NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — For nearly four decades, a landmark lawsuit ruling stalled plans to expand the University of Tennessee’s Nashville campus, citing that two universities with sharply divided demographics would undermine efforts to desegregate higher education.
Investigations later revealed the State of Tennessee had systematically underfunded Tennessee State University (TSU), its only public historically Black university. Requests to upgrade TSU’s facilities were repeatedly denied, while the University of Tennessee in Knoxville — the other state land-grant institution — regularly received its full allocation and, at times, more.
Independent Reporter Emily Siner and WPLN Education Reporter Camellia Buris have explored this history in the podcast The Debt: What Tennessee Owes Its HBCU The one-hour program features State Representative Harold Love Jr, Historian Dr. Learotha Williams Jr. and George Pruitt, President Emeritus of Thomas Edison State University, author of the book "From Protest to President" and former TSU Administrator.
Pruitt was in the midst of the fight for school funding in the 1970's. "Historically Black Colleges were mostly created right after the Civil War...Fisk in 1866... Tennessee State wasn't founded until 50 years later. The whole rational for starting Tennessee State in the first place was not altruism, it was to perpetuate segregation. Because after Plessy vs. Ferguson lawsuit, the court held that segregation was legal if you could provide separate but equal facilities."
The Debt: What Tennessee Owes Its HBCU offers a revealing look at Tennessee’s long history of educational inequity — and the enduring fight to correct it.
