1 Weaver, Robert C. “The Negro Private and Church-Related College” A Critical Summary,” The Journal of Negro Education, 29: 3 (Summer 1960), 394–400. Weaver, Robert C. was the first Black member of a presidential cabinet (Lyndon B. Johnson). In 1966, he became Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. He also worked closely with the John Hay Whitney Fund and the Ford Foundation as a foundation officer and special consultant, respectively.Google Scholar

2 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). For more information on the Brown decision in the primary and secondary setting, see Patterson, James T. Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Kluger, Richard Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for Equality (New York: Knopf, 1976); Constance Baker Motley, “The Legacy of Brown v. Board of Education,” Teachers College Record 96:4 (Summer 1995): 637–643; and Russo, Charles J. Harris, J. John and Sandidge, Rosetta F. “Brown v. Board of Education at 40: A Legal History of Equal Educational Opportunity in American Public Education,” Journal of Negro Education 63:3 (Summer 1994): 297–309.Google Scholar

3 The UNCF's commitment to these goals is evident in both its internal correspondence and its publicity. See United Negro College Fund Papers (UNCF papers), Robert, W. Woodruff Library, Atlanta University Center Atlanta, Georgia.Google Scholar

4 Du Bois, W. E. B. The Education of Black People, Ten Critiques, 1906–1960, Edited by Aptheker, Herbert, (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1973), 66 [original date of speech, 1930].Google Scholar

5 Trent, William J. Jr. to UNCF Campaign Leadership, 1954, “Questions and Answers Concerning the Effect of the Supreme Court Decision on the UNCF and its Member Colleges,” box 16, microfiche 2295, 2296, UNCF papers.Google Scholar

6 Drewry, Henry N. and Doermann, Humphrey Stand and Prosper. Private Black Colleges and Their Students (Princeton: Princeton University, 2001). Although today the UNCF boasts 40 member colleges, in 1954, there were only 31 member colleges. Membership in the UNCF required being a private institution with an “A” rating (assigned by the Southern Association of Negro Colleges). For more detailed information, see Tucker, Shuana K. “The Early Years of the United Negro College Fund, 1943–1960,” The Journal of African American History, 87, (Fall 2002):.Google Scholar

7 The Court's call for the dismantling of segregated schools with “all deliberate speed” actually came in the Brown II case, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, 349 U.S. 294 (1955).Google Scholar

8 Much like Richard Neustadt and Ernest R. May's Thinking in Time, Simon Schama's Dead Certainties, and Mark Bauerlein's Negrophobia, this article purposely looks at a narrow time span, in an effort to uncover the immediate reaction of participants to a critical event. Just as in the above-mentioned texts, this article uses a bounded case examination of an historical event with the idea in mind that initial reactions can reveal a different picture of people and institutions than their actions over a longer period of time. For examples of historical research that uses a single event or narrow time span as the subject of the research, please see, Richard Neustadt and Ernest R. May, Thinking in Time (New York: Free Press, 1986); Schama, Simon Dead Certainties: Unwarranted Speculations (New York: Vintage Books, 1991) Bauerlein, Mark Negrophobia, A Race Riot in Atlanta, 1906 (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2001); and Avery, Vida L. “The Creation of a Center for Black Higher Education: The Atlanta University Center” (Ph.D. diss., Georgia State University, 2003) See also, Geertz, Clifford “Deep Play on the Balinese Cockfights,” Daedelus 101 (Winter, 1972).Google Scholar

9 Thompson, Daniel C. Private Black Colleges at the Crossroads (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1973), 15, 16.Google Scholar

10 See Gasman, Marybeth “Frederick Douglass Patterson (1901–1988), College President and Founder of the United Negro College Fund,” The Encyclopedia of Philanthropy (New York: Oryx Press, 2001).Google Scholar

11 See Trent, William Jr., “Cooperative Fund Raising for Higher Education.” By 1954, the number of UNCF member colleges increased to 31 (although it had been as high as 33 in 1946). Initially some institutions were skeptical of Patterson's idea, and moreover, they were not willing to share the donors that they had worked hard to cultivate. In addition, the numbers of member colleges fluctuated based on accreditation problems. In 1952, the Southern Association of Colleges and Universities (SACS) no longer excluded Black colleges and began to make decisions related to their accreditation. The UNCF used the SACS accrediting standards to make membership decisions and some member colleges no longer qualified.Google Scholar

