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African Americans and the Struggle for Opportunity in Florida Public Higher Education, 1947-1977

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Larry Johnson ,
Deirdre Cobb-Roberts  and
Barbara Shircliffe
Larry Johnson
Affiliation:
University of South Florida, St. Petersburg (email: [email protected])
Deirdre Cobb-Roberts
Affiliation:
University of South Florida, Tampa
Barbara Shircliffe
Affiliation:
University of South Florida, Tampa
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Extract

In the decades following World War II, access to higher education became an important vehicle for expanding opportunity in the United States. The African American-led Civil Rights Movement challenged discrimination in higher education at a time when state and federal government leaders saw strengthening public higher education as necessary for future economic growth and development. Nationally, the 1947 President's Commission on Higher Education report Higher Education for American Democracy advocated dismantling racial, geographic, and economic barriers to college by radically expanding public higher education, to be accomplished in large part through the development of community colleges. Although these goals were widely embraced across the country, in the South, white leaders rejected the idea that racial segregation stood in the way of progress. During the decades following World War II, white southern educational and political leaders resisted attempts by civil rights organizations to include desegregation as part of the expansion of public higher education.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 47 , Issue 3: Special Issue on the History of Access to American Higher Education Commemorating the Sixtieth Anniversary of Higher Education for American Democracy—The Report of the President's Commission on Higher Education , August 2007 , pp. 328 - 358
Copyright
Copyright © 2007 History of Education Society 

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References

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