Introduction: Higher Education for African-Americans before the Civil Rights Era, 1900–1964

This volume considers the next phase in the gradual expansion and elevation of African-American higher education, the long march from Jim Crow conditions to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Such progress as was possible was made against heavy odds-the “separate but (un)equal” policies of the segregated South, less overt but pervasive racist attitudes in the North, and formidable legal obstacles to obtaining equal rights.