Date of Award
1-1-2021
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D. in History
First Advisor
Elizabeth A. Payne
Second Advisor
Mikaela M. Adams
Third Advisor
Shennette Garrett-Scott
Relational Format
dissertation/thesis
Abstract
After the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, student and faculty activists at public, flagship universities used existing civil rights organizations and founded new activist groups to bring attention to barriers that hindered their equal power and participation within higher education. African Americans, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and women created grassroots campaigns and worked within institutional structures to reform universities between 1964 and 1985. Activists worked separately and across gender, racial, and ethnic lines in attempts to gain authority, power, and self-determination within the university system. Students and faculty asserted that flagship universities needed to serve the needs of women and people of color both on and off campus. They called upon flagship, public universities, each charged with serving the needs of the citizens of their respective states, to create campus resources, admissions programs, policies, and interdisciplinary programs that challenged the white, male-centered structure of higher education. They faced opposition from governing board members, administrators, faculty, students, and alumni who benefitted from the status quo.
Public, flagship institutions expose important debates over the meaning and role of those institutions in their wider communities and states. While other scholars have studied universities, they tend to focus on a single group within the population. By placing the activist organizations and activist-oriented studies programs back in conversation with each other, as they were at the time, this project demonstrates that women and people of color achieved limited success at transforming higher education. Activists’ efforts reflected broader shifts in higher education across the United States, as women and people of color challenged state schools to serve their needs. Activists at the University of Illinois, the University of Mississippi, the University of Texas, and Rutgers University addressed systemic and cultural problems in higher education, and responded to conditions at each institution that reflected local politics and culture. A comparative approach reveals that a confluence of factors at the local, state, and national levels limited those changes. While their efforts did not result in a revolution of the university system, they did provoke a conservative backlash against higher education that shaped politics and public policy. Although universities complied with civil rights legislation, administrators failed to implement reforms that would result in systemic changes to universities. This project provides a new lens through which to understand higher education policy and relationships within public, flagship universities. The debates over the meaning and role of public universities shaped how many in and outside of the university community viewed higher education.
Recommended Citation
McClure, Jillian Elizabeth, "Opening the American University: African American, Latino/a, and Women's Activism in Higher Education and Postwar Politics, 1964-1985" (2021). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 2760.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/2760