Category: Higher Education

TAEX Basics: Questions Raised Early and Often about Civil Rights at the Texas (AgriLife) Agricultural Extension Services

By Greg Moses

One powerful component of the Texas higher education system has proved itself stubbornly impervious to the challenge of civil rights. Throughout the 20th century, the Texas Agricultural Extension Service (TAEX: now known as Texas AgriLife) has served as a textbook model of institutional segregation. And that tradition is in evidence today.

With its traditional headquarters at the College Station campus of Texas A&M University, TAEX reaches into virtually every county in the state, deploying an influential network of county agents whose work is supposed to bring cutting-edge science to the service of average citizens.

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Top Story of Fall 2001:

Fourth Federally-Mandated Desegregation Plan Approved and Posted At Official Website

By Greg Moses

As it attempts to reverse a slump in higher education, the state of Texas has promised to send new money to two old schools that have the best record of educating the state’s nonwhite students.

The Fourth Texas Plan for Desegregation of Higher Education, requested and approved by the Office of Civil Rights at the US Department of Education, promises to bring some parity to the state’s support of Prairie View University and Texas Southern University.

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Note: the following information was posted as “Site Info” at the html version of the Texas Civil Rights Review.

Site Notes

Therefore if, within the confines of its present culture, the nation ever seeks to purge itself of its color hate, it will find itself at war with itself, convulsed by a spasm of emotional and moral confusion. If the nation ever finds itself examining its real relation to the Negro, it will find itself doing infinitely more than that, for the anti-Negro attitude of whites represents but a tiny part-though a symbolically significant one-of the moral attitude of the nation.

–Richard Wright

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The First Investigation and the First Texas Plan

By Greg Moses

The first civil rights review of Texas higher education began on April 4, 1978, exactly one decade after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Region VI Director of the Office for Civil Rights Dorothy Stuck, accompanied by two associates, arrived at 2:30 p.m. at the Austin office of Texas Higher Education Commissioner Kenneth Ashworth to discuss plans for the upcoming review (Stuck 1978, p.1).

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Top Story of Juneteenth 1999:

Seven Agents Sign Joint Complaint

By Greg Moses

(June 19, 1999) AUSTIN, TX–The Texas Civil Rights Review is posting the complete text of a civil rights complaint now pending before the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) concerning alleged discriminatory practices at the Texas Agricultural Extension Service (TAEX).

The complaint, whichh is the subject of an ongoing investigation, alleges racial discrimination in employment, promotion, salary and position at TAEX, as well as discrimination against black youth in 4-H programs, and harrassment and retaliation against black employees who raise such issues.

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