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Dissertation Information for Carolyn Wilson Mbajekwe

NAME:
- Carolyn Wilson Mbajekwe

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- History

SCHOOL:
- Emory University (USA) (2006)

ADVISORS:
- Leroy Davis Jr

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- James L Roark
- Leslie M Harris

MPACT Status: Fully Complete

Title: A vision for black colleges in a post-Brown America: Benjamin E. Mays, Frederick D. Patterson and the quest for a cultural pluralism-based definition of collegiate desegregation

Abstract: This dissertation examines the philosophy of collegiate desegregation that Benjamin E. Mays and Frederick D. Patterson, two of the most important and influential African American higher education leaders of the mid-twentieth century, developed in the 1950s in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education . By the mid-1950s, World War II-induced structural changes and transformations and NAACP legal agitation converged to alter the segregated context in which black colleges had existed for close to one hundred years. These changes forced black higher education leaders to determine the role of historically black institutions in what was expected to be the new and emerging era of integration. This dissertation explores these developments, and uses Benjamin E. Mays and Frederick D. Patterson as a case study for helping us understand how black educators responded to the challenge. Mays and Patterson opposed any plan to extinguish the historically black colleges as well as any plan to separate the schools from the mainstream of higher education. Instead, Mays and Patterson conceived of a plan to bring traditionally black institutions up to a level where they could be attractive to white students as well as black students. Mays and Patterson saw desegregation as a vehicle to move the schools originally established for African Americans from the margins to the center of higher education. This philosophy of collegiate desegregation was premised on the school of thought we now know as \"cultural pluralism.\" This study further analyzes what the debate about how to define desegregation and the implications for traditionally black institutions tells us about black educators and their thought on larger questions of black history, black culture, as well as the future of the race. The study also provides historical perspective on contemporary educational policy issues, especially the ongoing question of the meaning and definition of collegiate desegregation and its implications for historically black institutions. Finally, it tells the story of an overlooked aspect of the lives and careers of Mays and Patterson: their thought on crucial questions of race, desegregation, education, empowerment, equality, and identity as America stood in the midst of enormous change.

MPACT Scores for Carolyn Wilson Mbajekwe

A = 0
C = 0
A+C = 0
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2008-03-12 12:08:24

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Students under Carolyn Wilson Mbajekwe

ADVISEES:
- None

COMMITTEESHIPS:
- None