Geier v. Blanton, Civ. A. No. 5077.

• Decision Date: 28 February 1977
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 5077.
• Citation: 427 F. Supp. 644
• Parties: Rita Sanders GEIER et al., Plaintiffs, The United States of America, Plaintiff-Intervenor, Raymond Richardson, Jr., et al., Plaintiff-Intervenors, v. Ray BLANTON et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Middle District of Tennessee

427 F. Supp. 644

Rita Sanders GEIER et al., Plaintiffs The United States of America, Plaintiff-Intervenor Raymond Richardson, Jr., et al., Plaintiff-Intervenors, v. Ray BLANTON et al., Defendants.

Civ. A. No. 5077.

United States District Court, M. D. Tennessee, Nashville Division.

January 31, 1977.

Judgment February 28, 1977.

George E. Barrett, Nashville, Tenn., for plaintiffs.

J. Stanley Pottinger, Asst. Atty. Gen., Nathaniel Douglas, Atty., Justice Dept., Washington, D.C., and Charles H. Anderson, U. S. Atty., Nashville, Tenn., for plaintiff-intervenor.

Avon N. Williams, Jr., Nashville, Tenn., Jack Greenberg, and Drew S. Days, III, New York City, for plaintiff-intervenors Richardson and others.

Brooks McLemore, Atty. Gen., William J. Haynes, Jr., Asst. Atty. Gen., Nashville, Tenn., for defendants.

MEMORANDUM

FRANK GRAY, Jr., Chief Judge.

As detailed infra, this lengthy litigation¹ culminated with a month-long evidentiary hearing (September 20 to October 20, 1976). At its conclusion the various parties were allowed time within which to submit proposed findings of fact.

The original plaintiffs filed a brief statement in lieu of detailed findings; however, Plaintiff-Intervenor United States and Plaintiff-Intervenors Richardson et al., filed separate detailed proposed findings. There were two proposed findings of fact submitted by the defendants. The Attorney General of Tennessee filed such proposals for all State defendants except the University of Tennessee and its Board of Trustees, and the University of Tennessee, through private counsel, filed its proposals.

This action was originally filed by the plaintiffs, both white and black citizens of the State of Tennessee, to enjoin the proposed construction and expansion of the University of Tennessee-Nashville Center. The plaintiffs alleged, inter alia, that Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial State University, now Tennessee State University (hereinafter referred to as TSU), was originally established under State statute² as a State public higher education institution for the education of blacks, which statute was prima facie evidence of racial discrimination; that TSU was being maintained by State officials as a segregated black institution contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States; that appropriations for TSU were not provided on a basis equal to those of the State's predominantly white institutions; and that the new construction and expansion of the predominantly white University of Tennessee-Nashville Extension Center would serve to perpetuate TSU, also located in Nashville, as a segregated black institution which would ensure the continued existence of a dual system of public higher education in Tennessee. Based on the foregoing reasons, and others, the plaintiffs requested that the State be enjoined from expanding the Nashville Extension Center, from providing unequal educational facilities, and from maintaining racially segregated institutions of higher education in Nashville.

Subsequently, the United States moved to intervene in the action. The United States joined the plaintiffs in their allegations and requested relief, and, in addition, the United States requested that the State officials be required to formulate and submit to the Court a plan of desegregation designed to eliminate the dual system of public higher education in Tennessee. On July 22, 1968, the Court granted the motion of the United States for leave to intervene as a party plaintiff.

