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Subject: In Mississippi, an Integration Uproar; Judge Weighs Plan That Would Mean
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 92 04:36:11 EST
Message-ID: <25.1992Nov17.043611@AmeriCast.com>

In Mississippi, an Integration Uproar; Judge Weighs Plan That
Would Mean Closure of 2 of 3 Black Colleges<By Mary
Jordan<Washington Post Staff Writer= ITTA BENA, Miss. - Here in
the poorest corner of the poorest state is a black college in the
middle of a cotton field and a firestorm.

With its cinderblock dormitories and unpainted classrooms, the
campus hardly seems a place whose threatened shutdown would stir
one of the most intense racial, political and legal battles in
Mississippi's history.

But the tension evoked by this case is reminiscent for many peo-
ple here of the emotionally charged period 30 years ago when
James Meredith became the first black at the University of Mis-
sissippi. Like Meredith's landmark lawsuit, one involving Missis-
sippi Valley State University (MVSU) in Itta Bena is being
watched nationwide.

The standoff began when black students sued the state, seeking
increased funding for its three historically black public col-
leges. This summer, in the 17th year of litigation, the Supreme
Court agreed that the state's higher-education system was
separate and unequal. But it returned the case to a lower court
to seek a remedy, which for blacks seems to be turning victory
into defeat.

The proposed remedy involves all of the state's eight public col-
leges. It would shut down MVSU and merge historically black Al-
corn State, which at 122 years is the nation's oldest black
land-grant college, with predominantly white Mississippi State
University. The lone remaining black university, Jackson State,
would be "enhanced and improved."

A women's college and a veterinary school would be closed. The
plan also seeks to change an admission policy that, by relying
almost exclusively on standardized tests, effectively has exclud-
ed many minorities from white universities.

Some state residents see the remedy proposed last month as pain-
ful for blacks and whites, one that seeks to dismantle a dual
system by closing smaller, weaker schools.  Others have marched
to protest it.

"I wouldn't say you are going to have something like the L.A. ri-
ots here," said Rep. Edward Blackmon, a black member of the state
House. "But this is the most divisive racial issue since the ear-
ly 1960s."

Submitted by the trustees for Mississippi's higher education sys-
tem, the plan has been returned to U.S. District Judge Neal B.
Biggers Jr., who has scheduled a hearing in Oxford Thursday.

"The mood runs from anger to disgust to disbelief," MVSU
President William Sutton said. "You discriminate against people
for years and years and years, and then you make those who suf-
fered every disadvantage and indignation because of segregation
pay the biggest cost for desegregation.

"It's simply wrong."

William Goodman could not disagree more.

Remember, said Goodman, the special assistant attorney general
who argued the opposite side of the case, "we didn't start this."
Black plaintiffs pushed this issue in court, he said, and "now
they are running from the decision."

Unless schools are closed or merged, Goodman said, the state's
public college system will continue to have white and black in-
stitutions existing side by side in a vestige of the state-
enforced segregation of a generation ago. For instance, 30 years
after Meredith's arrival, Ole Miss remains 90 percent white.

Shutting MVSU, a 42-year-old school with 2,200 students and fa-
cilities in need of repair, makes sense, he said.

Delta State, the predominantly white university 35 miles away in
Cleveland, has been open longer, has twice the enrollment and a
much better academic reputation. Under the plan, it would be
renamed and absorb black students. Its facilities, far superior
to those at MVSU, include a museum-quality arts center and a new
dormitory that is under construction and is to be equipped with
computerized study stations.

At MVSU, where pictures in the dorms depict legendary blacks and
where black professors teach in almost every classroom, students
do not want to leave.

"The thinking is we would rather live in our shack than in their
mansion," Sutton said.

Janell Byrd, assistant counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund,
said no one wants a repeat of what happened after the Supreme
Court's 1954 ruling in Brown v.  Board of Education that separate
elementary and secondary schools were inherently unequal. Black
schools were the ones closed, she said.

"At this point, black people don't want higher education desegre-
gated like it was for elementary and secondary schools," said
Byrd, who filed a brief in the case, Ayers v. Fordice. It marked
the first time that the Supreme Court looked at desegregation at
the college level.

