



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Some black plaintiffs, alumni, faculty, and students were not satisfied.

They said the financial enhancements were not enough to compete with the

white universities, did not remove inequities in black faculty salaries, did not

protect the academically disadvantaged students who needed open admissionto have higher education access, and that the three HBCUs would have

difficulty reaching 10 percent nonblack enrollment for three consecutive

years. The district court denied their motion to reconsider the agreement and

sent it to the state legislature to confirm its acceptance of the terms. Both

houses overwhelmingly approved the agreement and the district court judge

signed the compliance decree on February 15, 2002, thirty-seven years after

the case was first heard.Although some HBCUs are still in danger of closing, it will not likely be

because of a radical interpretation ofBrown. The High Court, Congress, and

the executive branch have all accepted that higher education, public as well

as private, involves a variety of institutions and student choice, and cannot be

treated the same as public elementary and secondary schools. Like some

PWIs forced to close in recent years, however, a number of HBCUs are in

trouble because of low endowments, low enrollments, administrative and

financial mismanagement, heavy debt, and/or loss of accreditation. Between

1996 and 2002 almost half of private HBCUs have received sanctions from

the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, the regional accrediting

agency for HBCUs and PWIs since 1931.26 Nevertheless, in recent years,

regardless of which party occupies the White House, the federal government

has clearly shown support for HBCUs. In 1980 Jimmy Carter signed

Executive Order 12232, establishing a program to overcome the effects of

discriminatory treatment and expand the capacity of historically blackcolleges and universities to provide quality education.27 Since then every

president from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush has issued similar

executive orders in support of HBCUs. For example, in 1986 the Higher

Education Act was amended to give HBCUs $170 million from 1987 to 1992

for infrastructure, enhancing program development, and research grants.

Between 1993 and 2003, federal support for HBCUs increased $639 million,

or 60 percent. Presidential executive orders have also created a Presidents

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Board of Advisors for HBCUs, which submit an annual report to the White

House, advise on policy matters concerning HBCUs, and monitor federal

agency compliance.28 Barak Obama, the first black president of the United

States, did not attend a black college, but he is likely to continue federalsupport for HBCUs.



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Taking the Pulse of HBCUs

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