12 Although the GEB's was funded as an outgrowth of the Negro Education Board, it gave only 19 percent of its donations to Black education. For more information, see Anderson, Eric and Moss, Alfred Dangerous Donations. Northern Philanthropy and Southern Black Education, 1902–1930 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999).Google Scholar

13 According to historian Anderson, James D. the GEB wanted to orchestrate the “systematic development of a few select institutions of Black higher education.” (p. 238). These institutions would: “… produce college-bred leaders to acculturate Black Americans into the values and mores of southern society. Second, it was very important that Black leaders be trained in the South by institutions ‘in touch with the conditions to be faced by the young people in later life rather than in the North by institutions… out of touch with southern life.’ Third, and most important, the development of a few strong institutions was viewed as a strategic means to reduce the number of existing Black colleges” (p. 255). See Anderson, James D. The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988).Google Scholar

14 Patterson, Frederick D. to Davis, Jackson General Education Board, May 28, 1943, General Education Board Papers, Record Group 5235–5240, series 1, sub-series 3, box 490, folder 5231, Rockefeller Archive Center [hereafter RAC], Sleepy Hollow, New York.Google Scholar

15 Patterson, Frederick D. in Goodson, Martia G. (ed.), Chronicles of Faith: The Autobiography of Frederick D. Patterson (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1991).Google Scholar

16 Gasman, Marybeth “A Word for Every Occasion: Rockefeller, John D. Jr. and the United Negro College Fund, 1944–1960,” History of Higher Education Annual, 2003; Gasman, Marybeth and Epstein, Edward “Creating an Image for Black Higher Education: A Visual Examination of the United Negro College Fund's Publicity, 1944–1960,” Presentation made at the American Educational Studies Association Annual Meeting, Pittsburgh, PA, October, 2002.Google Scholar

17 Rockefeller, John D. Jr. to Warwick, Mr. J.R. 20 November 1950, Messrs Rockefeller—Education, III 2G, box 52, folder 657, Sleepy Hollow, New York (RAC). This idea is present in most letters authored by Junior or sent out under his signature.Google Scholar

18 Rockefeller, Jr.'s letters to potential local campaign chairmen exemplify this idea. They are located, primarily, in Messrs Rockefeller—Education, III 2G, box 94, folder 655A, RAC.Google Scholar

19 Many letters to industry letters contain the phrase “insurance against subversive influences.” They are located in the Messrs Rockefeller – Education, III 2G, RAC.Google Scholar

20 Patterson, F. D. “Salient Points Concerning the United Negro College Fund Campaign,” October 10, 1944, GEB Papers, RAC.Google Scholar

21 Gasman, “A Word for Every Occasion.“Google Scholar

22 “America is Free to Choose,” 1944, General Education Board Papers, Record Group 5235–5240, series 1, sub-series 3, box 491, folder 5338, RAC.Google Scholar

23 “A Significant Adventure,” ~1950, General Education Board Papers, Record Group 5235–5240, Series 1, sub-series 3, box 491, folder 5240, RAC.Google Scholar

24 Gasman, “A Word for Every Occasion.“Google Scholar

25 Ibid.Google Scholar

26 Egerton, John Speak Now Against the Day. The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South (New York: Knopf, 1994); Litwack, Leon F. Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow (New York: Knopf, 1998); and Dudziak, Mary L. Cold War Civil Rights. Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).Google Scholar

27 These cases were Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, Registrar of the University of Missouri, et al, 305 U.S. 337 (1938); Sipuel v. Board of Regents, 332 U.S. 631 (1948); Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U.S. 629 (1950); McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, 339 U.S. 637 (1950). The first case, in 1938, involved Lloyd Gaines, a Black, high school valedictorian who wanted to attend the University of Missouri Law School. When the law school discovered that Gaines was Black they denied his admission but offered to pay his tuition in another state. In this instance, the Court declared that states must either furnish separate and equal educational institutions within the respective state or admit Blacks to the all-White institutions. In effect, Gaines called for the provision of an equal education for all of a state's residents. In the second case, Sipuel v. Board of Regents of Oklahoma, the Supreme Court required that states provide equal graduate education for Blacks under the Fourteenth Amendment. However, it did not specify how that education was to be provided. And as a result, the Oklahoma Board of Regents found a way of providing graduate education to Ada Louise Sipuel without admitting Blacks to the state's White institutions: they roped off an area in the state capitol building, designated the area as the “Negro law school,” and hired three Black lawyers to serve as the faculty. Although important and effective in foreshadowing the Court's future decisions, the Gaines case is not discussed in detail in this article. Taking place in 1938, six years prior to the creation of the UNCF, the case although promising to the Fund's leadership did not have an impact on their fundraising strategies. The Sweatt and McLaurin cases, which offered greater hope to the Fund leadership, are discussed in the body of the article.Google Scholar

