Running head: THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT AND HIGHER EDUCATION 1

The Civil Rights Movement and Higher Education

Cameron Jernigan, Satcha Sanon, and Jada Toledo

Florida State University

THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT AND HIGHER EDUCATION 2

Abstract

This paper will briefly explore different aspects of the civil rights movement, its effect on

higher education policy, student activism, and specific schools in the south. Understanding that it

is important to understand context, the research also explores and analyzes the events leading up

to the beginning of the civil rights movement, what policies looked like at that time and what

different factors affected the changes. Additionally, the research will discuss future implications

on how higher education during the civil rights movement has done for college students

presently.
THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT AND HIGHER EDUCATION 3

The story of American higher education is largely the story of American society. As

American society has changed and developed, so has the system of American higher education.

The civil rights movement is a pivotal part of American history, and an even more pivotal part of

the American education system. Before the civil rights act, Blacks who wanted to attend college

had little opportunity to attend institutions outside of Historically Black Colleges and

Universities. The civil rights movement was spearheaded by current college students and college

graduates. Because of the civil rights movement, Blacks were afforded rights they lacked for

centuries, and this movement could not have been possible without the work that was done

across the south by students.

History

The history of Blacks and higher education traces back to the late 1700s with many

strides and pivotal moments occuring to help the advancement of equal educational opportunities

for Blacks. The earliest record of a Black student in a higher education institution came in 1799

when John Chavis became the first ever Black individual to attend a college or university.

Chavis, who was a teacher and minister, attended what is now Washington and Lee University in

Lexington, VA. Although he is on record of being the first Black person to enroll in a public

college, there is no record of him receiving his degree (Titcomb, 2014). The first recognized

Black graduate of a college or university did not come until 37 years later. In 1836, Isaiah

DeGrasse became the first Black person on record to receive a bachelor's degree. He earned his

degree from Newark College, now known as the University of Delaware (Titcomb, 2014). In

1854, the first higher education institution for Black men was established. Ashmun Institute

[now known as Lincoln University] was the first institute of its kind went on to provide
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education to number of Black men with some notable alumni including Langston Hughes and

Thurgood Marshall (Titcomb, 2014).

After the signing of the second Morrill Act of 1890, which resulted in the inception of

historically black college and universities (HBCUs), major progress was made in terms of the

number of Black individuals attending postsecondary institutions and receiving degrees,

however, segregation was still prevalent, preventing equal and quality educational opportunities

for Blacks.

The journey towards the legal desegregation of higher education can be divided into three

time periods that were pivotal towards the equal opportunity of education. The first major period

came in the early 1900s which “focuses on early law that emphasized equal protection as

guaranteed by the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution (Stefkovich & Leas,

1994).” This decision supported the separate but equal ideology and placed emphasis on

providing separate facilities based on race.

In the late 1930s began the start of the second major period of desegregation where there

was a major shift of focus from institutions and facilities to individuals seeking out equal

education opportunities. During this time, important court cases such as Sweatt v. Painter (1950)

and McLaurin v. Oklahoma Regents (1950) made the Supreme Court question the separate but

equal doctrine and how it applied to higher education (Stefkovich & Leas, 1994). This would set

a foundation for the famous Brown v. Board of Education (1954) case that would later prove that

“when it comes to education, separate is not always equal (Stefkovich & Leas, 1994).” Although

the Brown v. Board of Education was very influential in the desegregation of public K-12

schools, it had absolutely no bearing on higher education institutions. While the case only
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specified the end of segregation of grade schools, some states followed suit and began admitting

African American undergraduate students into their institutions. “ By fall 1955, every state

university in the six states of the Border South had begun to admit Black undergraduates without

restriction to their major (​Wallenstein, 2009​).” Other states implemented policy changes as a

response to the ruling which altogether led to a “modest Black enrollment” in a short period of

time (​Wallenstein, 2009).

