The Campus Color Line: College Presidents and the Struggle for Black Freedom

Eddie Cole is Associate Professor of Higher Education and History at UCLA, and author of the award-winning book, The Campus Color Line: College Presidents and the Struggle for Black Freedom.

Some of America’s most pressing civil rights issues―desegregation, equal educational and employment opportunities, housing discrimination, and free speech―have been closely intertwined with higher education institutions. Although it is commonly known that college students and other activists, as well as politicians, actively participated in the fight for and against civil rights in the middle decades of the twentieth century, historical accounts have not adequately focused on the roles that the nation’s college presidents played in the debates concerning racism.