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MILLENNIUM SHOWDOWN FOR PUBLIC INTEREST LAW 7
extend the promise of equality to Blacks and then preserve white supremacy in
the United States. 28
It would take approximately seventy years of legal struggle before the force of
legal effort would yield concrete action to desegregate American society.29 More
aggressive legislative enactments and case law were needed to advance access to
education for black and poor white children. 3D The efforts of freed Blacks and, to
a lesser extent, benevolent societies, and the federal government contributed to
the advancement of African American access to education?1
From 1938 to 1948 lawyers pursued black student admission to graduate and
professional school through litigation. 32 While traditionally white institutions,
like Harvard University, admitted the occasional Black, broader access to higher
education resulted more often after the decision in Brown v. Board of Education
and its progeny.33 Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall authored
the strategy and inspired a generation of lawyers responsible for the advancement
of the civil rights movement. 34 From 1950 to 1960 litigators and civil rights
advocates focused on access to education in state systems, especially primary and
secondary schools. 35 During the fifty years that followed Brown the legal struggle
28 Foner, supra note 13, at 9-11.
29 Id.
30 Id. The Freedmen's Act of 1865 provided limited federal funding to address the growing
problem of freed Blacks searching for work and improved living arrangements away from the plantation.
Congress enacted the Morrill Act of 1862 to provide education to the common man. The common
people of that time were primarily farmers and laborers involved in what would become
industrial or "the mechanical arts." States, railroads, and some small farmers received tracts of federal
land to establish universities. Land-grant universities established modest admission and academic
standards and set modest tuition to ensure accessibility for agricultural and industrial laborers. Education
offered through the land-grant institutions would have practical and immediate application. The
Second Morrill Act of 1890 authorized federal funding to support the establishment of land grant
colleges. While this legislation encouraged increased access to education for Blacks, states could elect
to segregate Blacks and whites or establish a unified institution. Eventually there were more than 200
colleges opened to black students. The number of HBCUs increased to 104 and, accordingly, Blacks
enjoyed access to higher education through a total of twenty states, including those where slavery
once flourished. This also included the District of Columbia and the U.S. Vrrgin Islands; John A.
Powell & Marguerite L. Spencer, Remodeling the Urban University for the Urban Student: Talking
about Race, 30 CONN. L. REV. 1247, 1251 (1998).
31 Alonford James Robinson, Jr., History Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned
Lands or Freedmen's Bureau, available at http://www.africana.comlArticlesltc334.htm (last visited 21
9/03).
32 Id.
33 Id.; Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).
34 Boger, supra note 18, at 1732-33.
35 Id. In Brown V. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). the United States Supreme Court
determined that segregated public schools were inherently unequal. violating the equal protection
clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.