Tennessee’s desegregation case comes to a close with all parties in agreement that the state has finally eliminated all vestiges of racial segregation in its higher ed system.

By Reginald Stuart

NASHVILLE, Tenn
Rita Sanders Geier was savoring a moment that had eluded her for nearly 40 years. On a warm, sunny September afternoon, she was free to crack a smile of relief after having finally ‘won’ the nation’s longest-running lawsuit over the desegregation of a state system of higher education. It was a journey she began as a 23-year-old law student just over a month after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in her hometown of Memphis, Tenn.

Hours earlier, Judge Thomas A. Wiseman, senior judge for the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, agreed to dismiss Geier’s 38-year-old case after she and a parade of other lawyers declared that Tennessee had finally eliminated all vestiges of racial segregation in the state’s higher education system. The “dual system” — one for Blacks, one for Whites — was gone, they said, and had been replaced by a “unitary” system that would be fair to all, regardless of race. The state had invested $77 million over the past five years and made numerous major policy changes during that time to create a race-neutral higher education system.

Lawyers for the state vowed that Tennessee would not go back to its old habits, which included denying Blacks and other non-Whites equal access to all higher education opportunities. The state also acknowledged a pattern of unfair and obstructive treatment in regards to historically Black Tennessee State University. But today, court oversight is no longer required or desired, lawyers on both sides said.

Wiseman, who had presided over this often acrimonious and increasingly complex case for 28 years, offered an approving nod from the bench.