Ohio college students register to vote.

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The BRAD BLOG has reported on some of the newest efforts to suppress the student vote. The most recent efforts to fraudulently or deceptively infringe on college students’ voting rights have been led by the GOP, whose local officials have been engaging in what can only be described as a dirty tricks campaign to disseminate false information about regional election regulations.

Blogger Brad Friedman describes this growing attempt to discourage student voters:

The anti-student, anti-democracy scam, now reported in at least three states, includes scare-tactics published by election officials, notifying students (incorrectly) that they may lose student aid and scholarships, etc., if they register to vote where they go to school.

When such efforts are exposed as deceptive and inaccurate, the local Republican official will usually claim that their dissemination of false information was unintentional, and that they simply made a mistake in interpreting local regulations.

The states where this scam has taken place are South Carolina, Virginia, and Colorado.

To read the BRAD BLOG’s coverage of GOP efforts to suppress the student, minority, and low-income vote in key swing states, click HERE.

And if you haven’t registered, the Proud Black Voter blog has compiled a useful state-by-state list of links to voter registration information. Click on the image below to learn more about how to register to vote in your are;and remember that you don’t have to be Black to access the information on this site; you simply have to have a interest in voting for the candidate of your choice:

Posted by Ajuan Mance

I think both white and black students are against (the KKK) coming. I’m not afraid of anything. They have the freedom to come here. –Brittany Smith, University of Mississippi BSUPresident

According to The Daily Mississippian, the self-described emperor of the Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan will have officers and Klansmen “on hand” for tonight’s presidential debate, scheduled to take place on the Ole Miss campus. The Mississippian reports that the Klan will not take part in any violent or disruptive activities. “Our people will be in Oxford and on the campus ‘invisible,'” he explained in an interview printed in the September 15th Mississippian. “That means our people won’t be in regalia or demonstrating. So, I guess you’ll just have to guess which of the people present are Klansmen.”

Not surprisingly, the Mississippi Klan opposes the Obama candidacy. Said the emperor, “His election would bring disaster to America.”

Black Student Union President Brittany Smith is taking the Klan’s threatened presence in stride. “They’re not going to change people’s minds,” she explained. “I don’t think it matters.”

The decision to hold the first presidential debate at the University of Mississippi has combined with an overall greater interest on the part of students in the historic nature of this year’s GOP and Democratic tickets to create a lively political atmosphere on campus. Many students report noticing a greater interest in both the candidates and the issues among their friends and classmates.

***

The students at the University of Mississippi have caught election fever. Have you?

If you haven’t registered, then do so as soon as possible. There are many sites online where you can register to vote:

• The Afrosphere Bloggers Site is a good place to start, with several helpful links that will help you get registered in your state. Click HERE.
• Rock the Vote is another place where voters from all states and territories can register. Click HERE.
• Congress.Org provides an interactive U.S. map that will allow you to download the voter registration form for your state or territory. Click HERE.

And remember, it’s not enough just to register. Your opinion matters, but only if you take the time to vote! See you at the polls.

Posted by Ajuan Mance

It’s college application time. High school seniors are gathering teacher recommendations, ordering copies of their high school transcripts, and writing and re-writing their personal statements. Woe be unto those young men and women who are trying to squeeze in one last turn on the S.A.T., in time to beat the deadline (and meet the average score) of their first-choice school.

To commemorate this exciting period time in the lives of our college-bound seniors, I offer you these highlights from an article published in the October 1, 1998 issue of the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (JBHE). “How Did They Do That?” by Karin Chenoweth describes the findings of a joint Mellon Foundation – Urban Institute study of African American students who earned high scores on the S.A.T. Here are some of the most interesting points, quoted directly from the JBHE article (to read the entire article, click HERE):

• high-scoring African American students have fewer advantages than their White counterparts. They are also more likely to come from families with lower incomes and with fewer college degrees than Whites with similar scores.

• although the biggest concentration of Blacks with high scores attend school in the close-in suburbs of large cities, in general high-scoring Black students are much more likely than their White peers to attend school in central cities — where educational opportunities are often more limited than in the suburbs.

• Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond, professor at Stanford University’s School of Education explains that the data contradict the idea of the level playing field. She explains: “Black kids who score well do so against greater odds than what White students have to face,” she says. “There’s been this idea in the press that Black kids have equal opportunities, don’t measure up, and still want extra opportunities in the form of affirmative action. But Black kids are achieving against the odds.”

• all high performers, Black and White, take rigorous courses. Most take calculus, and even more take honors English.

• although the vast majority of Blacks with high test scores attend public school they represent only 4 percent of the African American males and 3 percent of African American females attending public schools.

