Segregation Scholarships

Kelly Therese Pollock  0:00  
This is Unsung History, the podcast where we discuss people and events in American history that haven't always received a lot of attention. I'm your host, Kelly Therese Pollock. I'll start each episode with a brief introduction to the topic, and then talk to someone who knows a lot more than I do. Be sure to subscribe to Unsung History on your favorite podcasting app, so you never miss an episode, and please tell your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, maybe even strangers to listen too. In 1823, an African American student named Alexander Lucius Twilight graduated from Middlebury College in Vermont, the first African American to have earned a degree from an American college. A decade later, in 1833, Oberlin College was founded by abolitionists in Ohio, opening its doors to Black students in 1835, and to women students in 1837. Over time, more northern schools of higher education began to admit, albeit in small numbers, Black students. By the end of the Civil War, around 40 Black students had graduated from colleges and universities in the United States, all of them in the north. There was a resistance to integrated schools in the south, and in 1865, the first historically Black university in the south was founded, Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. Although the first HBCUs were established in Pennsylvania and Ohio, many more were opened in the south during Reconstruction, as Congress was creating legislation in support of Black civil rights, with the greatest number of HBCUs opening in 1867. In 1896 the United States Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v Ferguson that segregation laws did not violate the Constitution, as long as the facilities, such as colleges and universities available to people of color were equal in quality to those available to white people. While the southern states embraced the separate part of separate but equal, building on segregation laws already in effect, and enacting more segregation policies, they ignored the equal part. Public HBCUs opened in every southern state. The Second Morrill Act of 1890 required that states provide educational opportunities to African American students in agricultural and mechanical arts in order to continue receiving federal funds. Rather than forego the federal money, or admit Black students to historically white public schools, the states instead established new HBCUs, or took over already established private HBCUs, converting them to public land grant schools. However, the public HBCUs in the south were never funded at anywhere near the levels that the flagship historically white public schools were. White students in southern states who wanted to pursue graduate education, for instance, by attending law school, medical school, or an MA or PhD program, could stay near home and study at a public institution. HBCUs, though, often did not have these kinds of graduate school opportunities for their students, and Black students were not admitted to the white public universities. In 1921, a St Louis Republican named Walthall Moore became the first African American elected to the Missouri state legislature. Just weeks after his term began, Moore introduced a bill to improve the higher educational opportunities for Black students. Although the legislation passed, it was an unfunded mandate, what the Black press at the time called a gold brick. In 1929, Missouri finally provided funding for a scholarship program established by Moore's legislation, that used tax dollars to provide full tuition scholarships for Black students to attend undergraduate or graduate programs in states bordering Missouri, if the course of study they wanted to pursue was available to the white students at the University of Missouri, but not available to the Black students at Lincoln University. Moore had intended that part of his legislation to be temporary in nature, only until such time that Missouri established such programs at Lincoln University. During the long delay between the passage of the Missouri law and its eventual funding, West Virginia started its own segregation scholarship program, with legislation drafted by Black legislator T. Edward Hill of Charleston. Black residents of West Virginia made up only 6% of the state's population, but they now had available to them the opportunity to receive funding to study out of state, again, if they wanted to pursue an educational opportunity available for white students at West Virginia University, but not available to Black students at West Virginia Colored Institute, or Bluefield Colored Institute. By 1948, every southern or border state, except Delaware, had established its own version of these scholarships to maintain a version of separate but equal educational opportunities, and to do so in a way that maintained segregation. Since the funds for these generally came from the same pot of money that was used to fund public HBCUs, the scholarships not only sent students far from home for their graduate opportunities, but also diminished the public HBCUs in the states. Most of these states', segregation scholarships were established after the United States Supreme Court had ruled such scholarships unconstitutional. In Missouri, a graduate of Lincoln University named Lloyd Gaines applied to the University of Missouri law school since Lincoln University lacked a law school. When he was denied admission on the basis of race, and offered a scholarship to study out of state instead, he sued, with the assistance of the NAACP. In 1938, the Supreme Court found in State of Missouri ex rel. Gaines V Canada et al, that the "Petitioner was entitled to be admitted to the law school of the state university in the absence of other and proper provision for his legal training within the state." Missouri could have instead established a law school at Lincoln University, but failing that, they had to admit Gaines and other qualified Black applicants to the flagship historically white school. By this point, though, Lloyd Gaines himself had disappeared. 10 years later, Ada Sipuel, assisted by the NAACP, sued the University of Oklahoma when she was denied admission to their law school on the basis of race. The Supreme Court again ruled that the state must provide instruction for Black students equal to that of white students. Oklahoma responded by creating the Langston University School of Law for Black students. But when further litigation proved the inferiority of the hastily constructed law school, the state of Oklahoma relented and admitted Sipuel to the University of Oklahoma College of Law in 1949. In 1992, Sipuel was appointed to the University of Oklahoma Board of Regents, the same board she had once sued for admission. It took many decades and many more lawsuits to desegregate all of the historically white public universities in the south, and the last of the segregation scholarship programs did not end until the late 1960s.

