Wallerstein, Peter. Higher Education and the Civil Rights Movement: White Supremacy, Black Southerners, and College Campuses. Gainesville, Florida: University Press Florida, 2009.

Summary
This collection of essays tells a more complicated (though at time less dramatic) story of the efforts to desegregate college and universities (moving beyond just the Meredith story). Wallersein makes the claim (interestingly and convincingly) that the desegregation was an effort to allow black students into what he calls non-black universities. Throughout the 20th century, many of the universities in the south had accepted Asian-Americans. The focus of this collection, then, is on the black applicants, litigants, lawyers, students, teachers and communities. This process of desegregation, from 1930 to 1970, merged with and reinforced the modern civil rights movement.

Example: Robert Pratt, in his study on Georgia, notes that the NAACP focused on higher education for two reasons: First, there may be less push back from whites because there were less black undergraduates and, second, because there was not post-baccalaureate training for blacks, whites could not rely on the separate but equal argument.

Example: Joy Ann Williamson looks at how Jackson State College and Tougaloo College “provided movement centers, instructional spaces and base from which black southerners could plan and carry out attacks on segregation beyond their campuses.” (13) Tougaloo, as a private institution, “shielded it from overt government interference” while Jackson State, a public institution, was severely constrained by a state government that wanted to maintain the status quo.

See also: Robert Cohen, Rebellion in Black and White; Martha Biondi, The Black Revolution on Campus