MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- Gov. Guy Hunt said Tuesday it would be premature to decide now whether to appeal a federal judge's order requiring Alabama to remove all traces of racial discrimination in its public colleges.
Terry Abbott, a spokesman for Hunt, noted that the U.S. Supreme Court is considering a similar case with a ruling that went in favor of Mississippi and Louisiana's higher education systems.
On Monday, U.S. District Judge Harold Murphy issued a permanent injunction ordering that the formula for funding higher education be changed to help the state's two mostly black public colleges, Alabama A& M University in Huntsville and Alabama State University in Montgomery.
Murphy's order calls for $10 million worth of building improvements at each school.
Murphy also ordered several predominantly white schools to do more to attract black students, faculty members and administrators.
The Rome, Ga., jurist, brought in to hear the long-running case, presided over a six-month trial that ended April 16, the second lengthy trial of a desegregation lawsuit filed in 1983.
'This court is obligated to see that vestiges of discrimination are eliminated root and branch, and it will brook nothing less,' Murphy wrote in his 1,000-page ruling. 'This is a final opportunity for the State of Alabama and its colleges and universities to regain a measure of control over the system of higher education.'
The order calls for major steps to be taken to increase white enrollment at mainly black schools and black enrollment at mainly white schools.
According to the suit, in 1990, 3,763 of Alabama A&M's 4,886 students were black and 4,469 of Alabama State's 4,587 students were black. The black enrollment at Auburn was 847 in a student body of 21,537 and at the University of Alabama it was 1,762 in a student body of 19,794.
Murphy's order calls for better facilities at Alabama State and Alabama A&M and an end to program duplications, especially in business and education, at the two schools and their mostly white neighbor institutions.
Already on appeal to the Supreme Court is a ruling by the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans that says state universities cannot be found racially discriminatory as long as there are no racial barriers or impediments to a student's freedom to choose a college. A final ruling is still to come in that case.
