February 10, 1988:
When the Supreme Court said in 1954 that segregated schools were unconstitutional, its ruling applied to colleges and universities as well as to elementary and secondary schools. At that time, the laws of every Southern State barred blacks from white colleges and required them to attend separate schools for blacks. To this day, the effort to desegregate those colleges remains difficult and controversial. The Director of President Jimmy Carter's Office for Civil Rights, David S Tatel, reminded the readers of the Times in an Op-Ed page article, that a series of judicial and administrative decisions during the Reagan Administration had weakened the primary tool for challenging racial segregation in higher education. The crucial clause is Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits racial discrimination in federally funded programs.
Lawyer Tatel argued that the consequence of this development was that Southern Colleges in fact are still segregated. ‘Many black students graduating from Southern High Schools will continue to attend black colleges that, like their pre-1954 predecessors, still have fewer resources and fewer programs and still offer their graduates fewer opportunities than their white counterparts. And there is little that can be done about it,’ wrote lawyer Tatel.
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