28 Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896).Google Scholar

29 Johnson, Charles S. “Some Significant Social and Educational Implications of the U.S. Supreme Court's Decisions,” The Journal of Negro Education, 23, 3 (Summer 1954): 354–371.Google Scholar

30 Kluger, Simple Justice. Google Scholar

31 Vanessa Siddle Walker provides a thorough analysis of the values of segregated schools at the elementary and secondary level in Vanessa Siddle Walker, “Valued Segregated Schools for African American Children in the South, 1935–1969: A Review of Common Themes and Characteristics,” Review of Educational Research 70:3 (Fall 2000): 253–295. See also, Johnson, “Some Significant Social and Educational Implications.”Google Scholar

32 Patterson, F. D. “The Private Negro College in a Racially-Integrated System of Higher Education,” The Journal of Negro Education, 21: 3 (Summer 1952), 368.Google Scholar

33 Lash, John S. “The Umpteenth Crisis in Negro Higher Education,” Journal of Negro Education, 22: 8 (November 1951), 432.Google Scholar

34 William J. Trent Jr. led the UNCF from 1944 to 1963. He was born in 1920 in Asheville, North Carolina, and graduated from Livingstone College in 1930 where his father William J. Trent Sr. was president of the college from 1925–1957. Trent also received a Master of Business Administration degree in 1932 from the University of Pennsylvania and served as the dean at Bennett College from 1934–38. For more information on Trent, see the United Negro College Fund Archives: A Guide and Index to the Microfiche, University Microfilms International, 1985.Google Scholar

35 Trent, W.J. Jr. to Maury, Reuben Chief Editor, New York Daily News, March 16, 1954 (pre-Brown), box 16, microfiche 2295, UNCF Papers.Google Scholar

36 Trent, William J. Jr., to UNCF Leadership, n.d. (pre-Brown), “Objectives of the United Negro College Fund,” box 16, microfiche 2295, UNCF Papers.Google Scholar

37 Trent, William J. Jr., to UNCF Leadership, n.d. (pre-Brown), “Objectives of the United Negro College Fund,” box 16, microfiche 2295, UNCF Papers.Google Scholar

38 “Feel Integration will Spur Race Colleges to Excel,” The Pittsburgh Courier, Saturday, March 15, 1952, no page number, located in box 16, microfiche 2296, UNCF Papers.Google Scholar

39 Ibid.Google Scholar

40 Ibid.Google Scholar

41 Ibid.Google Scholar

42 Patterson, F.D. May 27, 1954, “Report to Friends and Contributors of the United Negro College Fund,” box 16, microfiche 2295, UNCF Papers.Google Scholar

43 Raullerson, C.H. to Trent, W.J. Jr., June 1, 1954, “Materials prepared as a result of the Supreme Court Decision,” box 16, microfiche 2295, UNCF Papers.Google Scholar

44 Trent, W. J. Jr. “Official Statement of the United Negro College Fund Regarding the Supreme Court Decision of May 17, 1954,” UNCF publication, 1954, box 16, microfiche 2295, UNCF Papers.Google Scholar

45 Ibid.Google Scholar

46 Trent, W.J. Jr. to Negro Newspapers, “Night Letter,” box 16, microfiche 2295, UNCF Papers.Google Scholar

47 Patterson, F.D. May 27, 1954, “Report to Friends and Contributors of the United Negro College Fund,” box 16, microfiche 2295, UNCF Papers.Google Scholar

48 United Negro College Fund, 1954, Memorandum of Information, box 16, microfiche 2295, UNCF Papers.Google Scholar

49 Carroll, Margaret E. (Fund secretary), n.d., 1954, “Statement by Patterson, Dr. F.D. President and Founder of the United Negro College Fund on the Decision of the United States Supreme Court on Segregation in the Public Schools of the South,” box 16, microfiche 2296, UNCF Papers.Google Scholar

50 “Appraisal of a Venture. The United Negro College Fund's First Fifteen Years, 1944–1959,” Messers Rockefeller, Education, III 2G, box 96, folder 661A, RAC, Sleepy Hollow, New York.Google Scholar

