Collegiate Desegregation as Progenitor and Progeny of Brown v. Board of Education: The Forgotten Role of Postsecondary Litigation, 1908-1990

The year 2004 has been filled with commemorations, celebrations, retrospectives, and re-analyses of the importance, impact, and implications of the Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka (1954) case on its 50th anniversary. Absent from this re-visitation of desegregation in the primary and secondary educational settings are an acknowledgment and investigation of the role of colleges and universities in the quest for educational equity. The legal history of attempts to dismantle dual systems of higher education is the parent from which mass desegregation was born and the offspring that efforts to integrate K-12 schools have produced. The postsecondary cases that predate Brown provide the doctrines, principles, and jurisprudence that undergird the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 decision. Likewise, continuing litigations to redress inequality in public higher education are the primary banner carriers for the legal movement that required "all deliberate speed."