ROME, Ga.
A fourth trial will begin this fall in Alabama’s long-running college desegregation case, a judge has ruled.
U.S. District Judge Harold Murphy, who has been presiding over a case that had its origins a quarter-century ago, said he would soon issue a written order setting a trial date for sometime in late September or early October.
Alabama State University and Alabama A&M University have contended that the state’s higher education system has vestiges of the segregation era, including a lack of programs and facilities at the two schools and a low number of Black students, faculty and administrators at the predominantly White schools.
Parties in the case have said negotiations stalled last fall over issues of hiring more Black staff members at predominantly White universities and the state’s lack of need-based college scholarships.
Jim Blacksher, who is representing the state’s two historically Black schools, says Alabama is one of two states in the Southeast without “a meaningful financial aid program.”
“There’s nothing radical that we’re proposing,” Blacksher told The Birmingham News. “It’s all good policy that’s being implemented everywhere else in the country.”
