NEW STYLE SEGREGATION
Janssen, Peter A.
on Southern campuses new style Segregation by PETER A. JANSSEN npHE major public colleges and uni-versities in the Southeastern states have adopted a new policy concerning the admission of Negro...
...This color-blind policy also produces the potentially disabling side effect of virtually ignoring Negroes and their schools...
...There are, however, countless situations in which color-consciousness is essential for the elimination of invidious discrimination...
...In consequence, the student who spends four years in a predominately Negro institution may really have had only two or three years of college-level work...
...This fall the school contained only six faculty members and eighteen students...
...His articles have appeared in American Education, The Reporter, and U.S...
...not accepted by the whites," he said...
...The region's public universities, reaching for national prominence, are raising admission standards, increasing tuition, and placing new limits on the size of freshmen classes to concentrate on graduate and professional schools...
...These two schools each sent a visiting faculty member to teach at Wisconsin, one in history and one in art...
...A & M does not admit anyone who scores below 100 on a state test for high school seniors...
...Joseph Williams, dean of the school of education at the University of Georgia...
...Florida A & M, for example, has had trouble obtaining state support for its dwindling law school for years...
...The graduates of these segregated schools, of course, rarely meet the entrance qualifications of the predominately white universities...
...The color-blind attitude increases the gap separating Negro and white education in the South...
...Wisconsin also has worked out a faculty exchange with predominately Negro colleges...
...How has he been received by other students and the faculty...
...When I join a group of Tech students the conversation changes...
...graduates of Winston-Salem State College, 438...
...They have admitted a handful of Negroes, but not more than one per cent of their enrollment...
...Most of these projects are held in the summer in the form of workshops and institutes...
...commissioner of education, posed this troubling problem just a year ago in The Progressive: "Drawing distinctions based on race," wrote Foster, "runs counter to the PETER A. JANSSEN is the education editor of the Newhouse newspapers...
...A policeman arrested both Townsend and the white molester...
...God, it was nice," she said...
...I'm on display, something under glass...
...In an exchange program, Wisconsin has accepted three students on its Madison campus this semester from Texas Southern University and three from North Carolina College, both Negro schools...
...The Southeastern colleges, however, are attacking the problems of dual systems of higher education in their own states with less vigor...
...Five Negro faculty members from Southern institutions are now at Wisconsin to complete work on their doctorates...
...Administrators at Georgia Tech, for example, are quick to point out John Gill III, a mathematics honor student and editor of the student newspaper...
...Wisconsin has sent five of its own faculty members to North Carolina A & T College at Greensboro and Texas Southern...
...We just don't haul off and start a course in teaching the disadvantaged," said Dr...
...Administration officials, however, said they doubted that the state's political climate would allow them to recruit any Negroes, even in small numbers, at the graduate level...
...Graduates of Fay-etteville State College scored an average of 445...
...Harold Howe II, U.S...
...His idea was to improve the training of experienced Negro teachers and principals who showed leadership potential...
...Color-blindness is not enough...
...No, they were treated the same as other students...
...In the heart of Atlanta, Georgia Tech has twenty-five Negroes and 325 foreign students among its 7,000 students...
...But they seemed almost devoid of effort...
...Helen wanted to go to school outside the South, but her father asked her to stay in Tallahassee...
...That just isn't being done...
...When questioned about Negro education in the state, Dr...
...The University's administration is dragging its feet on the plan...
...It keeps Negroes out...
...They did not want to cause trouble...
...Godwin...
...A professor told him this semester that he would have to try harder than the rest of the class to prove himself...
...Townsend said he is accustomed to this type of treatment...
...This failure to try to improve Negro education is perhaps the largest difference between public universities in the North and South...
...We had an unfortunate experience with the first three Negroes we admitted," said Dr...
...We don't go out beating the bushes for Negro students," said Alan Robertson, dean of university relations at the University of Florida, "and we don't have any Negro faculty members...
...Commissioner of Education, said recently, "Negro colleges have proportionately fewer Ph.D.s on their faculties and pay them less than do other institutions...