Kelly Therese Pollock  9:54  
Joining me now to discuss these scholarships is Dr. Crystal R. Sanders, Associate Professor of African American Studies at Emory University, and author of, "A Forgotten Migration: Black Southerners, Segregation Scholarships and the Debt Owed to Public HBCUs."

Kelly Therese Pollock  11:12  
Hi, Crystal. Thanks so much for joining me today.

Dr. Crystal R. Sanders  11:15  
Thank you for having me.

Kelly Therese Pollock  11:16  
Yes, I am so excited to talk to you. This is yet another area of history I knew nothing about, and I'm really thrilled to have learned about. So I wanted to ask how you got interested in writing this book about the segregation scholarships. And I know this is your second book, so like what started you on this research path?

Dr. Crystal R. Sanders  11:36  
So I have always been interested in the history of Black education. I think I was interested in the history of Black education, because in school, I always heard that prior to desegregation, Black schools were these underfunded, really horrible institutions that no one wanted to attend. And that narrative did not line up with the stories from my parents and my grandparents, who all attended all Black schools. And so in undergrad, I wrote my undergraduate thesis on Black high schools prior to desegregation, really trying to make sense of what is typically taught about Black schools versus what I would hear at home about Black schools. And that love of, or interest in Black educational history stayed with me in graduate school. I wrote my first book, well, my dissertation, which became my first book, looked at the largest inaugural Head Start program in the country, which was a program run by working class Black women in the Mississippi Delta. And even, you know, with that opportunity, I was able to really problematize how we think about the war on poverty. Head Start was a war on poverty program. Oftentimes, there's this narrative of failure that surrounds the war on poverty. Yet in Mississippi, the problem was that these programs worked too well, meaning they worked too well at giving working class African Americans the opportunity to make meaningful decisions in local governance. And so these programs were defunded because they actually did what they were supposed to do, which was to include the poor. And so, you know, I wasn't sure what my next book would be, but in the back of my head, I had always been struck by the fact that many of the older, elderly Black women at my church, who were public school teachers, had all received master's degrees from NYU and Columbia in the 1950s. And I remember one time asking my dad, you know, "Why would they have gone from North Carolina to New York to get a master's degree in education? Why didn't they just stay home?" Because I'm thinking about this is the 50s, where there's segregation, traveling while Black, I couldn't imagine why they would have wanted to do that. And my father simply said to me something like, did you really think they had a choice? Did you think there was anywhere they could go locally? And I never forgot that. And so after I finished the first project, I just came back to, you know, this subject of Black women going to NYU and Columbia for graduate study, and I started doing more digging, and the more I learned, the more I was fascinated with the story and felt it was a compelling one that I wanted to write about.

Kelly Therese Pollock  14:12  
So let's talk about that digging. You're looking at a ton of different archives. There's oral histories. Can you talk some about how you approached this research and pieced together the story, which really is kind of all over the place, and pulled it together?

