Fighting for Black Colleges

By Ellie McGrath

Beleaguered but valuable, they strive to keep their identity

The march setting out from the Atlanta University Center to the Georgia state capitol had a familiar look. In the lead was the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Surrounding him were 3,500 people carrying signs and singing civil rights songs. A demonstration for integration? Not at all. Crowds of black students kept shouting "Save our black colleges," and the chorus they chanted went: "We don't need no music/ All we want to do/ Is read and write/ And study hard/ And stay in an all-black school." When his turn came to speak, Jackson ringingly proclaimed: "Black colleges have done a better job of teaching children rejected by society than anybody else has." It was Black College Day 1981 and in Atlanta, Montgomery, Harrisburg, Raleigh and Tallahassee, tens of thousands of black marchers last week were out cheering for, yes, separate but equal education.

Twenty-seven years ago, the Supreme Court declared that, in education, separate and equal are a contradiction in terms. All during the 1970s, under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, state university systems with dual systems for blacks and whites--separate and notably unequal--were under pressure from the Federal Government to integrate further. The solution usually offered by Washington was to eliminate duplicate academic programs, sometimes by merging public all-black and all-white institutions, thus destroying the identity of the black schools.

Meanwhile, under the impetus of affirmative action, bright black students were being lured away from predominantly black private colleges, even such celebrated places as Fisk, Morehouse, Tuskegee Institute, Howard University and Spelman College. While the number of black college students more than tripled in the past two decades, the percentage enrolled in black colleges dropped from 82% in 1965 to about 28% in 1981. Now, inflation and the Reagan clampdown on student aid are striking hardest at black private colleges with tiny endowments and at students whose parents have roughly half the income of white parents. Even worse, black colleges have come under harsh attack from a few influential black educators on grounds that they reinforce racism. In an article in the Nation, for example, Psychologist Kenneth Clark wrote: "Black colleges perpetuate inferior academic standards for black students and award Jim Crow degrees that do not meet the standards of the average traditionally white colleges."

In the U.S. today there are 105 predominantly black colleges. About half belong to state university systems that have been engaged in legal battles with Washington over integration. But it is the private black colleges that have the oldest and strongest identity to defend.

Tuskegee Institute celebrated its 100th birthday this year. So did Spelman, a selective women's college in Atlanta that encourages black women to prepare for high-flying careers with demanding majors in premed, pre-law and computer sciences. Both schools are now getting second-and third-generation students. Partly because the older private schools were the only places where students could get an advanced education, such colleges produced most of the black leaders in America. Martin Luther King graduated from Morehouse College in Atlanta, as did Georgia State Senator Julian Bond. Former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young and Novelist Toni Morrison graduated from Howard University, where ex-National Urban League President Vernon Jordan got his law degree. Historian W.E.B. Du Bois received a B.A. from Fisk University in Nashville.

That list helps illustrate one important point: black colleges provide a supportive environment where the talented can learn to excel. Furthermore, they have always been willing to take risks with students who had relatively low entrance scores, picking applicants on the basis of leadership qualities. Says Dr. Charles Johnson, a dean at Meharry Medical College in Nashville: "We look at whether they want to help people." Adds Elias Blake, president of Clark College: "We're important to this republic. The mission of these colleges has been to make up for the education gap that the broader society has tended to leave unfilled."

A 1978 study found that freshmen at black colleges had lower SAT verbal scores than the national freshman average (336 vs. 474). But black colleges point out that for many of their applicants it is not a case of which college they pick, but whether they can go at all. The aim of the colleges is to move students along so that, by graduation, they have caught up with the rest of the country. Says Tuskegee Dean Walter Sapp: "Yes, we create an atmosphere where a student can play catchup, but we also have people in graduate schools all around the nation." In fact, 24% of black college students go on to graduate school (vs. 33% from white colleges).

