Alabama's Decree Of Difficulty

Despite a court order, achieving racial parity still appears a long way off

When George Munchus came to the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1976, he was the only Black professor in the business department, and one of just a few at the university.

"Given the history of White supremacy in the state of Alabama, most people had little to no exposure to Black scholars," he says.

For 20 years, despite his appeals to the institution's senior administrators, he says he remained the lone African American professor there.

In 1996, the university hired another African American professor in the business department. And two years later that department still has just two Black professors.

Institution-wide the picture doesn't get any prettier. In a city nearly three-quarters Black, 4 percent of the university's full-time faculty members are African American. Black administrators are at just 9 percent.

UAB has the largest Black faculty of the traditionally White institutions in the state. Looking at the totals for all the TWIs in Alabama, as of last fall, Blacks constituted 4.2 percent of nearly 6,000 full-time faculty members. That same year, Blacks constituted merely 6.4 percent of all administrators at the state's colleges and universities.

And this was six years after a remedial decree in Knight v. Alabama mandated that many of the state's universities beef up their Black faculty and administrative staff in order to remove vestiges of discrimination.

Judge Harold Murphy, the presiding judge in the case notes in the decree that "Black students at majority White colleges and universities benefit on many levels from the presence of Black faculty and administrators."

He also came to the conclusion that Black students at historically Black universities (HBCUs) could also benefit from adequate facilities, endowments, and the like. So, he ordered the state to pay for more facilities and endowments at Alabama State University (ASU) and Alabama A&M University (A&M).

Half a decade later and nearly 30 years after the official end of de jure segregation, the state of Alabama is still struggling to level educational opportunities for its Black and White citizens. And critics say that such a goal will be difficult to reach unless the state recruits and retains more Black faculty. Only recently, because of the decree, are state Black institutions getting the resources that White institutions have taken for granted.

The second part in a series of two, this article concludes a look at the impact the past three decades of struggle in Alabama have had on African American students, faculty and administrators in the state's higher education community.

Faculty and Administration

In a September petition to Judge Murphy, James Blacksher the attorney for the plaintiffs in Knight v. Alabama writes that "UAB should explain why it has fewer tenured and tenure-track Black faculty, than do similarly sized universities" in a host of other cities with similar Black populations.

"I think the primary problem of under-representation of Blacks on White campuses is the way they do business," Blacksher says. "The hiring decisions are not made by the presidents or the vice presidents, who are essentially accountable for diversifying the university. The decisions are made by the deans."

But the president of the university, Dr. Ann Reynolds, disagrees noting that her school's Black faculty percentages are above the national average.

"We've got a very active minority faculty recruitment procedure," she says. Reynolds also insists that UAB's "African American faculty is much cherished. They are treated absolutely as they should be."

And indeed, Judge Murphy remarked in his 1991 decree that "the Comprehensive Minority Faculty Development Program at UAB serves as a model for other programs around the country. But the annual report the university submitted to the court shows the funds for the program have been reduced significantly.

And Munchus, one of the university's longest standing Black faculty members, tells another story.

"It's been a very, very, very challenging 22 years at best," he says. "Reynolds is still somewhat naive as it relates to what goes on in the departments. That's where Black faculty catch hell. She has yet to do the dirty work."

Munchus says that during his tenure at the university, there's been "no rebel flag waving, and I've never been called the `n' word." But he says it's a constant battle to get university officials to understand the significance of having no Black academic deans and few Black department chairs.

One thing he does admit, though, is that he'd be even lonelier across the state at Auburn University, where James Brown, vice president for minority affairs, says that recruiting for Black faculty "has become a bidding war."

With 27 full-time Black faculty members, less than 3 percent of Auburn University's faculty is African American, a fact that Brown attributes to the national scarcity of African American Ph.D.s.

But Blacksher again retorts, "There are plenty of Black Ph.D.s. The problem is that once they're recruited, they're not retained."

Of Auburn, Blacksher notes in his September petition that "three Black faculty members have resigned in the last few months because of lack of support for their tenure and promotion opportunities."

And, Auburn still has the second lowest Black faculty percentage of all the state-funded institutions. The institution has no Black deans or department heads. And roughly 4 percent of its administrators are Black.

"There's a real culture clash here," says Blacksher. "Until the culture changes where Blacks are included as a big part, Black faculty will never be retained in any real numbers.

"The lack of Black faculty means fewer mentors for Black Ph.D.s," he adds. "Fewer mentors will essentially mean fewer Black Ph.D.s, and fewer Black Ph.D.s will mean fewer Black faculty."

What the HBCUs Will Get

A casual glance at the campuses of historically Black Alabama State University and Alabama A&M University reveals decaying buildings and dilapidated facilities that don't exist at the state's other colleges and universities.