Dr. Crystal R. Sanders  14:26  
Sure. Once I realized through some digging in North Carolina archives, that beginning in 1939, North Carolina began providing funds for Black students to go out of state to pursue graduate programs that white students were able, where white residents were able to pursue in state at the University of North Carolina, I was fascinated, but I was thinking, was North Carolina the first to do this, you know? So at that point, I'm trying to figure out a timeline. And so I instantly turned to Black newspapers, because I'm trying to learn, you know. Was North Carolina the first? Was this something that had had been happening for years prior to 1939 or was North Carolina kind of innovative in this? And indeed, the more digging I found, I really saw that, you know, North Carolina was about middle of the road. 16 states in total, would use state funds to send Black students north, north to the midwest or to the west for graduate study as a way of maintaining segregation. And this practice actually started in Missouri, of all places, and it was started by a Black legislator who understood that higher education was anything but equal in the state of Missouri. And he hoped that Missouri's lawmakers would do right by its Black citizens. He wanted to see additional funds appropriated for the one public Black college in the state of Missouri, which is Lincoln University of Missouri. And so he proposes in 1921 that the state pay for Black students to go out of state until Lincoln becomes the equivalent of the University of Missouri. And so unfortunately, what he saw as a very temporary measure became a long term solution to maintaining segregation for segregationists across the south. So what starts in Missouri in 1921, would spread across all of the border and southern states, so that by 1948, with Mississippi being the last state, you've got all these states, as I say, exporting Black students. So doing this project, Black newspapers were essential. And then I had to figure out, you know, this is a story that I can't tell in detail about all 16 states. So I started visiting archives to try to figure out what type of story could give people a real, in depth overview of a system that encompassed, you know, the entire southern region. And so, you know, I visited archives in probably 10 states before I decided which states that I wanted to write about. And so I settled on Missouri, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Alabama. And I did that because I thought that these were four states that would really show the policies at play with these segregation scholarship programs, the obstacles that segregation scholarship recipients, you know, had to overcome. And it would also show kind of the administration, the various forms of administration of these segregation scholarship programs. But even though I focused on these four states, because I had done so much archival work, there are, you know, I'm using archives from Arkansas, archives from Mississippi, archives from Maryland. So I still do bring in material from various other states. They're just not covered as in depth as the four states that I previously mentioned.

Kelly Therese Pollock  17:43  
So you mentioned a little earlier the sort of dangers of traveling while Black, traveling out of state during this time period. Some of these students, of course, got to go to really great schools. You mentioned Columbia, NYU. Some of them are going to Northwestern and University of Chicago and Howard and you know, so they're going to these really great schools, but what are the downsides, the problems with having to go out of state to get this graduate education that they are unable to get in their home state, even with some funding from their state?