...We can help the younger colored teachers, but a lot of the old ones are beyond any chance at all," a professor of education at the University of Virginia commented...
...Some of the large white public institutions are starting after-the-fact programs to upgrade the skills of Negro teachers already working in elementary and secondary schools...
...Florida A & M University illustrates the Negro school's dilemma...
...I thought I would have to practice by myself and live by myself, but I didn't...
...Everything is in apple pie order here...
...The Negroes who are admitted to these schools under the color-blind policy usually are better qualified than white students...
...It has no programs of student exchange with predominately Negro Florida A & M University across town, and does not plan any...
...We do have Negro policemen and Negro secretaries now...
...We'd be eliminating higher education for a lot of Negroes if we did that...
...As John Townsend, a senior at the University of Georgia, ate in an Athens drive-in where he worked last fall, a white man threatened him with a knife...
...Many educators say a gradual merger process has to be started to end the dual system...
...Most of our students just apply here," Edwin Thorpe, A & M's director of admissions, reported...
...the Negroes would spend five quarters instead of four for a master's degree, "and we'd give them extra help and try to jazz them up with motivation," Dr...
...Harrison replied...
...None had encountered what he termed serious hostility on campus, although most had experienced discrimination from individuals...
...Before transferring to Athens, he was the first Negro to integrate a junior college in Columbus, Georgia, his home town...
...Further, because Negro colleges receive most of their students from segregated, inferior public schools, they must devote a substantial portion of their instructional time to remedial work...
...Both are predominately Negro institutions...
...In keeping with the color-blind policy toward Negro college students, the predominately white schools have assumed a hands-off policy toward improving the education of Negroes at any level...
...When faculty members at the white universities try to help Negro teachers, as at the University of Florida, they frequently encounter opposition from their own administration...
...As the university moves upward there is an inclination of a larger portion of the student body to come from higher-income elements of society," Dr...
...Nigras [sic] are treated no different [sic] than any other students here," Dr...
...If Fulton had it to do over, and if he had the money, he would go to school in the North...
...school officials said they could not remember how many are Negroes...
...A few miles away in Raleigh, North Carolina State University has 100 Negroes—and 500 foreign students—in its enrollment of 10,200...
...They come on the same basis as anyone else who applies...
...Chancellor John Caldwell told me, "This campus is absolutely free and open...
...Administrators and officers of the schools say they do not make any efforts to recruit Negro students...
...The pressure was far greater there, he said...
...He was manager of the student laundry at A & M before he retired, and college expenses are a burden...
...A few schools do not even make student housing available for Negroes...
...grain of traditional liberal philosophy...
...Only one of the seven universities (Chapel Hill) has an Upward Bound program to help disadvantaged high school juniors and seniors prepare for college...
...There aren't enough Negroes here to form our own group, and we definitely are...
...The University of Florida in Gainesville has "about" eighty-six Negroes in an enrollment of 18,039, according to Dr...
...The issue really is not one of overt discrimination any more," according to Dr...
...Lewis said he understands that the proposal has "a reasonable chance" of starting next year...
...After we had been there a few minutes, a librarian entered, saying we were disturbing other students and asking us to speak softly...
...Instead, it is how we can focus attention on providing opportunity for the Negro...
...Yet Negroes require and deserve not equal but special treatment to help them close the educational gap created by generations of discrimination at every level of life...
...Virginia does not have scholarships earmarked for Negroes...
...Did Georgia Tech give them any help after they were admitted...
...The University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill has eighty-five Negroes among 13,350 students, and the number of Negroes is not likely to increase...
...The Southern schools cannot even give lip service to efforts to recruit Negro students...
...There is little doubt about who will win and lose in a merger...
...It gave me a whole new conception of them...
...White and Negro educators there usually agree about the problems, but not about the solutions...
...Most do...
...A recent study by Dr...
...The university gave them summer work in English and mathematics, followed by special counseling during the year...
...William Friday, university president...
...Few of the universities I visited have started programs to break this pattern despite large amounts of Federal funds available to improve schools attended by children from low-income families...
...When I got my first A, the other students went back and checked their grades with the professor...
