Dive Summary:
- In a case before a federal judge in Baltimore, advocates for Maryland's four public historically black colleges question whether the state's higher education system has desegregated, alleging that the state failed in its obligations to make their institutions "comparable and competitive" with the institutions that received preferential treatment and were predominately white during the Jim Crow decades.
- The state argues that Maryland clearly has opportunities available for students of all races, and that those opportunities are ample evidence of desegregation, but the HBCU supporters want the state to pay $1 billion for new programs and facilities that would attract students of all races.
- Lawyers for the two sides tried to negotiate a settlement for several years, putting the case on hold, but Judge Catherine C. Blake will now review the case and eventually reach a decision following last Friday's closing arguments.
From the article:
This fall the University of Mississippi is holding a series of events to mark the 50th anniversary of James Meredith enrolling as the institution's first black student. And the U.S. Supreme Court is considering a lawsuit over the steps a flagship state university (in this case the University of Texas at Austin) can take to recruit black and Latino students. And in Baltimore, six years of litigation are drawing to a close over the question of whether Maryland's higher education system has desegregated. In the Maryland suit, advocates for the state's four public historically black colleges argue that the state never met its obligations to make those institutions "comparable and competitive" with the predominantly white institutions that -- for the decades of Jim Crow -- received preferential treatment. ...