The State Must Provide

May 3, 2021
Atlantic staff writer Harris debuts with a sharp and vigorous examination of “the lasting wounds of segregation in higher education.” He traces the battle over equal access from the establishment of the South’s first integrated college in 1855, through the Jim Crow era, when Southern states such as Missouri avoided creating in-state programs for Black graduate students by paying to send them to schools in other states, to recent Supreme Court decisions against race-conscious admissions that have kept Black enrollments disproportionately low. The history is enriched with vivid portraits of pioneers such as George Washington Carver, who attended Iowa’s Simpson College in 1891; Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher, on whose behalf the NAACP fought to integrate the University of Oklahoma; and Lloyd Gaines, who disappeared after winning his discrimination lawsuit against the University of Missouri School of Law. Harris concludes with a look at contemporary battles over state funding for historically Black colleges and universities and efforts by students and scholars, including Ruth Simmons, the first Black president of an Ivy League university, to examine the “legacies of slavery and discrimination” at American colleges. Fluently organized and lucidly written, this thought-provoking exposé is a worthy contribution to the debate over how to make American education more equitable.

June 15, 2021
How the legacy of discrimination still affects opportunities for Black students in the realm of higher education. Atlantic staff writer Harris, a former reporter at the Chronicle of Higher Education, makes his book debut with an illuminating examination of Black students' access to college, arguing forcefully that integrated colleges have failed Blacks. Even though Black colleges "educate 80 percent of Black judges, 50 percent of Black lawyers and doctors, and 25 percent of Black science, technology, math, and engineering graduates," they remain severely underfunded. The author traces the history of educational opportunities for Blacks beginning in the 19th century, when two noted institutions were established: Oberlin, in Ohio, and Berea, in Kentucky. Both were determined to offer interracial education, often flouting local laws--and, in Berea's case, the wrath of slaveholders--to do so. Berea's original structure was "burned to the ground by slaveholders and their supporters." After the Civil War, 45 Black colleges opened, but Blacks were barred from attending even public, land-grant colleges. The Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 upheld segregation, allowing states to pass laws making it illegal to educate Blacks and Whites together. Harris recounts lawsuits by students petitioning to attend all-White schools. In 1948, for example, when Ada Lois Sipuel sued to be admitted to the law school at the University of Oklahoma, the Supreme Court ruled that Oklahoma "was required to provide her a legal education." In response, Oklahoma quickly established a law school at the all-Black Langston University. Later, when the University of Oklahoma grudgingly admitted Black students, it sat them at the back of the classroom or set up railings to separate them from Whites. Harris suggests ways that the government can offer reparations for its history of hampering Blacks' education--perhaps as "targeted debt cancellation and tuition-free college," cash transfers to students, or the redistribution of endowments--but discrimination is still widespread, "bending and twisting until it fits within the confines of the system it is given." A well-researched, potent, timely investigation of yet another element of systemic racism.

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July 1, 2021
Harris, a staff writer for the Atlantic, writes about the racial inequality within higher education. Drawing on historical sources, legal documents, autobiographies, newspapers, interviews, and statistics, Harris weaves a compelling narrative that highlights how, across its history, the U.S. higher-education system has perpetrated discriminatory practices toward Black students that still exist today. Private institutions, often well funded, are attended by predominantly affluent students who tend to be white while historically Black colleges and universities and public institutions that support Black students are often underfunded by the state. Harris writes very clearly and illuminates historical examples of opportunities and racial-discriminatory practices in higher education while exploring federal and state governments' responses when it came to segregation and desegregation practices in higher-education systems. This thought-provoking, timely, and engaging read gives space to subject matter that has largely gone ignored and unaddressed, and offers readers much food for thought on the topic of discrimination and systemic racism in higher education.

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Starred review from August 1, 2021

In this book about racial inequality in the American higher education system from Reconstruction to the present, Harris (staff writer, the Atlantic) considers the motivations of abolitionists such as Cassius Marcellus Clay and John G. Fee to improve educational opportunities for Black students. He also describes the hopeful but short-lived efforts of progressive colleges such as Oberlin and Berea, and the rise of land grant colleges due to legislation introduced by Justin Morrill. Harris underpins this narrative with the history of pioneering, tumultuous efforts in Iowa, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Mississippi to admit Black students to university and to redress the issue of Black colleges being separate but not equal. Harris also discusses parity struggles after school desegregation; Head Start; and legal cases that opposed affirmative action. He ends with a sobering assessment of a "century of racial caste in higher education," examining declining college enrollment among Black Americans, even in states with sizeable Black populations; the potential impact of COVID-19 on college closures; the Universities Studying Slavery consortium; and arguments for atonement and reparations. VERDICT Profound and thought-provoking, this work is recommended for anyone who wants to understand the structural inequities of the U.S. educational system.--Elizabeth Connor, Daniel Lib., The Citadel, Military Coll. of South Carolina, Charleston

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