Dr. Crystal R. Sanders  18:17  
That's a great question, because oftentimes when I tell people about this project, they would say, "Wow, they got to go to the best schools in the country." And I say, "Yes, but you know, they were compelled to go to those schools. It's not like they had a choice." So first we they have to get there. So not every state paid for transportation. So that's an that's another cost for one to reach his or her highest, you know, intellectual potential. But if they are traveling by train or if they're traveling by car or if they're traveling by bus, we must remember that this is the period of Jim Crow. And so if they're traveling by bus, they are, you know, being forced to move to the back of those busses once, once those busses, if they're coming back home from northern cities after that bus enters, typically Richmond, Virginia, was coming through New York all the way down, they're being made to move to the back of the bus, right? We know that many of these bus stops, many of these train stations, don't serve Black passengers, so they're finding, you know that they're already are feeling that they've got to make sure they pack enough food, that they have to ensure that they can find a restroom to relieve themselves if necessary, because there were many stops along the way that did not have facilities for African Americans. If they are driving cars, they still have to figure out where they can stay. They have to figure out where they can eat. You know, we think about the Green Book. That was a real thing. African Americans could not be in certain places after dark. They had to figure out or to map out their route in a way that would allow them to stay safe and get the support, the shelter, the food, the lodging that they would need as as they journey, as they make their way along their journeys. But then when they get to the. Institutions in the north, midwest and west they aren't rolling out the proverbial red carpet for them. Just because the school is in the north doesn't mean that the school is absent of racism, right? And so whether we're talking about Columbia, whether we're talking about Kansas, whether we're talking about Wisconsin, whether we're talking about Harvard or University of Chicago, all of these students, almost all of them,  recount incidents of racial discrimination. At Kansas, you know, there were certain rules that only applied to Black students, places where they could sit in the cafeteria, rules about whether they could participate in extracurricular opportunities, like just going to a football game as a student at Kansas. So there are all of these ways that segregation scholarship recipients were reminded that even outside of the south, they were they would continue to be harassed and discriminated against because of their race. One of the women I write about in the book is Christine King Farris, who is the older sister of Martin Luther King Jr, and Georgia pays for her to go to Columbia University to pursue a master's degree in economics in 1948. And she actually says this was one of the worst experiences of her life, because when she got to Columbia, the faculty in the economics department were not that welcoming of her. They didn't appreciate that she was a woman for one thing, but to be a Black woman was a double whammy, and so she was ignored in the classroom. She could raise her hand, she could look the professor in the eye, she could actually just speak out loud, but the professor would pretend that he did not hear her, and she had such a bad experience, and she ends up changing her course of study, because she says, "This is a hostile department, and I'm not going to be successful in this department." But these are the kinds of stories that you know, many of the segregation scholarship recipients recount as they as they're studying at the best institutions in the country.

Kelly Therese Pollock  21:56  
So let's talk a little bit about funding. You said that when it first started in Missouri, this lawmaker is hoping, you know, Missouri will put more money into Black education. That's not where these scholarships largely come from, right? This is not additional allocation. So how are the states funding this?

Dr. Crystal R. Sanders  22:14  
So it varies by state. So some states are, I should say many states are taking money out of the budgets of their public Black colleges and using that money to fund segregation scholarships. So for every dollar that was ordinarily going to Florida A and M, which was a Black public institution, money is being taken from their budget to pay for Black students to go out of state for graduate study. The same thing is true for Kentucky. The same thing is true for Arkansas and several other states. So for you know, I call it robbing Peter to pay Paul, because these Black colleges were already underfunded, and yet we're seeing their very limited means even stretched even further in an effort to preserve segregation. Now in other states, it's not. The money is not necessarily coming from the budgets of public Black colleges, but this is money that those public Black colleges certainly could have used, because many of these states were already under many of these public state schools, yeah, these state schools were already underfunded. And so you know, when their Black presidents are going to the legislature and asking for money, they're constantly being told there's no money. But then all of a sudden, there is money to keep Black students out of the University of North Carolina or keep Black students out of the University of Virginia, and these are funds that were badly needed at places like North Carolina College, which today we know as North Carolina Central University, or Virginia State University.

Kelly Therese Pollock  23:46  
So these Black presidents of the Black institutions also had this very kind of difficult decision to make about how they were going to approach thinking about these you talk about situation in West Virginia, which is very different than a lot of the other states. Could you talk about that and the ways that they're trying to navigate a just really difficult environment?

