While the segregation of public schools officially ended with the landmark Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, the public university systems in Tennessee continue to struggle in dismantling the continued existence of segregation.
However, the settlement of a 33-year-old desegregation lawsuit last year may foster an enduring solution to an old problem -- racially balancing the infrastructure in the state's institutions of higher education.
"We are working hard to remove any and all vestiges of segregation that still remain in our schools," said Rich Rhoda, executive director of the Tennessee Higher Education Commission. "And resolving the lawsuit is a big step in the right direction."
The original lawsuit was filed in 1968 by Rita Sanders Geier, a former professor at the predominantly black Tennessee State University, and called for the abolishment of a "dual system of higher education" as well as increased state funding for black colleges in Tennessee.
A federal court ruling on the lawsuit in 1984 initiated federal supervision on the progress of desegregating schools in the state and ordered 10 universities in the state to meet racial admissions quotas, including The University of Memphis.
However, that ruling came under fire by some state educational officials, who called some of the federally mandated quotas "unrealistic."
For example, the 1984 accord called for TSU to boost its white enrollment, which currently stands at roughly 16 percent, to 50 percent by 1994.
In addition, the desegregation measure also called for "vast increases" in black enrollment and hiring of black faculty members at historically white institutions, such as The University of Tennessee-Knoxville.
While the lawsuit has been modified several times over the years, the final resolution of the lawsuit, attained in 2001, has apparently reached a practical accord that has been widely accepted among the state's colleges and universities, as well as lawmakers.
"The consent decree is definitely a step in the right direction," said Wendy Thompson, special assistant to the chancellor of the Tennessee Board of Regents assigned to monitoring the progress of the desegregation of higher education.
The current decree agreement requires that state lawmakers appropriate $14.8 million for the sole purpose of assisting higher education institutions in racially balancing their respective campuses.
"We want to ensure that all students have equal opportunities of access and success at all of Tennessee's public institutions,"Rhoda said.
The accord will also end court-ordered quota admission standards for the state's university systems.
Instead, the state has set "realistic racial objectives." Universities and colleges will use installments from this year's state budget to implement programs and to make improvements in marketing and recruitment strategies to attract a diverse student and faculty body to institutions that are currently "racially unbalanced."
Our main objective is to create an educational landscape where no institution in the state is racially indentifiable," Rhoda said. "We want students and prospective faculty to be attracted to our institutions for what they have to offer."
However, the state has given education officials only four more years to show signs of improvement in breaking down racial barriers that are historically ingrained in some institutions and have existed for decades, according to Thompson.
"We have a small window of opportunity to work in , but it's a job we can't afford to fail," Thompsom said.
In lieu of punitive penalties, state officials are taking a more goodwill-based stance in enforcing the objectives outlined in the settlement.
Thompson added that officials are currently assessing the specific needs for individual schools across the state, and will then propose distinct goals for each institution to meet.
The success rate for individual institutions will be gauged by an independent mediator, who in turn, reports the findings to a federal judge.
Currently, the main goals of the consent decree mainly involves the integration of black and white undergraduate students, but also emphasizes the need to increase the number of black faculty members across the state, according to Thompson.
While the number of African-Americans enrolled or employed at institutions in some capacities across the state is clearly on the rise, Thompson said the presence of black faculty members continues to be too low, and has only slightly increased from last year.
"Our immediate goals are to not only improve the balance of equality, but to sustain those changes once we have seen them through," Thompson said.
