Marybeth Gasman, the Samuel DeWitt Proctor chair and distinguished professor in the Rutgers Graduate School of Education, recently published an article that discusses the influence of the Supreme Court case “Brown v. Board of Education” on Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and higher education access.
The study explores how the federal case “Brown v. Board of Education,” though primarily focused on desegregating public kindergarten to 12th-grade schools, continues to have a lasting impact on higher education.
Gasman told The Daily Targum that she began researching Black colleges in graduate school after she read “The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935” by James Anderson. She said that her article represents the decades of work she has done with HBCUs as a historian.
Gasman explained that she used qualitative research, such as archives and oral history sessions, and a legal analysis to understand the history behind the court case and its impact for the article. In the study, Gasman discussed how the ruling led to HBCUs facing challenges of Black student enrollment.
While researching, Gasman said she noticed that HBCUs argued for integration, but theystill wanted to keep their doors open and claimed that the U.S. needed to open a greater number of higher education institutions instead of closing some down. She said that HBCUs do not discriminate against non-Black students.
Despite the academic success of HBCU graduates and their role in building the Black middle class, Gasman said that the implicit consequences of “Brown v. Board of Education” are still present. She said that state governments have failed to provide HBCUs with the land grant compensations distributed to them by the federal government.
“I show how challenging it was to navigate the higher education landscape after ‘Brown (v. Board of Education)’ for HBCUs,” she said. “We should see more HBCUs taking legal action to secure the money owed to them.”
Gasman said Congress often cites her work as a public scholar, so she wants federal and state governments to think about the role of HBCUs in the U.S. Moreover, she discussed the significance of understanding the history behind “Brown v. Board of Education” due to the current political climate.
Gasman stated that she wants the Rutgers community to know about the value and contributions of HBCUs to Black communities and to the country as a whole. She said it is important to be actively involved in local community-building efforts in order to raise awareness about HBCUs.
“We can all ensure that when HBCUs are discussed, we note their importance to higher education and the nation,” she said. “We all can do this.”