Author Archives: Todd Beamon

Earl S. Richardson envisioned a plan that would have allowed both his predominantly Black Morgan State University in Baltimore and largely White Towson University 15 miles away to jointly offer a high-quality MBA program that would have the additional benefit of making their universities more racially diverse. Richardson, who retired as president of Morgan last […]

In an unusual and confounding move, attorneys for Maryland relied on an expert witness who acknowledged that he never visited the four Black institutions before concluding that they had received sufficient state funding over the past years to remedy past racial discrimination. Instead he relied upon his own computation of state funding based upon proportional […]

Morgan State University has been unable to fully execute its mission because of poor financial support from the state of Maryland, its retired president has testified.   “We have never had the resources to carry out our full mission,” testified Earl S. Richardson, who served as Morgan’s president for 26 years before retiring last year. […]

As the plaintiffs continued its case in a trial of a $2.1 billion lawsuit to bring parity to Maryland’s four historically Black colleges and universities, a former chairman of the Maryland Higher Education Commission testified how the state continued to duplicate programs at traditionally White institutions despite an agreement with the federal government to stop […]

Maryland still operates a segregated higher education system – and those students attending the state’s four historically Black colleges and universities are not receiving as qualitative an education as if they were at Maryland’s traditionally White institutions, an expert witness testified Tuesday. “The dual education systems remain,” testified Clifton F. Conrad, a professor at the […]

David Wilson took a light-hearted turn, Tuesday, in explaining how Morgan State University would finance $15 million in equipment for its Benjamin Banneker Communications Center. “This is almost comical, but we would have to rob a bank,” Wilson said to laughter in testimony before U.S. District Court Judge Catherine C. Blake in Baltimore. “But we […]

Education desegregation has had a tumultuous history in Maryland. Another effort begins Jan. 3, when a lawsuit filed by the Coalition for Equity and Excellence in Maryland Higher Education against the state of Maryland goes to trial in federal court in Baltimore. The action seeks to make Maryland’s four historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) […]

While the Coalition for Equity and Excellence in Maryland Higher Education Inc. sued the Maryland Higher Education Commission in 2006, the lawsuit – which goes to trial Jan. 3 in a Baltimore federal court – is really rooted in more than 50 years of education litigation, beginning with the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education […]

The road has been an arduous one, but a lawsuit filed more than five years ago seeking $2.1 billion to remedy what it contends are disparities between Maryland’s historically Black colleges and universities and its traditionally White institutions is nearing trial in Baltimore. Its outcome could affect higher education for decades to come. “The best […]