The long struggle to emancipate African Americans from slavery has always been--but is not always seen as--a women's issue. For all of the failures, betrayals, and blind spots between them, the nineteenth-century abolitionist movement and the nineteenth-century women's movement inspired one another, shared some of the same spokespeople, and each battled to dismantle systems of discrimination and exclusion that ran deep in the very fabric of American institutions, attitudes, and everyday practices.

In the middle of the twentieth century, the twin struggles for justice were intertwined once more, as the Civil Rights Movement provided the models and laid the legislative groundwork that would usher in the contemporary women's movement and a period of unprecedented emancipation. Landmark legislation like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that legally struck down discrimination on the basis of race also included sex as a protected class. Eight years later, Title IX, the single most comprehensive legislation ever passed to protect women and girls of all races from sex discrimination in education, became the law of the land.

Race and Gender Equality Under Attack
It is not surprising, then, that in 2003, these two libratory forces for democracy should be linked yet again. Instead of being joined to tackle ever more subtle, but still powerful barriers to full equality in the United States, the two movements are facing a carefully orchestrated, well funded, and ideologically driven assault to strip them of the tools that have produced such measurable progress. In both cases, equal educational opportunities are at the heart of contention. From targeted legal cases aimed at the nation's elite public institutions to public referendums in key states to external organizing of conservative alumni to a letter campaign threatening lawsuits against outreach and support programs, the attacks have been relentless.

As planned by diversity's opponents, these have all culminated in a case before the Supreme Court. The particular case involves the University of Michigan and its undergraduate and law school admissions policies. It could have easily been some other institution. The White House and the Justice Department have joined with the plaintiffs against the University of Michigan. The ultimate goal of these assaults has been to undo affirmative action, one of the best tools for opening up opportunities denied to white women and racial minorities for centuries.

During this same period, Title IX has been placed under review by the Bush administration. Rather than a court battle or a Congressional confrontation, the arena for this debate is a regulatory one occurring within the Education Department, the designated agency charged with enforcing Title IX. While the immediate issue being debated is sports, the ultimate goal is to undermine the power of Title IX. Ellie Smeal, President of Feminist Majority, calls it a "stealth attack on Title IX" (see our feature article for more on this stealth attack).

Abandoning Democracy's Promise?
What is being challenged is not just a particular admissions policy on race or how one measures compliance in women and girls' sports. The stakes are much higher. What is being challenged is whether the United States will keep moving on our journey toward full democracy or whether we will turn back the clock, as we did during Reconstruction.

We often forget that the United States is a very young democracy. In terms of a fully practicing democracy, our origins came not in 1776, but two hundred years later in 1964 when the Civil Rights Act guaranteed that African Americans and other people of color could no longer be deprived of their right to vote. Only then did we become a functioning multiracial democracy. With the passage of Title IX and other key legislative acts in the 1960s and 1970s guaranteeing equal rights for women, the United States became a more gender inclusive multiracial democracy. That brief experiment--that stunning achievement--is what is at stake today.

Jim Crow and White Supremacy
History has taught us that the march towards democracy is not always linear. When existing power structures are most threatened, they typically retaliate to reclaim ascendancy. Rights for newcomers are often stripped away or nullified. The Emancipation Proclamation, for example, may have ended slavery in 1863. And Reconstruction after the Civil War may have launched a short-lived attempt to construct a multiracial democracy. But after a decade of progress, white supremacy reasserted its dominion in ways that still haunt us today.

With the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and the passage of Jim Crow laws in the South, emancipation was quickly replaced by an apartheid system of wage slavery that was held in place through state sanctioned violence and intimidation. Both Congress and the North were largely silent and often deeply complicit in helping to re-establish the pre-Civil War racial hierarchies. The historical reversal was not inevitable. It happened because people allowed it to. Americans who had power opted not to exercise it.

The Academy as Civic Actor
As a result, for the next hundred years, the United States was racially segregated, more similar to apartheid South Africa than to England, the very colony we had once fought to escape tyranny and "establish these truths that all people are born equal with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." For the last forty years, however, our nation has made enormous strides to transform Jefferson's democratic aspirations into democratic practice. People with power--and those who were granted none--joined forces and acted. It made all the difference.

At this pivotal historical juncture when so much is at stake and education is at the eye of the storm, those of us in higher education dare not be silent. Let us commit our intellectual capital to raising these issues among students, colleagues, alumni, and local and national communities.

Let us continue to incorporate great social justice movements embodying democracy's principles into every student's course of study. Let us challenge students to analyze the historic mechanisms that stifled emancipatory progress in the U.S. and around the world and re-instituted racial, gender, social, or national stratifications. Let us promote campus discussions about Title IX (see Title IX Talking Points) and call for institutional benchmarks of progress made for women at every college since Title IX was passed. In the face of attempts to reverse the gains we have made in integrating our campuses, let us work with others to sustain and initiate programs, policies, and practices that promote racially inclusive education.

But above all, let us be actively involved in claiming our democratic selves, our democratic legacies, and our democratic powers. History does not simply happen. It is made through a series of choices made by a individuals and groups about systems constructed over time. Gender and race continue to be inextricably linked. Justice for one is justice for all. Let us draw upon our legacies of emancipation and struggle so we might work together to ensure that America moves in this next decade towards a democracy that affirms rather than denies full racial justice and gender equality to all its people.