Affirmative Action: Breaking Barriers in Education for African Americans

The passing of Brown v. Board of Education desegregated colleges, but African American enrollment in southern schools remained low. Affirmative Action further opened the doors for African Americans to enter traditionally white colleges and universities. The US Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) was responsible for conducting desegregation compliance reviews at colleges and universities, but was not appropriately punishing offending institutions. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) sued HEW in Adams v. Richardson resulting in tougher standards for the higher education in North Carolina.[1]

After an eleven-year disagreement with HEW, the UNC System’s final plan for Affirmative Action was the Consent Decree. North Carolina State University was listed as a “predominantly white institution” along with ten other major universities in the Consent Decree.[2] These eleven universities were required to disestablish the structure of dual systems of education, meaning reducing unnecessary program duplication between traditionally black and traditionally white institutions. Reducing dual systems would encourage integration.[3] 

Affirmative Action and the Consent Decree pushed the School of Agriculture and Life Sciences to recognize its racial practices. After convictions of racial practices towards African Americans, SALS faculty voluntarily sought to expand educational empowerment to African Americans in the 1980s. SALS faculty joined an Affirmative Action Committee, proving their willingness to right racial and educational injustice.



[1] John B. Williams, III, Desegregating America’s Colleges and Universities: Title VI Regulation of Higher Education (New York: Teachers College Press, 1988), 8.

[2] Consent Decree: North Carolina v. Department of Education, No. 79-217-CIV-5 (E.D.N.C, filed April 24, 1979), 4.

[3] Williams III, Desegregating America’s Colleges and Universities, 9.

Affirmative Action: Breaking Barriers in Education for African Americans