Is Separate Unequal?: Black Colleges and the Challenge to Desegregation

When racial segregation was the rule in southern schools, all-black universities like Jackson State, Alcorn State, and Mississippi Valley State represented the only opportunities for African Americans to obtain a college education. For that reason, the move toward desegregation triggered by Brown v, Board of Education was a mixed blessing for those committed to preserving the traditions of Historically Black Colleges and Universities. As Albert Samuels observes, Brown’s tenet that separate educational institutions are inherently unequal has for nearly half a century forced HBCUs to defend their very right to exist. In this book he reexamines the debate over desegregation and its impact on publicly funded HBCUs, exploring the contradictions and concerns that Brown created for African Americans over four decades and challenging the idea that separate is necessarily unequal. Because the Brown decision has come to embody the American Creed and is now a cultural icon, critical discussion of it can be difficult Samuels contends, however, that Brown was originally intended to address discrimination against blacks as individuals; when its focus shifted to entire educational systems.