51 UNCF Fact Sheet, United Negro College Fund, UNCF Papers, General File, Woodruff Library Archives, Atlanta University Center, Atlanta, Georgia; Williams, Lea “The United Negro College Fund: Its Growth and Development“ (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1978), 107. See also, “Appraisal of a Venture. The United Negro College Fund's First Fifteen Years, 1944–1959,” Rockefeller, Messers Education, III 2G, box 96, folder 661 A, RAC.Google Scholar

52 Scott, J.S. Sr., Wiley College, n.d., 1954, “The Supreme Court Decision and the United Negro College Fund,” box 13, microfiche 1875, UNCF Papers.Google Scholar

53 Ibid.Google Scholar

54 Johnson, Charles S. “Next Steps in Education in the South,” Phylon 15: 1 (1st Quarter, 1954): 7–20, 10; Johnson made similar statements after the Brown decision in Johnson, “Some Significant Social and Educational Implications.”Google Scholar

55 Carroll, Margaret E. October 4, 1954, Press Release, Board Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, box 16, microfiche 2296, UNCF Papers.Google Scholar

56 Mays, Benjamin E. president, Morehouse College, Atlanta, Georgia, n.d. 1954, “In view of the recent Supreme Court decision, what do you consider the most effective arguments for continued support of the UNCF?” box 13, microfiche 1875, UNCF Papers.Google Scholar

57 National Mobilization of Resources for the United Negro College Fund, January 18, 1955, Messers Rockefeller, Education, III, 2G, box 96, folder 664A, RAC. See also Johnson, Charles S. The Negro College Graduate (New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969); Weaver, Robert C. “The Private Negro Colleges and Universities—An Appraisal,” The Journal of Negro Education 29:2 (Spring 1960): 113–120; Harrison, E. C. “On Reorientation of College for Negroes,” The Journal of Higher Education 26:6 (June 1955): 297–299+342.Google Scholar

58 African American Who's Who, 1944–1960.Google Scholar

59 Trent, W.J. Jr., May 24, 1954, Memorandum and Fact Sheet, box 16, microfiche 2295, UNCF Papers.Google Scholar

60 Patterson, F.D. May 27, 1954, “Report to Friends and Contributors of the United Negro College Fund,” box 16, microfiche 2295, UNCF Papers. See also, Johnson, “Next Steps in Education in the South,”; Johnson made similar statements after the Brown decision in Johnson, “Some Significant Social and Educational Implications.”Google Scholar

61 Thompson, Private Black Colleges at the Crossroads. Google Scholar

62 Patterson, F.D. May 27, 1954, “Report to Friends and Contributors of the United Negro College Fund,” box 16, microfiche 2295, UNCF Papers.Google Scholar

63 Trent, W.J. Jr., to UNCF Campaign Leadership, May 24, 1954, Memorandum and Fact Sheet, box 16, microfiche 2295, UNCF Papers.Google Scholar

64 Ibid.Google Scholar

65 United Negro College Fund, Official Publication, n.d., 1954, box 16, microfiche 2295, UNCF Papers.Google Scholar

66 Ibid.Google Scholar

67 Ibid.Google Scholar

68 Ibid.Google Scholar

69 Ibid.Google Scholar

70 Mays, Benjamin E. President, Morehouse College, Atlanta, Georgia, March 20, 1955, New York, New York, “Our Colleges and the Supreme Court Decision,” box 22, microfiche 3218, UNCF Papers.Google Scholar

71 Ibid.Google Scholar

72 For more information, see Gilpin, Patrick J. and Gasman, Marybeth Charles S. Johnson: Leadership Behind the Veil in the Age of Jim Crow (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003); and Robbins, Richard Sidelines Activist: Charles S. Johnson and the Struggle for Civil Rights (Columbia: University of Mississippi, 1996).Google Scholar

73 Foster, L.H. September 8, 1955, “Suggestions for 1955 UNCF Campaign,” box 13, microfiche 1875, UNCF Papers. Although not a member of the UNCF, Luther Foster as well as several other public Black college presidents, banded together with the private institutions in their response to the Court decision.Google Scholar

74 Kimball, Lindsley F. to Rockefeller, John D. Jr. and the Members of the Mobilizing Board, June 10, 1954, Messrs Rockefeller—Education, III 2G, box 95, folder 659, RACGoogle Scholar

