722
Opinion of the Court
sity, whose functions were to educate teachers primarily for rural and elementary schools and to provide vocational instruction to black students.
Despite this Court's decisions in Brown I and Brown II, Mississippi's policy of de jure segregation continued. The first black student was not admitted to the University of Mississippi until 1962, and then only by court order. See Meredith v. Fair, 306 F. 2d 374 (CA5), cert. denied, 371 U. S. 828, enf'd, 313 F. 2d 532 (1962) (en banc) (per curiam). For the next 12 years the segregated public university system in the State remained largely intact. Mississippi State University, Mississippi University for Women, University of Southern Mississippi, and Delta State University each admitted at least one black student during these years, but the student composition of these institutions was still almost completely white. During this period, Jackson State and Mississippi Valley State were exclusively black; Alcorn State had admitted five white students by 1968.
In 1969, the United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) initiated efforts to enforce Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U. S. C. § 2000d.1 HEW requested that the State devise a plan to disestablish the formerly de jure segregated university system. In June 1973, the Board of Trustees of State Institutions of Higher Learning (Board) submitted a plan of compliance, which expressed the aims of improving educational opportunities for all Mississippi citizens by setting numerical goals on the enrollment of other-race students at state universities, hiring other-race faculty members, and instituting remedial programs and special recruitment efforts to achieve those goals. App. 898- 900. HEW rejected this Plan as failing to comply with Title VI because it did not go far enough in the areas of student
1 This provision states: "No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance."
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