• there is a correlation between attending private and Catholic school and scoring high on the SAT. In private school, 16 percent of African American boys and 21 percent of the girls score 1200 or more. In Catholic school, 7 percent of male Blacks and 4 percent of female Blacks achieve these scores.
  Part of the reason offered by the study for that discrepancy [between public schools on the one hand and Catholic and private schools on the other] is that Catholic and private schools tend to require all students to take a rigorous college-preparatory curriculum, while many public schools do not.

• Blacks with high scores work fewer part-time jobs than Whites with high scores, and generally participate less in extracurricular activities — with the exception of what the study calls “intellectually stimulating” activities such as honor society, computer clubs, and instrumental music classes. Lower scoring Black students spent more time working and participating in junior ROTC.

• high-scoring African American students — particularly girls — have very high aspirations for their education. For example, 32 percent of Black girls who score above 1300 on the SAT say they will aim for a Ph.D., compared to only about one-fifth of African American boys and White students.

• African Americans with high scores also apply to slightly more competitive schools than their White counterparts, but keep to a fairly narrow range of schools. Only about sixty universities received the SAT scores of one hundred or more African American students with high scores. For the male African American with high scores, of the most popular schools, twenty-two were private schools, seventeen public universities, six were Ivy League, and five were historically Black colleges and universities. For females, the top schools included twenty-six private universities, thirteen public universities, six Ivy League schools, and five historically Black colleges and universities.

Posted by Ajuan Mance

A vintage photograph of the Morris Brown College baseball college. This photo dates from the early 1899 or 1900. Morris Brown College was founded in 1885, in Atlanta, Georgia.

(Source: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. Reproduction #: LC-USZ62-114266)

Posted by Ajuan Mance

While GOP officials seek to limit the decidedly left-leaning student vote at Virginia Tech, they seem to have little objection to the dramatic steps that administrators at another Virginia school, evangelical stronghold Liberty University, are taking to get their students to the polls. Eric Kelderman on The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Election 2008 Blog describes Liberty’s planned efforts to get out the student vote:

The chancellor of the conservative Christian college, Jerry Fallwell Jr., is canceling classes on Election Day and providing buses to drive students to the polls, according to a story in The Washington Post. Voter-registration forms are being distributed in the dorms and classrooms to get both in- and out-of-state students signed up before the October 6 deadline for registering for the general election.

Liberty’s decisive steps to increase student participation (steps that might well be appropriate on every campus) demonstrate the degree to which political activists on the far right, the far left, and everywhere in between have come to realize the enormous potential of the youth vote to transform this election.

The best way to determine which voting constituencies are believed to pose the greatest threat to the political status quo is to follow the news carefully and track the populations who are experienced attempts to limit their voter participation. In this election, that would be African Americans of all ages and classes and students of all ethnicities.

I believe that all who are eligible should register and vote, in this and every election! If you are a member of one of those groups who are experiencing challenges to your right to vote, however, you should take special care to participate. If your vote didn’t matter, then no one would care whether you registered or not.

If you haven’t registered, then do so as soon as possible. In many jurisdictions the deadline is only 3 weeks away. If you have already registered, then register a friend. Grab some voter registration cards and make sure everyone you know has filled one out and submitted it. Register your neighbors and friends, and then, if you have a car, consider driving people to their polling places, especially students, seniors, and others who may have limited transportation options.

There are many sites online where you can register to vote:

• The Afrosphere Bloggers Site is a good place to start, with several helpful links that will help you get registered in your state. Click HERE.
• Rock the Vote is another place where voters from all states and territories can register. Click HERE.
• Congress.Org provides an interactive U.S. map that will allow you to download the voter registration form for your state or territory. Click HERE.

Posted by Ajuan Mance

The Chronicle of Higher Education has published the 2008 edition of its annual almanac. The numbers are in, and here are some highlights on Black students and educational participation:

Population of the U.S.: 301,621,157

Proportion of the population that identifies as Black: 12.8%

Proportion of all adults who have earned a bachelor’s degree or higher: 27%

Total number of students enrolled in bachelor’s, graduate, and professional degree programs: 17,758,870

Total number of Black students enrolled in bachelor’s, graduate, and professional degree programs: 2,279,605

Proportion of undergraduates who are Black: 14.1%

Proportion of Black men and women who hold at least a bachelor’s degree: 18.6%

Proportion of fall 2007 college freshman who are Black: 10.7%

Number of doctoral degrees conferred in the U.S. in 2006: 45,596

Proportion of 2006 doctoral degrees earned by Black men and women: 6.3%

Top 5 African and Afro-diasporic nations sending students to the U.S., in descending order (does not include permanent residents): Kenya, Nigeria, Jamaica, Ghana, Trinidad & Tobago

Proportion of fall 2007 freshmen who feel it is likely that they will “socialize with someone of another racial or ethnic group”: 66.0%

Proportion of fall 2007 freshmen who agree “strongly or somewhat” that “affirmative action in college admissions should be abolished”: 47.8%

Proportion of fall 2007 freshmen who agree “strongly or somewhat” that “racial discrimination is no longer a major problem in America”: 19.5%

Posted by Ajuan Mance

Charles Hamilton Houston and his parents, William LaPre and Mary Ethel Houston. Houston’s father was an attorney. His mother was a college-educated teacher.