Dr. Crystal R. Sanders  24:09  
So we must remember the segregation scholarship programs start in the 1920s. We know that by 1948, 16 border and southern states have them. You know these Black college presidents are well aware that the NAACP has been waging legal campaigns to desegregate education. I think by you know, the 1940s, the question would be when, right in this matter of when would the Supreme Court decide that segregation in education was unconstitutional? So it wasn't a matter of if it would happen, but a matter of when it would happen. And Black college presidents are, you know, they are paying attention. They're paying attention because they want to keep their institutions open. They understand the importance of these institutions to Black communities. They understand that these institutions have, you know, really created a Black middle class. And they're really trying to ensure that they continue to exist, no matter what happens politically, no matter what happens in terms of court decisions that are coming down the pipeline. And so when it becomes well known that the NAACP is fighting against segregation scholarships, there are, you know, many Black college presidents who really can't get on board with that argument, because oftentimes, southern state leaders had tapped these Black college presidents to be administrators of these segregation scholarship programs. So in a way, you know they are, they are working on behalf of southern state legislatures to ensure that there is quote, unquote, compliance with separate but equal by sending Black students out of state. So many Black college presidents are hopeful that perhaps, in addition to segregation scholarship programs, there will be the establishment of graduate programs at Black colleges. So that is what most Black college presidents in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, are hoping for. They want to see widespread state investment in their institutions. So it's not that they're necessarily fans of segregation scholarship programs, but they're hoping that the state is going to get tired of sending Black students out of state so that they'll simply decide to start those programs at Black colleges. So most Black college presidents, that's what they're they're lobbying for. That's what they're asking for. However we see that there's one Black college president in particular, John W. Davis at West Virginia State College, who takes a different position. And he's essentially says, "Look, West Virginia State College has done a great job of educating African Americans. I believe that our undergraduate programs are strong. Our students can go anywhere in the world and compete. But that doesn't necessarily mean that I want to see graduate programs at West Virginia State College." Because he essentially says, you know, West Virginia is not a big state, and how many people, Black or white, do we have pursuing graduate study? What makes sense to him would be West Virginia University that had graduate programs opening up those programs to graduates of West Virginia State College. So when you know state officials come to him and offer him money to create graduate programs at West Virginia State College as a way of maintaining segregation, he says, "That's really not what I want. I want the opportunity for my students to be able to go to the graduate program that already exists and compete against students there." And he says, "And in fact, I'm willing to give up that money, the money that you were going to invest in my university, invest in that other university to ensure that both Black and white citizens of West Virginia have the best graduate programs available to them." And so, because of John W. Davis' leadership in 1940, West Virginia becomes the first state to desegregate its graduate programs, and so Black students can now attend West Virginia University for graduate study.

Kelly Therese Pollock  28:10  
You talk some in the book about what you call intellectual warfare, and so the idea that these students are taking segregation scholarships, going learning things, and then using that to, in fact, fight segregation later. Could you talk a little bit about that, what you mean by that terminology and how that plays out?

Dr. Crystal R. Sanders  28:28  
Sure, you know, I define intellectual warfare as the subversive act of acquiring knowledge to undermine and dismantle segregation, and for the vast majority of segregation scholarships, that is exactly what they do. They go, you know, to universities all across the country. They equip themselves with the knowledge, skills and credentials to come back to the south and use their training to not just be the best in their field, but to use their training to dismantle segregation. One of the best examples of this would be Fred Gray. You know, I talk about Fred Gray in the very beginning of the book. Many people may not know his name. I think his name should be a household name, but Fred Gray is one of the foremost civil rights attorneys in the United States. Fred Gray is a native of Alabama. He graduates from Alabama State in 1951. He then goes to what is present day Case Western University Law School, graduating in 1954, and immediately, when he graduates, he comes back to Alabama and opens up a law practice. And while he was in law school, he had said he knew that he was studying law to go back home and fight racism in every nook and cranny that he could find it. And that's what he has done and continues to do up until this day. You know he, he opens his law practice in 1954. December 1, 1955, he receives a phone call from his very good friend Rosa Parks, who had just been arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery city bus. He represents her. He ends up representing all of the participants of that Montgomery Bus Boycott who were arrested. He is able to successfully keep them out of jail. He becomes the civil rights attorney for Martin Luther King. We forget that in the 1950s, King is living in Alabama. He becomes the attorney for the survivors of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment in the late 20th century, when he's able to get a settlement from the federal government for the survivors of this unethical, horrific study that you know, refused to render treatment to Black men who had syphilis. And so, you know, when I look at someone like like Fred Gray, I think about the fact that Alabama subsidized his legal training. They to keep him out of University of Alabama, they paid for him to go to law school in Ohio, but he doesn't stay in Ohio. He very well could have done so. He very well could have stayed outside of the south and made a very nice life for himself, but he chose to come back and and in coming back, he was able to utilize his training to create a more inclusive and a more constitutional world for both Black and white residents in Alabama and dare I say across the United States, because he has, you know, taken part in class action lawsuits involving Americans all across the country who've had grievances that they had to settle In the courts of law. But even if we don't take a legal field, as a historian, I must mention John Hope Franklin. John Hope Franklin being a native of Oklahoma who goes to Harvard University with a segregation scholarship from Oklahoma. And when we think about all of the you know, seminal texts that Professor Franklin wrote, thinking especially of the book, "From Slavery to Freedom," he's offered a narrative of United States history that really shows the ways in which African Americans have pushed this nation closer to its creed, and that, again, is an example of intellectual warfare put into action, right? He goes to school. He gets trained as a professional historian. He learns how to, you know, use primary sources to interpret the past and then to make an argument, right, to to make an argument, or to to give us an eye, to give us really, a a narrative of a period of time that perhaps has only been told in one way, and he's offering us a competing narrative that's inclusive and that's accurate. And so we see that even in you know, the the discipline of history, there was a way for segregation scholarship recipients to practice and implement intellectual warfare.