The third and final period is when major progression occurred, which allowed the focus

of efforts to shift from an individual basis and back to the institutional level. “Encompassing

litigation that occurred after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, this analysis focused on

cases that called for dismantling dual systems of education for Whites and Blacks and that

reconsidered the role of choice in this process (Stefkovich & Leas, 1994).” This ruling set a

significant precedent for higher education, as the separate but equal doctrine was completely

eliminated, and Blacks could now begin gaining access to any institution.

Civil Rights Act of 1964

Many efforts to desegregate schools were conducted for several years but all were

unsuccessful and proved to be a process over time, as opposed to a single event taking place.

Actual desegregation of higher education did not begin until 1964. “​Each year, from 1945 until

1957, Congress considered and failed to pass a civil rights bill (Civil Rights Act, 2016), ” that

would allow Blacks to gain access to equal postsecondary education. Moderate gains were made

in both 1957 and 1960 when the government passed laws that provided limited civil rights, but

unfortunately, none of these acts provided major changes for Blacks.

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The biggest proponent in the desegregation of colleges and universities came with the

Civil Rights Act of 1964. Signed by Lyndon B. Johnson based on the ideals of then assassinated

president John F. Kennedy, “​The Act outlawed discrimination on the basis of race, color,

religion, sex, or national origin, required equal access to public places and employment, and

enforced desegregation of schools and the right to vote. It did not end discrimination, but it did

open the door to further progress. (Civil Rights Act, 2016)” This policy officially required public

institutions, both grade schools and colleges to desegregate. While the popular argument is made

that Brown v. Board I (1954) & Brown v. Board II (1955) outlawed segregation of schools, “the

Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the regulations that implement Title IV [of the Act] provide an

enforcement mechanism for the Department of Education to use to investigate schools and

postsecondary institutions to determine if they are integrated,” forcing all states to abide by and

implement this new legislation (Civil Rights Act, 2016).

Higher Education Act of 1965

Following the implementation of the Civil Rights Act the year prior, there was a major

wave of enrollment of Black students at predominantly White college and universities

nationwide. With a population to serve, along with supporting the greater numbers of students

now seeking higher education, President Johnson signed the Higher Education Act of 1965 to

provide more resources and funding for students to attend higher education institutions. This

legislation would relieve some of the financial burden of attending a college or university,

provided federal resources for both students and institutions, and created many community

service programs (Gould, 2015). “The Higher Education Act of 1965, in view of the Civil Rights

Act of 1964, spurred the beginnings of desegregation at historically White private institutions of
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higher education by offering as new inducements a variety of new federal programs

(Wallenstein, 2009).” One of the most prominent programs that came from this legislation was

the inception of Federal TRIO programs. TRIO programs got their start from a series of three

programs: Upward Bound, Talent Search, and Student Support Services; all of which were in

response to providing services and assistance to disadvantaged students attaining a

postsecondary education (U.S. Department of Education, 2015). Since its origin, the TRIO

programs grew and expanded to more than its three original programming including the Ronald

E. McNair Scholars Program, Educational Opportunity Centers, Veterans Upward Bound, and

Upward Bound Math-Science, all of which uphold the same purposes of the preceding programs.

Integration and HBCUs

The ​Plessy v. Ferguson​ case in 1896 created the “Separate but Equal” doctrine which

became the requirement for how K-12 schools would be run for the next 50 years in certain parts

of the United States. This decision created segregation, and was overturned in 1954 by Brown v.

Board of Education case. Because of the separate but equal doctrine created by the ​Plessy V.

Ferguson​ case, there was a need for Black teachers to teach at these segregated schools. This

created a push for the education of Blacks, namely in the southern region where this law was

passed, which forced some HBCUs to focus on teacher education and training programs to meet

this demand (Department of Education, 1991).

