Documents uncovered recently unveiled efforts by the College Board to desegregate Scholastic Aptitude Test testing sites in the South during the 1960s civil rights movement.
The College Board sent two undercover employees, Ben Cameron and Ben Gibson, to testing sites in various school districts to acquire information about racial discrimination against black high school students who wished to take the SATs, Wheeler said.
“I found records that had been stored since the ’60s of [Cameron and Gibson], who did most of the work on that project,” said Jan Wheeler, associate director for accreditation of the
In the South, black students were not allowed to enter white high schools Monday through Friday. In addition, the white schools implemented a rule that prohibited students who attended a black high school from entering the white school on a Saturday where the test was offered.
White schools that did offer testing to black students often subjected them to environments with inadequate lighting and disturbing noises, Wheeler added.
“If they got turned away [from the white high schools], sometimes the College Board would open centers at black high schools or black colleges, and sometimes [black students] had to go out of state,” Wheeler said. “When the College Board could not get a white high school to allow black students, they would close the test center at that white high school and open one at a military base.”
Even though Brown v. Board of Education passed in 1954, the ruling had almost no effect on the segaration and inequalities that prevailed in the South, Wheeler added.
According to Wheeler, the College Board was under no obligation to fight for test taking equality, but it was not satisfied waiting for the courts to take stronger action.
Wheeler noted the efforts of the College Board were kept a secret because it did not want the people who cooperated with them to be ostracized for being liberal about racial relations.
It was also risky for Cameron and Gibson to work on a liberal case of this magnitude in the conservative South, so they avoided publicity and when working on the investigation in
“If there had been publicity that the College Board was doing this, then various school districts would have joined forces and dug their heels in and not been willing to discuss it,” Wheeler said.
John Albright, senior consultant for higher education for the College Board, helped Wheeler and the College Board’s archivists begin their work.
Albright said he could not comment directly on the case but said the nation has come very far in its efforts to establish equality in all aspects of education.
“I believe what we’ve strived to do over the years — which includes but goes far beyond just the SAT — fits into most people’s understanding of the promotion of educational equity, access and excellence,” Albright said.
