Rita Sanders Geier

Rita Sanders Geier (née Rita Sanders) is an American civil rights pioneer, attorney at law, and public servant.[1] As a professor at Tennessee State University, she was the original plaintiff in a landmark lawsuit that lead to the racial integration of higher education throughout the State of Tennessee.[2][3]

Early life and education

Geier was born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1944.[4] Her parents were Edwin and Jessie Sanders. Edwin Sanders was a Methodist minister and served as the Board of Education for the Southwest Conference of the Central Jurisdiction for the United Methodist Church. He died in 1959. Jessie Sanders was a public school teacher.[5]

In 1961, Geier graduated from Melrose High School in Memphis which was segregated at the time.[6]

Geier holds a bachelor's degree from Fisk University, a law degree from Vanderbilt University, and a master's from the University of Chicago.[6] She is admitted to practice law in Tennessee and Washington, D.C..[7]

Rita Sanders married Paul Geier in 1970. The civil rights activist and pastor, James Morris Lawson, Jr., officiated at the couple's wedding. Geier lives in Silver Spring, Maryland and has two adult sons, Chris and Jon.[5]

Career

Following graduate school, Geier, then Rita Sanders, began her career as a history faculty professor at Tennessee State University in the late 1960s.

She spent much of the 1970s as an attorney with Seattle-King County Legal Services and Legal Services Corporation, where she served as western regional director.[4]

She joined the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) in 1979 as Assistant Director for Commercial Litigation and Senior Trial Counsel. From 1979 to 1988 she worked in the DOJ’s Civil Division.[6]

In 1988 she was named General Counsel for the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC),[4] a role she held until 1992.[6]

Geier joined the U.S. Social Security administration in 1992 as Associate Commissioner and Deputy Associate Commissioner for Hearings and Appeals. In 2001 she was promoted to Executive Counselor to the Commissioner and held that role from 2001 to 2007.[6][5]

Geier was named Associate to the Chancellor and Senior Fellow at the Howard Baker Center for Public Policy at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville in 2007 and held the post until 2011[8] In this role she oversaw the school's "Ready for the World" initiative[4] which sought to address public policy issues of cultural diversity.[9]

Lawsuit against the University of Tennessee

In 1968, Geier was a young student attending Vanderbilt Law School and an instructor at Tennessee State University (TSU), the only state-funded historically black university in Tennessee.

Early in her tenure, Geier became troubled by the state of Tennessee’s plan to construct a new facility for the Nashville campus of the Knoxville-based University of Tennessee while neglecting TSU. She came to learn that the salaries for faculty at TSU were significantly lower than those at the University of Tennessee.[10]

Geier worked as a clerk[5] for in the law office of George Barrett,[11] a white local attorney and Vanderbilt Law School alumnus. who agreed to file a lawsuit against the state of Tennessee and then Governor Buford Ellington, alleging that Tennessee maintained dual higher education systems. The suit attempted to block the construction of a new facility. The original case was filed as Sanders v. Ellington and later became known as Geier v. Tennessee.[12]

The foundational argument of the case rested on the premise that the expansion of the University of Tennessee-Nashville (UTN) would perpetuate two higher education systems in Nashville by creating competition between the two schools for students, faculty and state funding.[13] The case highlighted a failure to desegregate publicly-funded institutions throughout the state.[14]

The filing of the case failed to halt construction of the new facility and UTN expanded into an area near the state capitol of Tennessee. TSU continued to suffer from neglect due to inadequate resources and funding. In 1970, Sanders married and the name of the case changed numerous times as new governors were elected and immediately became defendants. Throughout its history the matter is documented as Geier v. Dunn,[15] Geier v. Blanton, Geier v. Alexander,[16] Geier v. McWhorter, Geier v. Sundquist[17] and finally Geier v. Bredesen.[12]

In 1972, TSU professors Sterling Adams, Raymond Richardson and 100 other black Tennesseans joined the case as plaintiffs. Avon Williams Jr., a civil rights attorney and state senator, represented the new plaintiffs.[18]

Following a judge’s ruling, on July 1, 1979 the merger of University of Tennessee at Nashville and TSU took effect. The combination marked the first time in history that a historically black college or university and a traditionally white institution were brought under a single banner.[19] At the same time, UTN and TSU faculty member H. Coleman McGinnis joined as a co-plaintiffs.[12]

The merger agreement was further modified in 1984 by Judge Thomas A. Wiseman Jr. who added a stipulation of settlement requiring quotas to ensure that TSU increased its white enrollment while other state schools expand the population of non-white students. This added more than $100 million to the coffers of TSU campuses. In recognition for his work on the case and his lifelong devotion to civil rights, the downtown Nashville campus of TSU was named after Avon Williams in 1986.

A mediated decree, known as the Geier Consent Decree,[20] was ordered by the court on January 4, 2001.[14] The agreement allocated $77 million to address diversity at institutions throughout Tennessee. As a result of the decree, black enrollment at UTN expanded by 2.2% and system-wide. During this period, the institution expanded its African American student population from 10.5% to 12.4%.[5]

On July 21, 2006, a federal mediator negotiated the final dismissal of the case. To commemorate the end of the 38-year case, Geier appeared with Governor Phil Bredesen announce that she and the other plaintiffs, would be asking a judge to dismiss the lawsuit, acknowledging that the state had finally met its desegregation obligations.[21] The state of Tennessee had appropriated $15.5 million for the Tennessee State endowment, $19.8 million in capital outlays and almost $15 million in student financial aid since mediation began in 2000.[22]

Honors and Awards

Geier was the fall 2006 commencement speaker at the University of Tennessee.[5]

President Clinton awarded her Presidential Rank Meritorious Executive Award for her work with the Social Security Administration.[8]

Impact of the case

The Geier v. Tennessee case and subsequent litigation, had a broad reaching impact on education in the state. In 2001, Tennessee began offering enrichment programs for African American high school students aimed at improving student scores on standardized tests.[23] Tennessee State University is today a fully-integrated institution, offering bachelor, master's and doctoral degrees. The combination of UTN and TSU now comprises more than 65 buildings spanning 500 acres. Of the roughly 10,000 students, 75% are African American and 22% are white.[23] About 10% of the 2006 freshman class at the University of Tennessee were African American.[5]

References
  1. "Civil Rights Division 40th Anniversary | C-SPAN.org". www.c-span.org. Retrieved 2020-04-11.
  2. "#513 12-7-97 - Attorney General Janet Reno and Bill Lann Lee to Commemorate the 40th Anniversary of the Civil Rights Division". www.justice.gov. Retrieved 2020-04-11.
  3. Martin, Douglas (2014-08-30). "George Barrett, Tennessee Lawyer Who Fought for Desegregation, Dies at 86". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-04-11.
  4. "The Reformer: Rita Geier - Vanderbilt Lawyer (Volume 40, Number 2)". law.vanderbilt.edu. Retrieved 2020-04-14.
  5. alumn_admin (2007-04-01). "To Do the Right Thing". Tennessee Alumnus. Retrieved 2020-04-11.
  6. "Rita Geier | Trailblazer Series". trailblazer.utk.edu. Retrieved 2020-04-11.
  7. "Rita Sanders Geier Lawyer Profile on Martindale.com". www.martindale.com. Retrieved 2020-04-14.
  8. "In the Public Interest, Vol. 1 Issue 1". Issuu. