A Forgotten Migration: Black Southerners, Segregation Scholarships, and the Debt Owed to Public HBCUs

Although this is an academic book, it is also a politically relevant one that will interest anyone curious about the longitudinal effects of systemic racism on educational structures, particularly institutions granting graduate and professional degrees. By examining segregation-based scholarships and their impact on Black institutes of higher education, including historically Black colleges and universities, Sanders (African American studies, Emory Univ.) draws attention to bigger, systems-based concerns (e.g., health care) and the impact educational paradigms have on them. Sanders also documents how circular systemic injustice is, as the barriers to higher education engender a lack of legal representation by Black lawyers, and this stagnates legal support and policy change efforts centered on racial injustice. This book zooms in on the powerful ways in which Black students benefitting from segregationist scholarships and historically Black colleges and universities have weakened the foundation of white supremacy in the United States. It also powerfully illustrates how insidiously racism reestablishes itself in structures, like a hydra.