Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 21, 1991 TAG: 9104210096
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: JACKSON, MISS. LENGTH: Medium
It took 20,000 federal troops to force James Meredith's integration of the University of Mississippi in 1962 - a riot erupted when the civil rights activist arrived at the Ole Miss campus in Oxford to enroll under court order.
Now, blacks attend all eight public universities. However, three of them maintain their traditionally black character, with black enrollment at about 95 percent, and receive less funding than their larger, mostly white counterparts, critics say.
It is the way Mississippi deals with these traditionally black schools that led to accusations the state is operating a dual system, with the black schools getting shortchanged.
The issue has been batted around in the courts since a lawsuit was filed in 1975, and the Supreme Court has agreed to finally resolve the issue. Justices will hear arguments in their session that runs from October through April and a ruling is expected before July 1992.
The high court will decide whether Mississippi's universities should be required merely to maintain racially neutral admissions policies or to go beyond that and develop desegregation strategies similar to those demanded of grade schools.
The lawsuit demands more money for Alcorn State, Jackson State and Mississippi Valley State, the traditionally black institutions, to make up for past discrimination.
"If they say the state doesn't have to do anything, they can just walk away, and it means the death for all black education," said Alvin Chambliss of Oxford, an attorney for blacks who filed the lawsuit.
"You just can't walk away from historical inequities," he said.
Equality will never come unless the black schools are given more money and treated equally, Chambliss said. "The state doesn't want to give them resources to do what the flagship states are doing," he said.
The outcome of the case will affect cases pending in nearly every Southern state, particularly those in Alabama and Louisiana, as well the fates of the nearly 50 majority black colleges in the United States, Chambliss said.
Last September, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled that Mississippi has done enough to wipe out segregation by opening universities to all students.
In 1986, the average state spending for each student enrolled in historically black schools averaged $6,038. In comparison, average spending for students enrolled at historically white schools was $8,516.
But by 1990, per-student spending had become roughly equal between the two groups of schools. The system enrolled nearly 59,000 students last year, about 11,500 in the predominantly black schools.
But the improvement in funding is not enough to overcome past neglect of the schools, Chambliss argues.
"Basically these schools are dying and the sad thing is they are dying for lack of attention," Chambliss said.
He is supported by the U.S. Department of Justice, which argues Mississippi's university admissions policy is racially biased.
by CNB