The case is being watched closely by 17 states that are in or
border the South and all of which operated de jure, or state-
sanctioned, segregated systems of higher education. No resolution
is expected for months, if not years.

Also nervously eyeing the case are 105 historically black col-
leges - those established before 1964 and whose principal mission
is to educate blacks. Many of them see Ayers as a threat to their
survival.

More than 250,000 students attend historically black or other
predominantly black schools, which have enjoyed a recent resur-
gence in popularity.

"There is some pure and simple racism," said Rep. Blackmon, who
has joined black leaders in several states in a crusade to save
MVSU. "And then there is the benign racism of those who say the
black college should close because there is not enough money.
This whole case is about race." While black leaders in the 1940s
and 1950s were suing for access to white instititutions, the
fight now is for the right to keep separate schools.

"In a perfect world, we may have blacks and whites in same
schools," said Franklyn G. Jenifer, president of Howard Universi-
ty. "But in fact, America is as segregated as it was in 1954."

"Yes, it's extremely ironic," he added, "that, after a long
struggle for integration, K-12 and colleges are as segregated as
they were before."

Jenifer and others said that the success of black colleges cannot
be dismissed and that more whites would attend them if they were
strengthened.

While 17 percent of black college students are in predominantly
black schools, they account for 27 percent of bachelors degrees
earned by blacks, according to the National Association for Equal
Opportunity in Higher Education. Black colleges also have an un-
disputed claim to producing a range of leaders, including the
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., retired Supreme Court justice Thur-
good Marshall, Virginia Gov. L. Douglas Wilder (D), District sha-
dow senator Jesse L. Jackson, filmmaker Spike Lee and novelist
Toni Morrison.

Some black colleges have suffered from bad management, high dro-
pout rates and weak academic programs.

A stunning 50 percent of MVSU's students are freshman, indicating
a massive dropout rate. The federal government has put the school
on a warning list because more than 40 percent of its students
have not repaid student loans.

On campus at MVSU, perhaps best known as the alma mater of Jerry
Rice, wide receiver for the San Francisco 49ers, many students
said recently that they are not interested in attending a white
college in the state.

"At Ole Miss," Byrd said, "they still wave the Confederate flag.
Does that affect black students? Hell, yes." When then-governor
Ross R. Barnett (D) resisted the court order to admit Meredith,
President John F. Kennedy dispatched the National Guard and
violence ensued.

Kirk Fordice (R), who became governor last year, was quoted last
January as saying that, if a court ordered him to raise taxes to
equalize spending between historically black colleges and white
institutions, he might call out the National Guard. Many blacks
described that as inflammatory and racist.

Fordice, who later said he mentioned the National Guard as "noth-
ing more" than a way of highlighting his anti-tax position, did
not return telephone calls seeking comment.

Tamla Moore, an MVSU sophomore, lives at home with her unemployed
parents. Asked whether she would attend a white college if MVSU
closes, she said, "I just got out of high school, and I don't
want to go through all that racial tension again. "In high
school, white folks hung around with white folks, never mixing.
We even had two proms."

Moore recalled with relief that, at MVSU, she does not face in-
cidents such as the time a white student smeared what looked like
blood on his face and told their high school principal that
blacks had beaten him.

Few people at Delta State, whose enrollment is 27 percent black,
seem to support the "desegregation" plan either. Delta State's
blacks are unhappy about the proposed shutdown of MVSU, many of
whose students might become dropouts rather than switch to a
white school, they said. Whites expressed concern that, if more
blacks enroll, whites will leave, and they said the new admission
policy would lower the value of their degrees.

"I wouldn't want to get in a freshman class with students lucky
to graduate from high school," said Kevin Duke, 22, a biology ma-
jor who hopes to be a doctor. "In high school, teachers would
have to slow down to let some kids catch up; in college, everyone
should have to keep up with the teacher."

But many black Mississippi students come from deprived environ-
ments and families with little history of higher education, and
they thrive at black schools better attuned to their needs, said
James W. Shores, a professor of criminal justice at MVSU.

Black and white colleges may link hands in the future, he said,
"but that is a goal for the future. The time has not arrived
yet."<02:19 11-17C9999-----

Copyright 1992, The Washington Post.  This story is from the
Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar-
chived or redistributed.

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