Black students have always been an afterthought. From its inception, our higher education system was not built on equality or accessibility, but on educating-and prioritizing-white students. Told through a vivid cast of characters, The State Must Provide examines what happened before and after schools were supposedly integrated in the twentieth century, and why higher education remains broken to this day.The definitive history of the pervasiveness of racial inequality in American higher educationĪmerica’s colleges and universities have a shameful secret: they have never given Black people a fair chance to succeed. The State Must Provide is the definitive chronicle of higher education's failed attempts at equality and the long road still in front of us to remedy centuries of racial discrimination-and poses a daring solution to help solve the underfunding of HBCUs. He explores the role that Civil War-era legislation intended to bring agricultural education to the masses had in creating the HBCUs that have played such a major part in educating Black students when other state and private institutions refused to accept them. Board of Education, and the government's role in creating and upholding a segregated education system. Harris weaves through the legal, social, and political obstacles erected to block equitable education in the United States, studying the Black Americans who fought their way to an education, pivotal Supreme Court cases like Plessy v.

In The State Must Provide, Adam Harris reckons with the history of a higher education system that has systematically excluded Black people from its benefits. While governments and private donors funnel money into majority white schools, historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), and other institutions that have high enrollments of Black students, are struggling to survive, with state legislatures siphoning away federal funds that are legally owed to these schools. The definitive history of the pervasiveness of racial inequality in American higher educationĪmerica's colleges and universities have a shameful secret: they have never given Black people a fair chance to succeed. It is an invaluable text from a supremely talented writer.' -Clint Smith, author of How the Word is Passed 'A book that both taught me so much and also kept me on the edge of my seat.

The State Must Provide by Adam Harris