(Source: Blight, David. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, No. 34 [Winter, 2001-2002], pp. 10)

The Garvey movement was a black man’s dream; and for all its bombastic phantasmagoria of a visionary African empire, it made a permanent contribution in teaching the simple dignity of being black. Prior to Marcus Garvey all Negro teaching had been to be like the “good white folks” and not make too much noise. Madam Walker had made a million dollars making bleaches and straightening hair. But Marcus Garvey, the black Negro from Jamaica, founded himself an imaginary empire, surrounded himself with black dukes and black duchesses, gathered himself a black army and a green cross corps of black nurses, actually sent black men out to sea in command of ocean-going vessels, and paraded in the sun claiming his black skin as his proud birthright and distinction. For my purposes it is immaterial whether he was charlatan or fool, Marcus Garvey by turning the Negro’s attention to the beauty of the color of his own skin, has had a profound influence on Negro thought.

–Charles Hamilton Houston, “An Approach to Better Race Relations,” National YWCA Convention, Philadelphia, May 5, 1934

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Biography and Notes: My last blogpost featured a quote from Harvard Law Professor Randall Kennedy that is critical of what he perceives as an anxiety of authenticity on the part of Black Harvard Law School students and alums. In the featured quote (from Kennedy’s Sellout, his most recent book), he links this apparent fear of being not Black enough/not connected to community enough/forgetting “where you came from” to the writings and speeches of Charles Hamilton Houston.

Professor Kennedy is especially interested in those instances when the pressure among Black professionals to remember “where you came from” and “stay black” becomes the basis for ostracizing those African Americans whose interests and ideas fall outside of the range of activities and concerns that one might consider to be acceptably Black. This is relatively recent phenomenon (which really gained momentum during the late 1960s) and it represents a misreading and misuse of Houston’s ideas.

Charles Hamilton Houston’s life is a testament to the power that an African American attorney can have when he or she commits himself to social change in and for the Black community.

Born in 1895, Houston was the valedictorian of his graduating class at Amherst College (his was one of six valedictorians for the class of 1915). A cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School, a former Dean of the Howard University Law School, and a history-making civil rights lawyer, he believed deeply in the need for and the responsibility of African American lawyers to aid Black communities in dismantling Jim Crow segregation and the local and regional obstacles that it placed in the path to freedom.

Houston entered Harvard Law school in 1919, after serving as an Army officer in World War I. At Harvard he became the first Black editor of the law review. He graduated in the top five percent of his class, earning his LL.B. with honors. He continued his legal studies at the University of Madrid and went on to earn his J.D.

Houston joined the faculty of the Howard University Law School in 1924. The website of the Charles Houston Bar Association describes his impact there:

Charles Houston joined the faculty at Howard Law School in 1924, and soon ascended to become its vice-dean (1929-35). During his tenure, Mr. Houston sculpted the institution into a legal powerhouse, training almost a quarter of America’s Black law students. By 1931, the full-time legal program he instituted had received accreditation from both the American Bar Association and the Association of American Law Schools. The success of his law school program is evident from the work and accomplishments of the great legal minds it produced. Mr. Houston was a teacher and mentor to many of the great civil rights defenders of the 20th Century. These celebrated figures include Thurgood Marshall, the first African American U.S. Supreme Court Justice.

As an attorney, Houston argued a number of cases before the Supreme Court, focusing his energies primarily on those that could hasten the demise of Jim Crow segregation. Houston’s most influential tactic in these cases was his emphasis on the failure of segregated jurisdictions to adhere to the letter of the law as defined in Plessy vs. Ferguson, which allowed racial segregation as long that the racially designated facilities were equal. Houston’s emphasis on the failure of segregated jurisdictions to abide by the “separate but equal” provision was instrumental in the history-changing Brown vs. Board decision.

Unfortunately, Houston would die before his most famous student, Thurgood Marshall, won that landmark case. Charles Hamilton Houston died on August 22, 1950. Five Supreme Court justices attended his funeral. Four years later, Thurgood Marshall would build on the work of his late mentor, successfully arguing the case that would end school segregation throughout the U.S.