Indeed, black colleges have a head start in doing what more and more white colleges must now do: educate badly prepared students on inadequate budgets. Many black colleges place heavy emphasis on testing and remedial training for freshmen in math, reading and writing. Teaching, more than pure scholarship, is emphasized in faculty advancement. Black educators also argue convincingly that the later success of black college graduates comes from the fact that such schools provide them with role models. They also give them a chance to succeed socially and academically, thus lifting them to levels of skill and confidence that not every black student could reach at white institutions, where blacks are often made to feel isolated and marginal.

Says Meharry's Johnson: "Integration is not for all blacks." A number of top students seem to agree. Hari Close, 20, a junior from Boston, turned down Amherst to go to Tuskegee. Says he: "It gives me the opportunity to be involved not only academically but socially and emotionally. It prepares you to be ready for everything."

During Tuskegee's centennial celebration last April, Vice President George Bush helicoptered onto the Alabama campus and promised that America's black institutions "will be preserved and strengthened in the years ahead." That was heartening news to hard-pressed black administrators, though they are still waiting to see what help will come and trying to live with fiscal difficulties made far worse by the Administration's new student-aid cuts. For the 41 private colleges that belong to the United Negro College Fund, endowment averages only $3,028 per student, compared with the national figure of $5,741 for four-year private schools. The average black family can contribute only $870 a year toward tuition. Besides, black institutions lack the strong alumni associations and million-dollar donors that keep many private colleges going. Three years ago, Fisk President Walter Leonard launched a fund-raising drive with a goal of $10.9 million. Says he: "Vanderbilt announced a $150 million drive over the same period to enhance its endowment--ours was to survive--and announced 33 months later that they had raised $191 million. Fisk raised $10.4 million."

The Reagan Administration has taken steps to help long-established black state schools. After years during which lawsuits and rejected integration proposals flew back and forth between state capitals and Washington, the Justice Department and the state of Louisiana have entered a "model" agreement that appears to avoid rigid numerical quotas, compliance orders and threats of fines and mergers. Instead, Louisiana and other states like North Carolina and South Carolina will enhance present open-admission programs by spending money on buildings and ambitious educational projects, and trying to put black colleges more on a par with their white counterparts.

South Carolina State College, for instance, will receive a $4.5 million business administration building, $2.1 million for faculty salaries and $7.8 million to establish new courses. Florida has promised to set up nine "unduplicated high-demand learning programs" at black Florida A & M University so as to attract white students. North Carolina, faced with a $10 million withholding of federal aid, ended an eleven-year battle by promising to establish a new graduate center at Winston-Salem and upgrade its traditionally black institutions. The state has agreed to a set of guidelines that may be adjusted at a future date: black students are expected to make up 10.6% of total enrollment at the white schools by 1986 and white students, 15% of enrollment at black.

At many of these historically black institutions, faculty and administration are relieved. But some civil rights activists are not so happy with Reagan's route. Jean Fairfax of the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which instigated suits against many recalcitrant states, is afraid that these states will renege on promises, as they have before, this time on the funds that are supposed to be pumped into black schools. The phrase "separate but equal," after all, was coined by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1896 to describe the way in which rights could be achieved without integration, and then flagrantly violated.

Some black schools, too, want money but do not want to create new programs simply to attract whites. Under orders to increase white enrollment to 30% of its total 2,200 student body, a coalition of faculty and students at Cheyney State College in Pennsylvania last year sued the Federal Government and the state, charging that such a demand would weaken the school and threaten its survival as a black institution. Cheyney was founded in 1837 and claims to be the nation's oldest black college. The school's supporters note that whites have always been welcome and now are 5% of the student body. They argue that instead of being forced to spend money on new programs, the college should enhance the courses it already has. Says E. Sonny Harris, president of Cheyney's faculty union: "Once we're brought up to par, then we can talk equality." --By Ellie McGrath. Reported by Joseph N. Boyce/Atlanta and Janice C. Simpson/Cheyney

With reporting by Joseph N. Boyce/Atlanta, Janice C. Simpson/Cheyney

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