GOING FROM BLACK TO BLACK AND WHITE: A CASE STUDY OF THE DESEGREGATION OF KENTUCKY STATE UNIVERSITY

In the last five decades, the emphasis on desegregating public education in the United States has come full circle, from a time when public predominantly white secondary schools were mandated to desegregate their student bodies "with all deliberate speed" to a time when public historically black institutions are being ordered by the U.S. Office for Civil Rights to increase their white student populations.;The purpose of the study was to chronicle and analyze desegregation activities at Kentucky State University between 1981 and 1986 under the administration of one president, Raymond M. Burse. The first part of the study chronicles how KSU, a public historically black institution, became a bi-racial University. For purposes of this study, a bi-racial institution is defined as one consisting of a critical mass of white students. Willie asserts that the critical mass should not be less than twenty percent of the total student body.;For purposes of analysis, J. Victor Baldridge's political model for decision-making in higher education was employed in large measure because it provided an appropriate framework for analyzing the way certain decisions were made at KSU. Thus, the analysis, which constitutes part two of this paper, focuses on the University's social structure; that is, the different interests held by various groups such as faculty members and some top administrators who did not support the president's views. It also explores the interest articulation process or how the different groups made known their concerns, and it examines the legislative phase or how the various concerns were eventually translated into official university policy. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.).;Roughly, until the mid-fifties, the thrust to desegregate public educational institutions, from elementary through post-secondary, was targeted primarily at white institutions--institutions which throughout history had legally excluded blacks. Although in 1969 the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education warned that desegregating public black colleges would be the first step toward their eventual extinction, it is doubtful that those who argued for the total elimination of a racially dual system of education envisioned that twenty-five years after the momentous Brown decision, public historically black colleges and universities would be confronted with their own desegregation mandates.