"When I first came here, the building tight behind my office had a gutter so unkempt that pigeons used to check in and out of it like it was a hotel," remembers Bill Harris, president of Alabama State University.

Now thanks to the remedial decree, the two schools will get capitol improvement funds -- $15 million to Alabama State and $16 million to A&M -- to spruce up their physical plants.

They'll also get an endowment -- $1 million annually for the next 15 years -- and the state is required to match contributions of up to $1 million to each endowment.

"The fact of the matter is that for so many years, there was an inequity in the distribution of funds in this state. And the situation got so far out of hand that there are literally decades [to] make-up," says Harris.

That inequity, some say, may never even out. Especially, says state finance director Jimmy Baker, because Alabama is slowly moving towards a performance funding model. Under such a plan, state resources are allocated to schools on the basis of an institution's ability to meet certain performance standards.

Although it is not yet a significant portion of each school's state appropriations, performance funding is in the mix.

"Funding for the historically Black institutions is not even equal now and I don't anticipate it ever being equal," Baker says. "Particularly once you factor in performance funding."

One part of the Murphy decision that no other state desegregation case covers is an expansion of A&M's land-grant status. The decree calls for one unified system, so Auburn -- the state's other land-grant school -- will combine efforts with A&M.

Dr. John T. Gibson, president of Alabama A&M says the merger will help his school do a better job of reaching out to farmers that have traditionally gotten little to no state backing.

"A&M will develop the urban and non-traditional program," says Gibson. "It will be our job to ensure that the limited-resource farmers always have support."

Blacksher says the mandate will level out years of gross state neglect.

"A&M never got any state money to carry out its land-grant functions until it brought on the lawsuit," he says. "Auburn, on the other hand, was getting in the neighborhood of $40 million dollars a year for agricultural extension and research." Calls made to verify this claim with A&M were not returned.

The Future

With only a few items left to hash out in the plaintiffs' case against the state, higher education officials in Alabama must now go about implementing Judge Murphy's decree. While some schools may be moving slower than others in their recruitment and retention of Black students, faculty, and administrators, there's been no official state resistance.

"I think that the state has churned out, without extraordinary grumbling, the requirements of the court," says Harris. "The state has not, and probably won't, do any more than the court has ordered. And it has been with some difficulty that we've come to an understanding of what it is the court ordered."

That is where Carlos Gonzalez comes in. He's the court monitor charged with assisting Murphy in implementing the decree. He says that things have gone relatively smoothly and that he likes to leave as much of the decision-making as possible to the individual institutions.

One problem he notes is that the colleges need stable leadership in order to implement changes.

"A&M has had a series of presidents which has been a problem. ASU has had a pretty stable presidency, but their board is in disarray. Auburn has had some problems, too."

But, Gonzalez says with resignation, that's all part and parcel of what he describes as "a highly political education system."

It's that same highly bureaucratic system that didn't allow Murphy to do more for Black students in the state, Blacksher says.

"If they suddenly walked in and said to the president of Alabama State that he'd have a say in what goes on at the University of Alabama, it would have been ensuring failure," he says. "It's a political process. All we hoped to accomplish with the lawsuit is to better position Blacks with respect to educational opportunities.

"People who expected the feds to come in like the great White father were disappointed," Blacksher adds. "Look at the awful way we handled K-12 integration 30 years ago. It just wouldn't work."

What would work, says ASU's Harris, is if all Alabama's citizens realized their duties in ensuring educational opportunities for everyone.

"I think clearly there is a responsibility for all of the people in the state to make sure that any person of whatever race or ethnic group, has access to, and feels wholly comfortable, at any institution that the state supports," he says.

Because after all, as Blacksher puts it, "this goes deeper than higher education desegregation. We're talking about what kind of society we're going to build for our children."

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Total State Funding for Alabama's Public Institutions of Higher Education Over the Last Two Decades(*)

Alabama System       $3,996,978,133
Alabama A&M          $  310,939,780
Alabama State        $  304,673,052
Athens State         $   69,890,155
Auburn System        $2,253,245,454
Jacksonville State   $  342,257,039
Livingston           $  110,106,478
Montevallo           $  180,570,131
North Alabama        $  246,832,782
South Alabama        $  810,718,153
Troy State           $  326,161,716
Two-Year Colleges    $2,349,835,382