...Graduation requirements would not be lowered...
...Although we lowered our voices, she kept reappearing, finally politely asking us to leave...
...She has been North just once in her life, to a music festival last summer at the University of Kansas...
...The University of Virginia in Charlottesville has sixty-eight Negroes—and 130 foreign students—among its 7,900 students...
...There can never be equality with separateness," says M. G. Miles, dean of students" at Florida A & M. However, Dr...
...Winfred L. Godwin, director of the Southern Regional Education Board, has warned, "People who say we should close the Negro colleges are almost irresponsible in a way...
...The average for North Carolina State College, the highest score for a Negro institution, was 480...
...My roommate—she was white —and I still write each other...
...on Southern campuses new style Segregation by PETER A. JANSSEN npHE major public colleges and uni-versities in the Southeastern states have adopted a new policy concerning the admission of Negro students...
...When these funds were used in university programs, they usually went into white elementary and secondary schools...
...In smaller university communities, Negro students often face an additional problem of blatant off-campus discrimination...
...Does Georgia Tech plan to recruit more Negroes...
...not have a single Negro faculty member...
...Florida A & M does not have the courses she thinks she needs, but she probably is not "qualified" for admission to Florida State...
...We don't recruit anyone but qualified students," Dr...
...It's no picnic here," he said...
...The average graduate of a Negro college scored far lower than the average white...
...News & World Report...
...administrators say the requirement, in effect, has been raised this year to 350, and will go higher...
...They do not offer Negroes scholarships, nor provide special tutoring and counseling for those who succeed in gaining admission...
...They couldn't believe it...
...Sitting outside an A & M classroom recently, she enthusiastically described the summer...
...Three Wisconsin students are attending Texas Southern with partial support from the Wisconsin Student Association...
...The quality of enrollees is so low...
...Last spring, Dr...
...Tall, thin, and reserved, Gill is the ninth Negro ever admitted to Georgia Tech, and he would rather attend school in the North...
...But the situation is getting a lot better...
...Commissioner of Education, wrote in a recent study of Negro education that "considered as a whole, the elementary and secondary education of Negro children...
...I asked four Negroes for interviews outside the library and student union at the University of Florida before Wayne Fulton, a sophomore sociology major from Miami, agreed to talk...
...Some are doing poorly, as expected, but many are doing spectacularly well...
...Earl J. McGrath, former U.S...
...They don't throw stones at me, but they hardly welcome me with open arms...
...G. W. Foster, Jr., former consultant to the U.S...
...Graduates of - predominately white University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill averaged 633 on the test...
...The slow progress of desegregation has left Negro schools with their inherent and often pragmatic inequities...
...She would like to transfer to Florida State because it has several courses in her major— music therapy—not offered at A & M. But she probably will not, "because I'm really not sure how well I'd do over there...
...Florida State University, also in Tallahassee, officially does not admit anyone who scores below 300 on the same test...
...Neither of us saw any other students in that wing of the library...
...Each has signed an agreement to return to his own school to teach after he receives his degree...
...Helen Johnson, dreaming of a summer in Kansas, knows that her future is closing in...
...Sometimes they work, and sometimes they do not...
...Since most Negro students are poorly-trained graduates of inferior segregated secondary schools, they do not qualify for admission into what have been white colleges and universities...
...This proposal, however, does not do away with the segregated Negro school...
...The universities' schools and departments of education are likely centers for plans to combat the dual system...
...Desegregation has sent some Negroes to predominately white elementary and secondary schools in Southern states, but few whites have ventured to journey in the opposite direction...
...A recent visit to public colleges in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia revealed that the new policy works just as effectively as the old...
...The white public universities still are ignoring—and thereby maintaining —the all-Negro elementary and secondary school systems...
...J. Bryant Kirk-land, dean of the school, admitted, "I've had limited direct contact with the students in predominately Negro colleges...
...Many Negro students approached on the predominately white campuses preferred not to talk with a reporter...
...They usually said they were worried about the administration's reaction...
...O. C. Aderhold, Georgia's president, told me...
...Lewis said...