Posted by Ajuan Mance

Randall Kennedy (b. 1954)

Annually the [Harvard Law] school’s Black Law Students Association (BLSA) sponsors two events that I usually attend. One is a gathering at the beginning of each school year to which all of the black professors are invited to speak to the incoming class of black law students. The other is a weekend conference in the spring aimed at drawing alumni back to campus. At both, fear of selling out is thick in the air. At the gathering in the fall there is much exhortation about the racial obligation to “give back” to the black community and to avoid “forgetting where you come from.” And one can be certain that references, usually several, will be made to a statement that has now become iconic within the black bar — the claim, attributed to Charles Hamilton Houston, that “a lawyer’s either a social engineer of he’s a parasite on society.” At the sping conference, there are always panels featuring alumni who insist that, despite their ensconcement in the higher echelons of the nation’s preeminent law firms or businesses, they nonetheless make sure to “give back,” to “stay black,” to pay their racial dues. Regardless of the stated themes of the spring conferences, an implicit subtheme earnestly voiced in practically all of them is that the students nearing graduation have not sold out.

–Randall Kennedy in the Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal (191-192).

Biographical Notes: Randall Kennedy is the Michael R. Klein Professor of Law at Harvard University. His book Race, Crime, and the Law won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. Born in Columbia, South Carolina, he was educated at St. Albans School, Princeton University, Oxford University, and Yale Law School. Prior to joining the faculty of Harvard law school, he clerked for Judge J. Skelly Wright of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and Justice Thurgood Marshall of the U.S. Supreme Court.

In addition to numerous essays and articles in scholarly journals and mainstream periodicals, Professor Kennedy is the author of several books. Some of his more recent books include: Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal (2008); Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity and Adoption (2003); Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word (2002); and Race, Crime, and the Law (1998).  

Posted by Ajuan Mance

Young people as a whole are notoriously uninterested in politics, but this year more are tuning in. During the primary season, for example, the two-party turnout among 18- to 29-year-olds quadrupled in Iowa and Tennessee and tripled in Florida, Mississippi and Texas compared with 2000.

The general election is also enticing young voters. In 2004, the Rock the Vote registration group signed up about 1 million new voters. This year, the group has already registered about 1.4 million voters.

–from a recent USA Today editorial

Colleges and universities have long served as the backdrop for dramatic shifts in our political and social landscape. It should come as little surprise, then, that Michelle Obama, whose husband has already transformed U.S. politics through his historic run for the presidency, is speaking today on the campus of the University of Virginia, an institution founded by another agent of historic social change, Thomas Jefferson.

There is, of course, a downside to the college campus’s reputation as a hotbed of social activism and political change. For example, those outside of the university might be afraid of the potential of such a concentration of passionate and politically engaged voters to shift political outcomes throughout the region, and in a way that is disproportionate to their numbers.

Such fears are, no doubt, behind the push in certain Virginia communities to limit students’ voting rights. The Roanoke Times is one of several papers reporting on efforts of Virginia Republicans to challenge the legitimacy of the registration of students whose on-campus address differs from their permanent address (most often their parents’ home address).

Jon Taplin’s Blog details the efforts of certain Virginia districts to discourage student participation by disseminating false information threatening “dire consequences” like the inability to apply for financial aid, should students register to vote in any precinct other than that which corresponds with their parents’ home address. Jon Taplin comments on the specific struggle of Virginia Tech students to maintain their right to register and vote:

When I was helping register Black Voters for SNCC in 1964, I would have laughed if you had told me that middle class white college students would need the help of a civil rights lawyer to get registered.

You may recall similar attempts to disenfranchise college students during the Democratic primary. I blogged on this phenomenon back in January of this year. Now, efforts to squash the student vote, which disporportionately favors the Democratic presidential candidate, have resurfaced again, as particular jurisdictions attempt to limit the constitutional rights of their fellow citizens, threatening — in effect — to penalize them for choosing Virginia as the place where they want to spend their undergraduate years.

Posted by Ajuan Mance

Mary Jane Patterson (d. 1894)

Mary Jane Patterson is very likely the first African American woman to graduate from a U.S. college or University. The photograph above depicts Ms. Patterson in 1862, the year that she graduated from Oberlin College. After completing her bachelor’s degree, she moved to Philadelphia where she work as an assistant to Fanny Jackson Coppin, at the Institute for Colored Youth (later named Cheyney University).

Mary Jane Patterson would go on to become to first African American principal at Washington, D.C.’s Preparatory High School for Colored Youth (later renamed Dunbar High School).  To learn more about Patterson’s life, read her profile on African American Registry.

Posted by Ajuan Mance