After a hearing conducted on August 19, 20 and 21, 1968, the Court delivered an opinion from the Bench, which opinion was followed by an Order on August 22, 1968, denying the requests of the plaintiffs and plaintiff-intervenor, the United States, to enjoin the proposed construction and expansion of the University of Tennessee-Nashville Center (hereinafter referred to as UT-N), but requiring the defendants to formulate and submit to the Court, by April 1, 1969, a plan designed to dismantle the dual system of higher education in Tennessee, with particular attention to TSU. In its opinion, filed in written form on August 23, 1968, Sanders v. Ellington, 288 F.Supp. 937 (M.D.Tenn.1968), the Court found that a dual system of higher education had been established by law in Tennessee and that it had not been dismantled; that progress toward desegregating the traditionally white institutions in the eight years of an opendoor policy had been slow as shown by the percentages of black enrollment ranging from .6 percent to about 7 percent at the individual universities;³ that TSU still had a black enrollment in excess of 99 percent; and that the record at that time did not indicate that the proposed construction and operation of UT-N would necessarily perpetuate a dual system of higher education.⁴ In reaching its decision, the Court did not find that the State's higher education officials had been guilty of any unconstitutional acts in the recent past, with emphasis on "recent." However, in light of "mistakes and inequities in the past," the Court held ". . . that there is an affirmative duty imposed upon the State by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States to dismantle the dual system of higher education which presently exists in Tennessee." Id., at 942. Noting that "the failure to make A & I TSU a viable, desegregated institution in the near future is going to lead to its continued deterioration as an institution of higher learning," the Court reiterated that the requested desegregation plan should place special emphasis on the desegregation of TSU. Id., at 943.

On April 1, 1969, the defendants filed a document styled "Plan for Desegregation of Higher Education Facilities in Tennessee." With respect to the desegregation of the State's traditionally white institutions, the Plan of 1969 stated generally the defendants' commitment to increase the number of black students, to establish close working relationships with the officials of predominantly black high schools, to set aside financial aid for minority students, to advise potential black students of the availability of financial aid programs, to conduct oncampus orientation programs for black students, and so on. With respect to the desegregation of TSU, the Plan of 1969 proposed that the defendants would recruit both white students and white faculty members for TSU, that the physical appearance of TSU would be upgraded to make it more attractive to students of all races, and that the defendants would give concentrated attention to developing and publicizing academic programs which would attract white and black students to TSU. The defendants decided that the best method of desegregating the two Nashville institutions, TSU and UT-N, would be to establish joint, cooperative, and exclusive program arrangements between the two institutions. The Plan did not specify any of the proposed program arrangements.

On December 23, 1969, the Court entered an Order on the defendants' Plan of April 1, 1969. In that Order the Court concluded that the defendants' Plan could be neither approved nor rejected. Specifically, the Court determined that "the plan as submitted lacks specificity, in that there is no showing of funds to be expended, no statement of the number of students to be involved and, most importantly, no time schedules for either the implementation of the projects or the achievement of any goals." Also, the Court reiterated its previously expressed conclusion ". . . that the State does have a Constitutional duty to dismantle any State-supported dual system of education, at any level." The defendants were directed to formulate and submit to the Court, on or before April 1, 1970, a report showing precisely what steps had been taken to implement each proposal in the Plan of 1969, including setting forth specific projected time schedules for such implementation.

The defendants filed the Court-ordered report on April 1, 1970. In general, the report stated that the black enrollment at the traditionally white institutions increased 42.2 percent, from 2,720 in 1968-1969 to 3,869 in 1969-1970, with most of the increase occurring on the freshman undergraduate level; that the percentages of black student enrollment in the individual senior institutions ranged from .8 percent to 10.2 percent; that the percentage of black faculty for all institutions had increased very little, from .4 percent to .9 percent; and that the amount of financial aid utilized by black students had increased substantially. With respect to the Nashville situation and TSU, the report stated that the white student enrollment at TSU decreased from 45 to 44; that there had been no significant increase in the number of white faculty at TSU (10 to 11); and that the defendants had failed to reach an agreement on the proposed joint UT-N-TSU engineering program. Subsequently, on June 14, 1971, the defendants filed another report showing that, while some more limited progress had been made by most of the predominantly white institutions in recruiting minority students, officials at the predominantly white institutions had not made any real progress in attracting black faculty. The report further showed that TSU was still overwhelmingly black with its percentage of 99.7 percent black undergraduates and 99.9 percent black freshman during the academic year 1970-1971, but that the State placed some hope for progress in a joint engineering program between UT-N and TSU and a cooperative effort with UT-N, TSU, and Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) for the Specialist in Education degree, which programs had been agreed upon by the relevant institutions.

Following a hearing on the progress, or lack thereof, evidenced by the reports summarized above, on February 3, 1972, the Court entered a Memorandum Opinion and Order, in which it concluded that the traditionally white institutions were "proceeding to dismantle their dual system of...