SOURCE: Alabama State Finance Office (*) 1978-97

BLACKS AT ALABAMA'S TRADITIONALLY WHITE INSTITUTIONS

Full Time Faculty

FALL 1989

                             TOTAL     BLACK    % BLACK
INSTITUTION                 FACULTY   FACULTY   FACULTY

Auburn Univ.                 1039        11       1.1%
Auburn Univ.-Montgomery       191         9       4.7%
Troy State Univ.              246         9       3.7%
Univ. Alabama                 887        21       2.4%
Univ. Alabama-Birmingham     1497        44       2.9%
Univ. Alabama-Huntsville      245         6       2.4%
Univ. of North Alabama        190         5       2.6%
Athens State Univ.             56         4       7.1%
Calhoun State Comm. Coll.     141        18      12.8%
Jacksonville State Univ.      283        11       3.9%
Univ. of West Alabama          98         1       1.0%
Univ. of Mobile               143         2       1.4%
Univ. South Alabama           631        19       3.0%
Totals                       5647       160       2.8%

Fall 1997

                             TOTAL     BLACK    % BLACK
INSTITUTION                 FACULTY   FACULTY   FACULTY

Auburn Univ.                 1112        29       2.6%
Auburn Univ.-Montgomery       197         8       4.1%
Troy State Univ.              303        19       6.3%
Univ. Alabama                 830        32       3.9%
Univ. Alabama-Birmingham     1662        69       4.2%
Univ. Alabama-Huntsville      257         7       2.7%
Univ. of North Alabama        193         9       4.7%
Athens State Univ.             71         6       8.5%
Calhoun State Comm. Coll.     133        21      15.8%
Jacksonville State Univ.      261        14       5.4%
Univ. of West Alabama          93         2       2.2%
Univ. of Mobile               128         8       6.3%
Univ. South Alabama           715        28       3.9%
Totals                       5955       252       4.2%

8-YEAR CHANGE

                             BLACK    % BLACK
INSTITUTION                 FACULTY   FACULTY

Auburn Univ.                   18       1.5%
Auburn Univ.-Montgomery        -1      -0.7%
Troy State Univ.               10       2.6%
Univ. Alabama                  11       1.5%
Univ. Alabama-Birmingham       25       1.2%
Univ. Alabama-Huntsville        1       0.3%
Univ. of North Alabama          4       0.2%
Athens State Univ.              2       1.3%
Calhoun State Comm. Coll.       3       3.0%
Jacksonville State Univ.        3       1.5%
Univ. of West Alabama           1       1.1%
Univ. of Mobile                 6       4.9%
Univ. South Alabama             9       0.9%
Totals                         92       1.4%

Full Time Administrators

Fall 1989

                            TOTAL   BLACK   % BLACK
INSTITUTION                 ADMIN   ADMIN    ADMIN

Auburn Univ.                   28      14      1.4%
Auburn Univ.-Montgomery        62       4      6.5%
Troy State Univ.               21       0      0.0%
Univ. Alabama                 119       3      2.5%
Univ. Alabama-Birmingham      243      14      5.8%
Univ. Alabama-Huntsville       66       2      3.0%
Univ. of North Alabama         12       0      0.0%
Athens State Univ.              4       1     25.0%
Calhoun State Comm. Coll.       9       0      0.0%
Jacksonville State Univ.       44       1      2.3%
Univ. of West Alabama          15       0      0.0%
Univ. of Mobile                26       2      7.7%
Univ. South Alabama           152       5      3.3%
Totals                       1054      36      3.4%

Fall 1997

                            TOTAL   BLACK   % BLACK
INSTITUTION                 ADMIN   ADMIN    ADMIN

Auburn Univ.                  287      12      4.2%
Auburn Univ.-Montgomery        55       8     14.5%
Troy State Univ.               16       1      6.3%
Univ. Alabama                  98       3      3.1%
Univ. Alabama-Birmingham      247      22      8.9%
Univ. Alabama-Huntsville       81       7      8.6%
Univ. of North Alabama         40       2      5.0%
Athens State Univ.             16       1      6.3%
Calhoun State Comm. Coll.      19       3     15.8%
Jacksonville State Univ.       41       2      4.9%
Univ. of West Alabama          25       4     16.0%
Univ. of Mobile                28       0      0.0%
Univ. South Alabama           235      11      4.7%
Totals                       1118      76      6.4%

8-YEAR CHANGE

                            BLACK   % BLACK
INSTITUTION                 ADMIN    ADMIN

Auburn Univ.                    8      2.8%
Auburn Univ.-Montgomery         4      8.1%
Troy State Univ.                1      6.3%
Univ. Alabama                   0      0.5%
Univ. Alabama-Birmingham        8      3.1%
Univ. Alabama-Huntsville        5      5.6%
Univ. of North Alabama          2      5.0%
Athens State Univ.              0    -18.8%
Calhoun State Comm. Coll.       3     15.8%
Jacksonville State Univ.        1      2.6%
Univ. of West Alabama           4     16.0%
Univ. of Mobile                -2     -7.7%
Univ. South Alabama             6      1.4%
Totals                         40      3.0%

COPYRIGHT 1998 Cox, Matthews & Associates
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