Advancing Democracy: African Americans and the Struggle for Access and Equity in Higher Education in Texas / Edition 1

by Amilcar Shabazz

Overview

As we approach the fiftieth anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education (1954), it is important to consider the historical struggles that led to this groundbreaking decision. Four years earlier in Texas, the Sweatt v. Painter decision allowed blacks access to the University of Texas's law school for the first time. Amilcar Shabazz shows that the development of black higher education in Texas—which has historically had one of the largest state college and university systems in the South—played a pivotal role in the challenge to Jim Crow education.

Shabazz begins with the creation of the Texas University Movement in the 1880s to lobby for equal access to the full range of graduate and professional education through a first-class university for African Americans. He traces the philosophical, legal, and grassroots components of the later campaign to open all Texas colleges and universities to black students, showing the complex range of strategies and the diversity of ideology and methodology on the part of black activists and intellectuals working to promote educational equality. Shabazz credits the efforts of blacks who fought for change by demanding better resources for segregated black colleges in the years before Brown, showing how crucial groundwork for nationwide desegregation was laid in the state of Texas.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807855058
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	01/30/2004
Edition description:	1
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.71(d)

About the Author

Amilcar Shabazz is a professor in the department of American studies and director of the African American studies program at the University of Alabama. He is coeditor of The Forty Acres Documents: What Did the United States Really Promise the People Freed from Slavery?

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	xi
	Introduction	1
1	As Separate as the Fingers: Higher Education in Texas from Promise to Problem, 1865-1940	9
2	The All-Out War for Democracy in Education: Ideological Struggle and the Texas University Movement	34
3	Lift the Seventy-Five-Year-Old Color Ban and Raise UT's Standards: University Students for Democracy before Sweatt	66
4	This Is White Civilization's Last Stand: University Desegregation before Brown	95
5	Democracy Is on the March in Texas: Black Equality versus White Power, 1955-1957	138
6	Plowing around Africans on Aryan Plantations: Access without Equity at Texas Universities, 1958-1965	196
	Coda	218
	Notes	223
	Bibliography	281
	Index	295

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

From the 1880s to the ultimate desegregation of all the state's colleges and universities, Advancing Democracy demonstrates how the Texas experience was a beacon for desegregation movements in other states.—Black Issues Book Review



[A] deeply researched monograph.—Journal of American History



Exhibits an engaging, lively writing style. . . . The students and local leaders in this tradition of sacrifice are at the heart of this excellent historical work.—American Historical Review



Shabazz is adept at narrating the history of desegregation at numerous state-supported colleges, private universities, and religious institutions. . . . He is also skilled at illustrating the dialogue between black activists and white officials. . . . A nicely balanced account,—Arkansas Historical Quarterly



Fills a void in the history of educational history and the Civil Rights movement in Texas. . . . [Shabazz's] well researched and well-written book will emerge as the standard work on the topic, and introduces themes that future historians will build upon.—Southwestern Historical Quarterly



A compelling, readable effort to excavate the individuals and organizations, from the grassroots to the bureaucratic level, responsible for advancing the cause of equity in education in a state that is often a bell-wether for race relations in the South. . . . While this volume will be of particular interest to those associated with Texas higher education, there is much to interest any student of civil rights history and education.—Harvard Educational Review



[Advancing Democracy] is a potent reminder of the ferocity of African Americans' desire for education and equality and their belief that access to better education would lead to greater equality.—History of Education Quarterly



The story Shabazz presents is a fascinating one, depicting Texas and Texans at their best and their worst. . . . This extensively researched book . . . will inform and sometimes provoke its readers while it educates them about the heretofore-neglected history of the struggle for equality in Texas higher education.—East Texas Historical Journal



This is a timely and valuable book which is well-researched and well-documented. . . . Advancing Democracy provides us with a useful and long-overdue study of an important topic in Texas history, one which reminds us just how extensive white supremacy and Jim Crow policies were in our state's past.—H-Texas



A dynamic history of higher education desegregation that offers a more complex and layered understanding of the struggle for equal educational opportunities. Dramatic, readable, and provocative, this book brings alive the tensions and conflicts, as well as the great discipline and determination, within the black struggle.—James D. Anderson, author of The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Editorial Reviews

"Exhibits an engaging, lively writing style. . . . The students and local leaders in this tradition of sacrifice are at the heart of this excellent historical work."
-- "American Historical Review"

From the Publisher