HBCUs became a possibility during the 2nd Morrill Act in 1890. This act required states

that had established a land grant institution from the first Morrill Act that restricted the

attendance of Black students, to establish another land grant institution that was specifically for

Black students. Before this time, there was formal legislation in place that made educating
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Blacks illegal in certain parts of the United States. The first HBCU, The Institute for Colored

Youth, which is now Cheyney University in Pennsylvania, was founded in 1837, and the next

two were founded in Pennsylvania and Ohio respectively. HBCUs at the time were actually a

way to educate those who had no prior education, and it wasn't until later that HBCUs started

educating at the college level and granting degrees. For example, The Institute for Colored Youth

opened in 1837 but didn't begin granting bachelor’s level degrees until 1913. Because of this,

Blacks were being educated, but still were held back from certain opportunities (Department of

Education, 1991).

Although major predominantly White colleges and universities began desegregating

around 1954, Black students were not being recruited, were not generally welcome and were not

graduating. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 required that Black students be admitted and allowed

to attend predominantly White institutions, but did nothing to make sure that they were being

supported. Earlier cases such as ​McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents,​ and ​Sweatt v. Painter,​

both in 1950, were supposed to create comparable learning environments and supportive spaces

for Black students, but there is no supportive evidence to say that was achieved (Department of

Education, 1991). The lack of graduating Black students in these institutions was due in part to

the threat of violence from their White counterparts, the hatred they received from their faculty,

and the lack of support they received from staff. In addition, when the colleges and universities

began desegregation, the focus was on Black students integrating into the White institutions;

white students were not attending or integrating into Historically Black Colleges and

Universities. Because of the preconceived notion that HBCUs were inferior, integration did not

occur widely, if at all in these institutions (Kean, 2008).

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The lack of recruitment efforts and underrepresentation caused for a push by student

organizations to administration to change admission practices to make more progress toward

racial and ethnic diversity (Thelin, 2018).

Student Activism

The Civil Rights Movement was a monumental time for activism in higher education.

Students, faculty, and staff all took part in both local and national protesting and organizing.

Involvement in the movement began as early as 1955 with the Montgomery Bus Boycott in

Montgomery, Alabama. Students and staff at Alabama State University took part in the year long

boycott in efforts to desegregate the transportation system. In fact, the boycott was started by

Alabama State University English professor Jo Ann Robinson, who had been considering a bus

boycott in Montgomery for some time, printed thousands of fliers asking the city’s Black

population to boycott the bus system for one day, December 5, 1955, after Rosa Parks was

arrested four days prior (Robinson, 1987, p. 55). With the help of students and other staff, they

were able to spread the word to most of the city’s Black population and have a successful

boycott. After the success of the one-day boycott, local ministers, including Dr. Martin Luther

King, Jr. and Ralph Abernathy, helped to continue the boycott for the next year, until in when the

Supreme Court found segregation on public transportation to be unconstitutional in ​Browder v.

Gayle​.

Greensboro Four & the Sit-In Movement

While students were heavily involved in the movement in many ways from the very

beginning, student-led activism and student activism without the intervention of older,

non-student leaders was not as common. The first prominent instance of this happened on
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February 1, 1960 in Greensboro, North Carolina with students at the historically Black North

Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (NC A&T). Four young Black students,

Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair Jr., and David Richmond, inspired by Dr. Martin

Luther King, staged a sit-in at the Whites-only lunch counter at Woolworth’s department store in

downtown Greensboro. They bought items at the non-segregated department store, before sitting

down at the Whites-only lunch counter and asked to be served (Morgan and Davies, 2012, p.1).

After being refused service, they refused to leave and remained at the store until it closed. They

returned the next day with over twenty more Black students, both from NC A&T and Bennett

College, a nearby Black women’s college. By the fourth day of the sit-in, over 300 people took

part and other local stores began being targets for sit-ins (Branch, 2013, p. 16).

