As we approach the fiftieth anniversary of
Brown v. Board of
Education (1954), it is important to consider the historical
struggles that led to this groundbreaking decision. Four years
earlier in Texas, the
Sweatt v. Painter decision allowed
blacks access to the University of Texas's law school for the first
time. Amilcar Shabazz shows that the development of black higher
education in Texas--which has historically had one of the largest
state college and university systems in the South--played a pivotal
role in the challenge to Jim Crow education.
Shabazz begins with the creation of the Texas University Movement
in the 1880s to lobby for equal access to the full range of
graduate and professional education through a first-class
university for African Americans. He traces the philosophical,
legal, and grassroots components of the later campaign to open all
Texas colleges and universities to black students, showing the
complex range of strategies and the diversity of ideology and
methodology on the part of black activists and intellectuals
working to promote educational equality. Shabazz credits the
efforts of blacks who fought for change by demanding better
resources for segregated black colleges in the years before
Brown, showing how crucial groundwork for nationwide
desegregation was laid in the state of Texas.