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  • 2021-07-14 (xsd:date)
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  • Is This 1961 Pro-Segregation Letter from LSU's President Real? (en)
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  • The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision by the U.S. Supreme Court was a landmark in civil rights history, as the court struck down the separate but equal doctrine that had enabled racial segregation in public facilities for decades. Most notably, the Brown ruling ended the practice of racial segregation in public schools -- in law, at least, if not immediately in practice. Some states followed the legal ruling and desegregated their public schools, but in others school administrators and government officials remained defiant. In one of the most renowned cases, James Meredith had to pursue a lawsuit against the state of Mississippi up to the Supreme Court in order to secure admission to the all-white University of Mississippi, while the state's governor, Ross Barnett, refused to accept his enrollment. Likewise, in 1963 Alabame governor George Wallace famously blocked the doorway of the University of Alabama in a defiant attempt to prevent two Black students from enrolling. In some states, previously all-white public universities reluctantly accepted the enrollment of Black students but nonetheless did their best to keep them apart from white students by maintaining non-integrated dormitories, extracurricular activities, and athletics programs. In 1954, for example, the University of Texas (UT) rescinded the admission of several Black students in order to preclude the possibility that they might try out for the school's football team: Contrary to the law, into the 1960s the University of Texas continued to maintain dormitories for Black students that were not only separate, but decidedly unequal: Amid those protests and lawsuits over the segregated dormitory facilities, according to Asher Price, UT’s chancellor, Dr. Harry Ransom, wrote administrators at a number of other universities across the South to ask them how they had handled issues of desegregation. One of the other school administrators that Ransom wrote to was Troy H. Middleton, the president of Louisiana State University (LSU) from 1951 until 1962. Middleton's response is the letter reproduced at the head of this article, in which he acknowledged that the school had begrudgingly accepted Negro students, but declared that they were not allowed to room with white students, that the school would discontinue (i.e., presumably drain) its swimming pool if Black students attempted to use it, and that he would fabricate an excuse to disqualify any Negro who sought to take part in a school athletic program: In 2020, the LSU Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a motion to remove Middleton's name from the university's main library due to his segregationist policies while LSU president. That action was carried out within hours of its approval. (en)
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