The State Must Provide: Why America’s Colleges Have Always Been Unequal—and How To Set Them Right

In this book about racial inequality in the American higher education system from Reconstruction to the present, Harris (staff writer, the Atlantic) considers the motivations of abolitionists such as Cassius Marcellus Clay and John G. Fee to improve educational opportunities for Black students. He also describes the hopeful but short-lived efforts of progressive colleges such as Oberlin and Berea, and the rise of land grant colleges due to legislation introduced by Justin Morrill. Harris underpins this narrative with the history of pioneering, tumultuous efforts in Iowa, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Mississippi to admit Black students to university and to redress the issue of Black colleges being separate but not equal. Harris also discusses parity struggles after school desegregation; Head Start; and legal cases that opposed affirmative action. He ends with a sobering assessment of a “century of racial caste in higher education,” examining declining college enrollment among Black Americans, even in states with sizeable Black populations; the potential impact of COVID-19 on college closures; the Universities Studying Slavery consortium; and arguments for atonement and reparations.