...Hal Lewis, a Florida professor of education, drafted a proposal to waive entrance requirements to the graduate school of education for ten or fifteen Negroes a year...
...The degree of segregation at the large public colleges in the Southeast is almost absolute...
...They were all valedictorians in their high school class, but they flunked out...
...We couldn't take the time...
...The quality gap can be measured...
...And as the predominately white colleges raise their standards and costs, this disregard relegates most Negroes to small segregated Negro institutions, directly reinforcing the dual school system...
...J. Wayne Reitz, university president...
...The consequences of these pressures can be seen at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill...
...Only four of the 500 undergraduates in the school of education at North Carolina State University are Negroes...
...As solutions are avoided, the cost of the problems mounts...
...And nowhere is this more dramatically illustrated than in the field of public education...
...The prevailing pattern of teacher segregation in Negro elementary and secondary schools further works against attempts the universities might contemplate to improve Negro education...
...Until such opportunity is provided, at every level and in proportion to need, we are continuing to deprive our Negro fellow-Americans of the equal education to which as citizens they are constitutionally entitled...
...is so incomplete in scope and so substandard in quality that even if they met none of the economic barriers to higher education . . . many could not extend formal schooling beyond high school...
...More generations of Negro students are lost simply by attending the segregated public schools in their own states...
...Townsend talked with me in a small conference room on the fourth floor of the university library...
...Instead of strengthening A & M's law school, the state formed a new one at Florida State, which now has 116 students...
...Two Negro students interviewed later in the university library said the school's housing discrimination forces them to live off campus...
...We had to stop all remedial work for everyone a few years ago because of admissions pressure," said Dr...
...The color-blind policy has its effect...
...Most Northern schools at least go through the motions, and many have started special programs to attract Negroes who normally would not qualify...
...Florida State University in Tallahassee has forty Negroes among its 14,300 students...
...At each school I spoke with Negro students at random, seeking them out in libraries, student unions, bookstores, cafeterias, and other places where students gather...
...Yet help is desperately needed...
...We'd lower the admissions standards to get them in," he said, "but not to get them out...
...The tragedy of the dual system of life became clear in an interview with Helen Johnson, an attractive, soft-spoken A & M freshman...
...A few hours drive east, in Athens, the University of Georgia has about thirty Negroes among its 13,500 students...
...Edgar F. Shannon Jr., university president, explained that "because of our entrance qualifications, any Negro boy who is accepted here can get into Harvard or Yale, and he can get more scholarship help there...
...Howe proposes that Negro colleges concentrate on remedial work in the near future, perhaps keeping students five or six years for a bachelor's degree...
...Everybody can participate in every activity of this university...
...The institutions themselves, however, are doing little to advance this hope...
...Their qualifications aren't high enough for a lot of schools...
...You've got to remember, this is the South...
...The University of Wisconsin, for example, has recruited twenty-four Negroes from Southern states and Northern big cities whose college board scores were too low for routine admission...
...Edwin D. Harrison, president of the Georgia Institute of Technology, in an interview...
...Instead of openly trying to preserve the segregation prohibited thirteen years ago by the Supreme Court, they have formed a "color-blind" attitude, and now accept "qualified" students regardless of race...
...The universities train white teachers, who then return to white elementary and secondary schools, widening the gap between Negro and white education...
...They also would receive extra help from the university's psychological and reading clinics and the medical school...
...The color-blind policy prevails throughout the South...
...J. Carlyle Sitterson, university chancellor, explained...
...F.S.U...
...Ironically, many of the schools I visited, in states with large Negro populations, have more foreign students than Negroes...
...I just can't be me here," he said...
...When questioned, however, he added, "We don't make any efforts to admit Negro students...
...The problems are plentiful...
...Each student would have his own counselor...
...James C. Wallace, an assistant professor at North Carolina State, compared the scores of graduates of white and Negro colleges on the National Teachers Examination, a test given applicants for teaching jobs in many school systems...
...Most of them said they were trying to make the best of an uncomfortable situation so that following generations of Negroes could win easier admission to public higher education in their native states...
Vol. 31 • May 1967 • No. 5