Days after the initial sit-in, similar protests happened in nearby North Carolina cities

Raleigh, Durham, Winston-Salem, and High Point. Eventually, news would spread to other

southern states, and sit-ins began to happen all over the south. Students at Fisk University in

Nashville, Tennessee, at both Florida State University and at Florida A&M University in

Tallahassee, Florida, and several historically black schools that compromised the Atlanta

University Center in Atlanta, Georgia, among others, all took part in a national sit-in movement

to push local, state, and national governments to abolish segregation in public spaces.While

situated primarily in southern states such as North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee,

Virginia, and Texas, you also found states outside of the south taking part in the wave of sit-ins.

Baltimore, Maryland was one of the first cities outside of the south to take part in the movement

and stage a sit-in to protest racial segregation. In fact, Baltimore would go on to stage two sit-ins

in 1960, first in February by students at local HBCUs, immediately after the Greensboro sit-ins,
THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT AND HIGHER EDUCATION 11

and later in June by local Baltimore residents, which included high schools students (Associated

Press, 2013).

The Formation of SNCC

The wave of sit-ins in the early months of 1960 proved to be successful. While nowhere

near changing laws, or the opinions of many White segregationists, they proved that students had

strong leadership and organizing ability and the potential to have large scale impact on the

movement moving forward. During the first week of April 1960, almost 100 student leaders met

at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, a center for interracial discussion, to exchange

contact information and organize ideas. Due to the success of the meeting, the Southern Christian

Leadership Conference director organized a second meeting of student organizers at Shaw

University, a historically Black university located in Raleigh, North Carolina, less than two hours

from where the first sit-in had occurred two months prior.

The weekend of April 15, almost 150 Black student sit-in organizers, most from around

the southern United States, as well delegates from civil rights organizations like the Congress of

Racial Equality (CORE), Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and the Fellowship of

Reconciliation (FOR), gathered in Raleigh at Shaw University for the conference (Carson, 1995,

p. 21). They spent the weekend discussing more strategies for the movement. At the behest of

Martin Luther King Jr., they would also begin conversations for the formation of a new student

led civil rights organization, what would eventually become the Student Nonviolent

Coordinating Committee.

The first official meeting of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee took place

in Atlanta, Georgia a few months later on May 13-14, with 11 students in attendance. Although
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they were without funds to operate, they were still able to work as a functioning organization

after SCLC director, Ella Baker, gave them a corner of of the SCLC office in Atlanta to operate

out of (Carson, 1995, p. 25). Over the next few months, SNCC would change and grow, its focus

changing as well, laying the foundation to eventually growing into being known as the “shock

troops” of the revolution.

Freedom Rides

Moving into 1961, student activists, some members of SNCC and some not, continued to

conduct sit-ins in southern cities, including in Rock Hill, South Carolina. After learning that the

initial students were jailed, they attempted a “jail-in” by intentionally being arrested in Rock Hill

for requesting services at a lunch counter, and denying bond after being jailed, in an attempt to

promote the “jail, no bail” mentality. After being in jail for a month, they realized that few other

college students were willing to be jailed for an extended period of time. They were eventually

forced to concede their mission (Carson, 1995, p. 32). In spite of this failure, they would soon

learn of an opportunity to build off the dying momentum from the sit-in movement: freedom

rides.

The Freedom Rides were originally conceived by the Congress of Racial Equality as a

means of protesting racial segregation during interstate travel. The buses, with integrated

passengers, would ride from a northern or midwestern city through southern states, lasting

anywhere between 1-14 days. On the first of several freedom rides were two members of SNCC,

John Lewis and Henry Thomas. The riders faced violence from white mobs, the Klu Klux Klan,

and arrests in many southern cities, primarily in Birmingham, Alabama and Anniston, Alabama,

where violence was worsening to the extent that Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy sent
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officials to evacuate the riders (Branch, 2013, p. 24). Freedom Rides would continue throughout

the summer of 1961, with SNCC sponsoring several of these rides. They would eventually

culminate in pressuring the Kennedy administration and the Interstate Commerce Commission to

abide by the federal laws that mandated integrated interstate travel (Arsenault, 2006, p. 438). Not

only that, news of the protests and the violence that riders faced spread nationwide and alarmed

the nation of what was taking place in the south.

