Knight v. The State of Alabama: Evolving Efforts to Desegregate Alabama Higher Education

• In Event: Brown and Beyond: Studies in Desegregation

Abstract

From Autherine Lucy's brief enrollment in and expulsion from the University of Alabama, through Governor Wallace's "standing in the schoolhouse door," and beyond, the paper examines how Alabama’s social, political, and legal context from 1968 to the present influenced litigation—nearly forty years of the Knight v. Alabama federal court cases—that attempted to meaningfully desegregated higher education in Alabama. The study employs a combination of primary documents—court cases, filings and proceedings, and compliance reports—and secondary sources—books, dissertations, historical, higher education, and legal journal articles) to examine the social context of race relations in Alabama in relation to the efforts that have been made to desegregate Alabama’s system of higher education.

Author

• Thomas G. Barrett, University of Arkansas at Little Rock