Kelly Therese Pollock  33:01  
You mentioned that the NAACP had been working on lawsuits toward toward desegregation, and that shows up throughout this book, that there are several cases with desegregation scholarships, with graduate education. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that, and like we see in other areas, with sports and with transportation and all sorts of other areas, they're looking not just for people who can be the face of this, but the right client, the client who will be the most impactful, will be the most likely to be successful. Can you talk a little bit about the kinds of cases that they're bringing? 

Dr. Crystal R. Sanders  33:44  
Sure, you know, again, when I tell people about this story, they say, "Wow, I've never heard of this." And then I'll say, "When you were in school, did you learn about the Gaines case, the Supreme Court case in 1938?" And they say, "You know, I kind of remember that. I've heard, that name sounds familiar," and I'll say, "Well, actually, the Supreme Court in 1938 outlawed segregation scholarships, but there was no enforcement of the court order." So I mentioned the Gaines case because, you know, early on, in the early 1930s, the NAACP began saying, "We need to open up graduate education. That'll be our first step to being able to desegregate public education in the United States." So there was this eye early on, you know, really early on, focused on graduate education, and the NAACP was constantly looking for plaintiffs who would agree to work with them in an effort to desegregate graduate and professional school programs across the south. But to be honest, you know, when the NAACP is approaching individuals across the south, late 1920s early 1930s you know, there are many people who are hesitant to get involved. They're hesitant because they know it's dangerous, right? They know that, you know, there's no federal anti lynching law. They know that African Americans often went missing. African Americans who challenged the racial status quo often went missing, that they and their families would experience widespread reprisals, whether those were economic or physical reprisals. So that's, you know, that's one of the main reasons why many people would say, "I'm not interested in partnering with the NAACP." But another reason is because lawsuits take time, and many people just want to live their lives. They just want to go to law school, finish law school, become an attorney and practice, and the NAACP might say, "You know, we've got to see this case to the end. So we can't tell you that it's going to be swift, but we're believing that we're going to have victory." But when you know, when there's a chance that this may take years and years and years, that's another reason why prospective plaintiffs will say, "I'm not interested in getting involved." And then, from the NAACP perspective, there were only certain people that they wanted to work with, because there was a great concern that lawsuits would be thrown out on technicalities, or lawsuits would receive a lot of bad press if the plaintiff didn't have the right background or come from the right side of the tracks, or come from the right type of family. So with especially with cases related to education, they wanted plaintiffs who had excellent academic records, because they did not want the argument to be that the individual did not get into the flagship institution because of anything other than their race. So they needed to make sure that their applicants were the best of the best, the top of the class, applicants who were not just great students in the classroom, but were great students on campus. These were leaders, these were people that that school officials would speak highly of. So there is a there was a type of student that the NAACP wanted. And we really see this coalesced in 1935 in Maryland, where there is a young Black man who had attended Amherst College, had graduated from Amherst with honors, Donald Murray. And he was a native of Baltimore, Maryland, came from a very prominent Black family in Maryland, and he wanted to go to the University of Maryland law school. So this was the perfect plaintiff for the NAACP, because he had gone to a very highly selective liberal arts school and done well. He came from a family that was above reproach in Baltimore, and he wanted to attend law school. And the Maryland's law school is actually in Baltimore. It's not in College Park where the main campus is. And so, you know, he hit all he crossed all the marks. And that, you know, spoiler alerts talked about in the book, that case was a success. The the, you know, NAACP is able to, really, relatively quickly get Donald Murray into the University of Maryland. But the problem was the case didn't go to the Supreme Court, because after Maryland lost in the lower court and in the equivalent of the Maryland Supreme Court, they decided not to take it to the Supreme Court. So Donald Murray enters the University of Maryland in 1936 but there's not a national precedent, so that meant the NAACP, once again, has to find plaintiffs to be able to go into court and hopefully have a case that's going to see its way all the way up to the United States Supreme Court. And that's what happens with Lloyd Gaines, Lloyd Gaines, top of his class at Lincoln University in Missouri. Lloyd Gaines was the son of a widowed mother with several children. Again, he has a compelling reason why he cannot go out of state for law school. He has a stellar academic record. He was known as a very hardworking student. He was, you know, president of this, president of that. He had the background that the NAACP wanted, and that case ends up being successful. But we can think about the fact that that case dragged on for years and years and years, and even though in 1938 the court sides with the NAACP, the court does not tell the University of Missouri to admit him. It simply says you've either got to create a school, or Missouri has to create a school for African Americans, or admit Lloyd Gaines into the University of Missouri, and the state of Missouri chooses to do the former. They say, "Give us time. We'll create a law school for African Americans," which again, shows this drawn out process, because now Lloyd Gaines has to wait even longer before he can enter law school because now the Supreme Court has told African Americans to wait until Missouri creates a school for for them. Unfortunately, you know, Lloyd Gaines would disappear before he's able to enter law school. I believe he was killed. We, you know, we still don't know what happened to him, but from his story, one of the things I take away is the fact that unless court cases are in for court orders are enforced, they really have no, no real, you know, merit. And in this case, in 1938 the United States Supreme Court says that segregation scholarships are unconstitutional, yet we see close to 10 states creating segregation scholarships after this court order, there was no enforcement, which meant that there was really no concern at the executive level, for the executive branch, for African Americans' constitutional rights to graduate and professional study. 