75 Details of the reduction in individual donors and increase in corporate donors are included in Allen, York Jr. to File, December 13, 1956, Messers Rockefeller, Education, III 2G, box 95, folder 659A, RAC.Google Scholar

76 Drewry, and Doermann, Stand and Prosper, 103.Google Scholar

77 Paul Younger quoted in Drewry and Doermann, Stand and Prosper, 94. For more information, see Williams, Alma Rene A Research History of the United Negro College Fund, Inc., 1944–1987 (New York: United Negro College Fund, 1988 - unpublished manuscript).Google Scholar

78 Price, Hollis F. July 7, 1954, “The Supreme Court Decision and the Private Negro College,” box 13, microfiche 1875, UNCF Papers.Google Scholar

79 Mays, Benjamin E. president Morehouse College, Atlanta, Georgia, n.d., 1954, “In view of the recent Supreme Court decision, what do you consider the most effective arguments for continued support of the UNCF?” box 13, microfiche 1875, UNCF Papers.Google Scholar

80 Trent, William J. Jr. to UNCF Leadership, n.d. “Objectives of the United Negro College Fund,” box 16, microfiche 2295, UNCF Papers.Google Scholar

81 Description is based on “Tomorrow's Generation,” 1954, lateral file, UNCF Papers.Google Scholar

82 Jenkins, Martin D. “The Future of the Desegregated Negro College: A Critical Summary,” The Journal of Negro Education, 27, 3 (Summer 1958): 419–429; Patterson, “The Private Negro College in a Racially-Integrated System of Higher Education,” 363–369; Clark, Felton G. “The Development and Present Status of Publicly-Supported Higher Education for Negroes,” The Journal of Negro Education, 27, 3 (Summer 1958): 221–232; Patterson, F. D. “Colleges for Negro Youth and the Future,” The Journal of Negro Education, 27, 2 (Spring 1958): 107–114.Google Scholar

83 United Negro College Fund, Official Publication, n.d., 1954, box 16, microfiche 2295, UNCF Papers.Google Scholar

84 Ibid.Google Scholar

85 Thompson, Charles S. “The Prospect of Negro Higher Education” Journal of Educational Sociology, 32, 6 (February 1959), 309–316, 311.Google Scholar

86 Allen, York Jr. to File, December 13, 1956, “United Negro College Fund,” Messers Rockefeller, Education, III, 2G, Box 95, folder 659A, RAC.Google Scholar

87 Thompson, “The Prospect of Negro Higher Education,” 311–312. Thompson also discusses these ideas in “The Negro College: In Retrospect and in Prospect,” The Journal of Negro Education, 27, 2 (Spring 1958): 127–131.Google Scholar

88 Gilpin, and Gasman, Charles S. Johnson. Charles S. Johnson died unexpectedly in 1956 at the age of 63. After his death, Fisk University and its new president Stephen J. Wright had a very difficult time sustaining Johnson's programs and ideas. Other Black colleges also pursued efforts to integrated, including Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri. According to its university history, “In 1954, the United States Supreme Court handed down its ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, and Lincoln University responded by opening its doors to all applicably meeting its entrance criteria” (see www.lincolnu.edu/~lupres/history.htm). Currently, Lincoln University is approximately 50 percent African American. Likewise, Howard University in Washington, D.C., has been successful in recruiting both Whites and Asians to its campus. Howard University was a member of the UNCF but is not currently. Lincoln University in Missouri has never been a member.Google Scholar

89 Gasman, “A Word for Every Occasion.“Google Scholar

90 Cutlip, Scott Fundraising in the United States. Its Role in America's Philanthropy (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1965).Google Scholar

91 Although there was a dip in the number of individual contributions immediately after the Brown decision, the number of contributors rebounded by 1959, and the dollar amount raised increased steadily throughout the period.Google Scholar

92 Thompson, “The Negro College,” 130–131.Google Scholar

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95 Mays, Benjamin E. “United Negro College Fund Address, Buffalo New York, May 4–5, 1959, UNCF Papers, Robert W. Woodruff Library, Atlanta University Center. Mays's stance on the future of Black colleges is also present in “Appraisal of a Venture. The United Negro College Fund's First Fifteen Years, 1944–1959,” Rockefeller, John D. Jr. Papers, RAC, III 2G, Box 95, folder 659A, 1959. Please note that the number of UNCF member colleges increased to 33 in 1958 with the inclusion of Barber-Scotia College in North Carolina and St. Paul's College in Virginia.Google Scholar