Red Emma’s

Under the Plessy v. Ferguson decision, decades earlier, southern states could provide graduate opportunities for African Americans by creating separate but equal graduate programs at tax-supported Black colleges or by admitting Black students to historically white institutions. Most did neither and instead paid to send Black students out of state for graduate education.

Crystal R. Sanders examines Black graduate students who relocated to the North, Midwest, and West to continue their education with segregation scholarships, revealing the many challenges they faced along the way. Students that entered out-of-state programs endured long and tedious travel, financial hardship, racial discrimination, isolation, and homesickness. With the passage of Brown in 1954, segregation scholarships began to wane, but the integration of graduate programs at southern public universities was slow. In telling this story, Sanders demonstrates how white efforts to preserve segregation led to the underfunding of public Black colleges, furthering racial inequality in American higher education.

Crystal R. Sanders is associate professor of African American studies at Emory University.

Dr. Ashley Robertson Preston is an author, curator, and Associate Professor of History at Howard University. Her past positions include serving as director of the Mary McLeod Bethune Foundation-National Historic Landmark at Bethune-Cookman University while she also was an archives technician for the National Archives for Black Women’s History at the Mary McLeod Bethune Council House-National Historic Site. _Dr. Preston’s second book _Mary McLeod Bethune the Pan-Africanist, published with the University Press of Florida, examines the international activism of Bethune. In addition to her work as a historian she is also the founder of the nonprofit Carter G. Cares. Inspired by her son, who was born prematurely at 28 weeks, the organization raises awareness and provides support for NICU families and high-risk mothers.