Kelly Therese Pollock  40:41  
Even after the schools eventually desegregate their graduate programs, that doesn't erase the past harms that are done. Could you talk a little bit about the long term impact of these policies? 

Dr. Crystal R. Sanders  40:55  
Sure. So we must remember that you know, southern and border states are investing large sums of money into sending Black students out of state. And every single dime that was invested and sent to the University of Wisconsin, sent to Harvard, sent to the University of Southern California, that was a dime that could have been invested into Black colleges. We have to think about the fact that southern state legislatures could have said, "We are going to equalize educational opportunity within our state's borders. If our state has a law school at a institution for white students, at a public institution for white students, then we will put a law school at an institute at a public institution for Black students." But that doesn't happen. And so today, when we look at, you know, constantly wondering, well, why are these schools, meaning, why are Black schools, HBCUs, continuously facing funding challenges, we have to look at this long history where there was a a disinvestment from these schools, right or divestment, money is being spent outside of the state, rather than being put into the curricular offerings of these institutions that would have encouraged more students attending them, because now they would have had these graduate and professional school programs that made them even more attractive to prospective students. We also know that, you know, not only was there not a decision to place graduate programs at these institutions, but money that could have been used to just upkeep these institutions, used for their physical plant, used for routine maintenance on dorms and other buildings, that money was being taken and rerouted to pay for Black students to go out of state. So for all of these states that said every dollar that is required to send a Black student out of state is going to be $1 that comes out of a Black college's budget, there needs to be a reckoning for that right, because this was a very sordid attempt to preserve segregation, and it is really predicated or balanced on the budgets of public Black colleges. And so I believe that there's a debt that has to be paid. I mean, when we put these figures in 21st century dollars, we are talking in the millions. This is not a small sum of money that has been denied or stolen from these institutions. And when we think about that, what could have been and what has been lost over time, we have to begin to have some conversations on how we repair the harm.

