For most of American history, a majority of the black population in this country was prohibited from learning to read or write. Today African Americans are enrolling in higher education in record numbers. Here are some key events that occurred along the way.

Donald L. Hollowell, a leading civil rights advocate in the state of Georgia during the 1950s and 1960s, died this past December of heart failure in Atlanta. He was 87 years old.

Because black students are at least three times as likely to come from poor families as are white students, one would expect that blacks on average would be more likely than white students to attend schools closer to home. But just the opposite is true.

In 1991 Barack Obama was the first African American to be named president of the Harvard Law Review.

A new survey by the Department of Education examines the educational, occupational, and economic status of students who earned a bachelor’s degree in 1992-93. In many areas, African-American college graduates do well in comparison to their white peers. But in employment and home ownership, a college education does little to close the persistent racial gaps that prevail in society as a whole.

There are two things well-read people know about Margaret Walker. She spent the first 50 years of her life getting set to write her only novel Jubilee and the rest of her life being celebrated for it.

Colleges compete fiercely for high U.S. News & World Report rankings. But a new study argues the rankings are seriously flawed. The proposal suggests an alternative methodology that offers African Americans and students of all races better information on what college is right for them.

By Charles J. Ogletree, Jr.
VIRTUALLY ALL OF the black freshmen who arrived at Stanford in the fall of 1971 were born near the time that the Brown decision was issued in 1954. We were, in every sense of the word, Brown babies, and we came to Stanford from every conceivable community in the country.

Norbert A. Schlei, a white lawyer, was a lead draftsman of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Surprise! Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin was a liberal on most racial issues. In fact, McCarthy had been a strong supporter of federal antilynching legislation, a measure that was never enacted because of opposition from southern Democrats. When campaigning for election to the Senate, McCarthy actively sought black votes in Milwaukee and other Wisconsin cities.