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A resolution opposing legislation vacating the state university board of Tennessee State University and allowing the management, governance, powers, and duties to be transferred to the Tennessee higher education commission.
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WHEREAS, Tennessee State University was founded in 1912 as the Tennessee Agricultural & Industrial State Normal School and in 1922 gained status as a College granting bachelor's degrees; and
WHEREAS, during the era of Jim Crow segregation, the State of Tennessee underfunded Tennessee Agricultural & Industrial State Normal School and did not provide the same level of support for its operations, infrastructure, faculty and administrative salaries, facilities as it did for other state institutions that excluded African Americans; and
WHEREAS, in 1951, the Tennessee State Board of Education approved the college's university status and changed its name to the Tennessee Agricultural & Industrial State University, which later achieved full land-grant university status entitling it to federal funding with state funding matches; and
WHEREAS, in 1968 the state legislature changed the name of the university to Tennessee State University. Throughout all the institutional changes, the school remained one of the country's leading historically Black colleges and universities and a preeminent center of higher education for Black students in Tennessee; and
WHEREAS, in 1968, Vanderbilt Law School student and History instructor at Tennessee State University, Rita Sanders Geier, filed suit against the State of Tennessee for maintaining a dual educational system that discriminated against African Americans The facilities at Tennessee State University were inferior, the institution had fewer resources, and its faculty and staff were underpaid compared to predominately white institutions of higher learning in the state; and
WHEREAS, with the assistance of Civil Rights attorney, Avon Williams, Geier and her co-plaintiffs prevailed in the decade lo...
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