Feds Press State On Racial Equality In Higher Education BALTIMORE, MD (wypr) - Federal Civil Rights authorities continue to press Maryland for equality of educational opportunity. Decades after Brown v. Board of Education, black educators have observed that equality demanded more than integration. Remedial steps were needed to assure that historically black institutions of higher education could operate on a level playing field relative to their predominantly white competitors. Without federal requirements, they said, the goal of fairness might lie in the far distance.

It's a march that began in earnest in Maryland in the mid-1930s. Charles Hamilton Houston, dean of the Howard University Law School, partnered with his former student, Thurgood Marshall, to desegregate the University of Maryland School of Law.

The Supreme Court s idea of separate but equal was fully discredited as a useful remedy during their arguments in the law school case. Houston's argument went beyond the law school to facilities at Princess Anne Academy - now the University of Maryland, Eastern Shore. Its faculty included only one member with a master's degree, none with a Ph'D. Lab equipment was woefully inadequate. A fund established by the legislature to send black students out of state had no money.
After an assistant attorney general acknowledged that blacks were excluded on the basis of race, Judge Eugene O'Dunne promptly ruled in favor of Marshall and Houston. The Court of Appeals quickly affirmed his judgment. This was a step, but only the first step.

Since then, since the days of the civil rights movement, a more enlightened Congress passed laws in which more and more public investment has been directed to UMES and other historically black colleges. Marshall said, after he was appointed to the Supreme Court, that integration was a less important objective of Brown's architects than access to equal educational opportunities: buildings at historically black institutions had to be on a par with white schools and these schools might also merit attention to assure that the quality of degree programs had to be protected as well - not undermined by competition from white schools. That issue has arisen repeatedly.

Maryland officials contend they have met the requirements established by federal Civil Rights authorities, investing more than 55 million dollars, in recent years, to enhance facilities at the state's four historically black schools. Other issues may remain unsettled.

Federal Civil Rights officials toured Maryland schools recently to see if these, and other compliance efforts, were sufficient.

Remedies have been a very long time coming. But much progress has been made since the days when university officials did all they could to preserve a system of education that was separate and deplorably unequal.

You've been listening to an essay by WYPR's Senior News Analyst Fraser Smith. Your comments are welcome at fsmith@wypr.org. © Copyright 2009, wypr