“Admission to One. . . Admission to All”: The (End of the) Radical Dream of Open Admissions in the Post-Desegregation South
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-2023
Publication Title
The Journal of Basic Writing
DOI
10.37514/JBW-J.2023.42.1.02
Abstract
This essay describes Open Admissions in the South during postsecondary desegregation, providing a comparative analysis of policies and debates in Tennessee, Louisiana, and Georgia. Statewide Open Admissions policies emerged in the 1960s as part of superficial efforts to comply with desegregation but were ineffective; consequently, they were overturned in court in favor of increased remediation and selective admissions in four-year colleges and universities. Desegregation litigation consistently presented literacy remediation as key to desegregation, undermining civil rights activists’ arguments for transformative Open Admissions programs that proposed nonselective admissions coupled with the transformation of historically white universities’ programs and policies. Desegregation enforcement may have delegitimized radical Open Admissions by presenting remediation, particularly Basic Writing, as key to accessing higher education for students of color—a persistent rhetoric in Basic Writing scholarship that must be reexamined in light of this history.
Recommended Citation
Mendenhall, Annie, "“Admission to One. . . Admission to All”: The (End of the) Radical Dream of Open Admissions in the Post-Desegregation South" (2023). Department of English Faculty Research and Publications. 1.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/english-facpubs/1
Comments
Georgia Southern University faculty member, Annie S. Mendenhall authored “Admission to One. . . Admission to All”: The (End of the) Radical Dream of Open Admissions in the Post-Desegregation South.