Professor Crystal R. Sanders of Emory University and author of A Forgotten Migration will be giving the African American Experience in Missouri lecture at the State Historical Society of Missouri on March 19 at 6:30 p.m. Sanders will speak about the obstacles that Black southerners faced and overcame as they pursued graduate and professional school study during the era of legal segregation. While more than 100 public and private Black colleges existed in the South, training beyond the bachelor’s degree was almost impossible. Before 1936, there were only seven schools in the region—all private institutions—where African Americans could pursue graduate or professional school study. No Black institution conferred the Ph.D. degree until 1955. To feign compliance with the legal doctrine of separate but equal, 16 states authorized the use of public tax dollars for its Black residents to go out-of-state to pursue postbaccalaureate degree programs that were available in-state to white residents.
The event is free and open to the public. A reception will be held at 6 p.m. with the lecture at 6:30 p.m. Co-sponsors of Sanders’s lecture include University of Missouri College of Arts and Science, MU History Department, Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy and the State Historical Society of Missouri. Additional support comes from the University of Missouri Department of Women's and Gender Studies.
Dr. Sanders is an associate professor of African American Studies at Emory University and an award-winning author. Previously, she was an Associate Professor of History and the former Director of the Africana Research Center at Pennsylvania State University. She received her BA in History and Public Policy from Duke University and a Ph.D. in History from Northwestern University. Sanders is the author of A Forgotten Migration: Black Southerners, Segregation Scholarships, and the Debt Owed to Public HBCUs, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2024. The book was named a finalist for the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) Book Prize in 2025. She is also the author of A Chance for Change: Head Start and Mississippi's Black Freedom Struggle published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2016 as part of the John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture. Sanders’ work can also be found in many of the leading history journals including the Journal of Southern History, the North Carolina Historical Review, and the Journal of African American History.