Kelly Therese Pollock  43:37  
So you're an AKA. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about what it means that we have a presidential candidate, a nominee who is AKA, who is a graduate of a historically Black college.

Dr. Crystal R. Sanders  43:52  
Well, I am quite excited by Vice President Kamala Harris's candidacy, because I think she has the skill set and the experience to really help our country, continues to be a leader and continues to create opportunities for everyone, no matter your race, no matter your gender, no matter your sexuality, no matter your class. With respect to her background, I find it very exciting that she is a graduate of Howard University, one of nearly 100 HBCUs in the country, and that's exciting because it's a reminder of, once again, the ways in which HBCU graduates have continuously made history and continuously made this country better. Yes, it's exciting that there's a presidential candidate that's a graduate of an HBCU, but we must remember that the first you know African American on the Supreme Court was a graduate of an HBCU, graduating from Lincoln University of Pennsylvania, Thurgood Marshall. And there are countless others who you know, have all have you know received either undergraduate or graduate training at Black colleges, and so it's just a reminder that these schools have provided countless generations of graduates who are ready from day one to do good work. They have the skill set, the intellect, the knowledge and the know how to do their jobs well, and have done so in a way that I believe we've all benefited from. And I must say, yes, I'm very excited that is a member of my sorority. Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority is, you know, one of four historically Black sororities for college educated women in the United States. And really, all four organizations are made up of dynamic women who are committed to service, who are committed to leadership, who truly believe in giving back. And so I'm very optimistic about a Kamala Harris administration, because being a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated, I know that she understands the importance of giving back. I know that she understands the importance of service, and I hope that we would see programs in her administration that would focus on creating new ways for individuals from all across the country, from all walks of life, to come together and serve in various capacities, whether that's serving in the civil service, or whether that is participating in community organizations that are committed to helping you know various constituencies. 

Kelly Therese Pollock  46:30  
I really want to encourage listeners to get a copy of your book and read it. It is fascinating history, and I just loved it. So please tell listeners how they can get a copy. 

Dr. Crystal R. Sanders  46:40  
Sure. "A Forgotten Migration," my book, is available wherever books are sold. You can order it from the University of North Carolina Press website. You can order it from Amazon, Barnes and Noble or any other independent bookseller, if that's where you choose to purchase your books.

Kelly Therese Pollock  46:57  
And there's also a PBS documentary, right?

Dr. Crystal R. Sanders  47:00  
There is. So the PBS documentary that's titled, "Segregation Scholarships," is available online. You could probably just Google segregation scholarships, if you put that in quotation marks and then put PBS, it should come up. It's a five part online series that kind of gives you an overview of the history of segregation scholarships, and then kind of looks at some of the present day educational challenges that Americans across the United States are facing.

Kelly Therese Pollock  47:31  
Is there anything else you wanted to make sure we talk about?

Dr. Crystal R. Sanders  47:34  
Well, first I would just want to say thank you for having me. It's always a pleasure to get to discuss my work. And then I just want to remind everyone to please exercise your right to vote.

Kelly Therese Pollock  47:44  
Crystal. Thank you so much for speaking with me.

Dr. Crystal R. Sanders  47:47  
Thank you. 

Teddy  48:04  
Thanks for listening to Unsung History. Please subscribe to Unsung History on your favorite podcasting app. You can find the sources used for this episode and a full episode transcript @UnsungHistorypodcast.com. To the best of our knowledge, all audio and images used by Unsung History are in the public domain or are used with permission. You can find us on Twitter or Instagram @Unsung__History or on Facebook @UnsungHistory podcast. To contact us with questions, corrections, praise, or episode of suggestions, please email Kelly@UnsungHistorypodcast.com. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate, review, and tell everyone you know. Bye!

Transcribed by https://otter.ai