President Biden has pledged to combat racial inequality and to expand access and lower costs for higher education. These proposed education policies signal a federal commitment to eradicating barriers that hinder people from reaching their highest academic potential. They are also a reminder of the link between racial discrimination and unequal opportunity in education. Public higher education in the United States was legally segregated on the basis of race from Emancipation until the mid- to late 1950s.
Although many states, on paper, had dual systems of higher education, in reality, these states had well-endowed non-Black flagship institutions (many of these schools admitted non-White students) and poorly funded Blacks-only institutions. The inequity was most extreme at the post-baccalaureate level, as public Black graduate and professional school programs were nonexistent until the eve of World War II. This severely limited the production of Black physicians, lawyers and pharmacists, and stymied the creation of a Black middle class.
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