Voter Registration

One of the most enduring and successful programs of SNCC was their voter registration

efforts throughout the south. Led by Bob Moses, their first large scale project was in McComb,

Mississippi. With funding from the Voter Education Project, a project federally endorsed by the

Kennedy Administration, they were able to expand efforts into the Mississippi Delta, around

Albany, Georgia, and into the Black Belt of Alabama. It was at this point that organizing made

the final transition from campus centric direct action efforts, to larger scale, community driven

efforts on a national scale. SNCC also took part in large scale voting rights efforts in conjunction

with non-student led organizations like the SCLC and CORE. Some of the most notable of these

efforts were Freedom Summer in Mississippi in 1964, as well as in Selma, Alabama in 1965,

both of which pushed Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

#BlackLivesMatter and Future Implications

The Black Lives Matter movement is a movement started in response to the murder of

Trayvon Martin, and his killers acquittal (Her Story). The Black Lives Matter movement is

largely grounded in the frustrations of Black Americans in regards to police brutality, mass

incarceration of Blacks, and the overall lack of justice for Blacks in the United States criminal
THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT AND HIGHER EDUCATION 14

justice system. Some see the Black Lives Matter movement as a continuation of the Civil Rights

Movement, picking up where it left off years ago (Clayton, 2018). There are many similarities

between the two movements, but there are also many differences. On campuses across the United

States, students are creating organizations and finding more creative way to get their demands

met. Students have taken a more academic approach by fighting for more diversity within their

faculty, more mental health for Black students, and stricter policies against offensive acts.

(Somashekhar, 2015).

The biggest differences between the Black Lives Matter movement and the Civil Rights

Movement is the current use of technology and the organizational structure. Students are

protesting and demonstrating in strikingly similar ways to the Civil Rights Movement, with

marches, die-ins, and other demonstrations. The use of social media completely exacerbates the

attention given to these demonstrations, and without a proper top-down, centralized leadership

structure, the movement is seen as unorganized and not widely accepted (Clayton, 2018). This

gives us an idea of what to expect from the current social movement surrounding Blacks in the

United States, and what we may see from future movements.

Conclusion

The Civil Rights Movement was an important and profound period for American society,

but specifically for colleges and universities. The need for the civil rights movement is evident

when reflecting on the treatment of Blacks and the education, or lack thereof, that they were

afforded over time. Reflecting on the research cited in this work, its evident that the Civil Rights

Movement would not have been a possibility without college students, college educated leaders,

and Historically Black Colleges and Universities. The downfalls and victories of American
THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT AND HIGHER EDUCATION 15

history are well reflected in its education system and the policies that shaped the future of all

Blacks in America, especially the civil rights movement.

Between 1954-1968, the landscape of higher education was irrevocably changed by the

involvement of students organizing and protesting as part of the movement, as well as the

legislation passed due to the movement’s successes. Blacks of all ages would not have been able

to vote for the first time if not for the work of students. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Higher

Education Act of 1965, and Voting Rights Act of 1965 would not have passed without the work

of college students organizing in the early 1960’s. Black students would not have been able to

integrate and eventually graduate from predominantly white colleges in the south without student

protests and shows of activism placing pressure on governors, legislators, and school

administrators.

History has shown that college students impacted the Civil Rights Movement

tremendously, and as a result, changed what higher education looked like for the next generation

of students, staff, and faculty. While students affected the Civil Rights Movement, the Civil

Rights Movement also affected the students. The passing of the acts and policies of this time

allowed Black students to take advantage of more educational opportunities that would prove to

improve the lives and opportunities available for generations to come.

THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT AND HIGHER EDUCATION 16

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