Reparation and Reconciliation: The Rise and Fall of Integrated Higher Education

Reparation and Reconciliation is the first book to reveal thenineteenth-century struggle for racial integration on U.S. collegecampuses. As the Civil War ended, the need to heal the scars of slavery,expand the middle class, and reunite the nation engendered a dramaticinterest in higher education by policy makers, voluntary associations, andAfrican Americans more broadly. Formed in 1846 by Protestant abolitionists,the American Missionary Association united a network of colleges opento all, designed especially to educate African American and white studentstogether, both male and female. The AMA and its affiliates envisioned integratedcampuses as a training ground to produce a new leadership class for aracially integrated democracy. Case studies at three colleges-Berea College,Oberlin College, and Howard University-reveal the strategies administratorsused and the challenges they faced as higher education quickly developedas a competitive social field. Through a detailed analysis of archival and press data, Christi M. Smithdemonstrates that pressures between organisations-including charities andfoundations-and the emergent field of competitive higher education led tothe differentiation and exclusion of African Americans, Appalachian whites,and white women from coeducational higher education and illuminates theactors and the strategies that led to the persistent salience of race over othersocial boundaries.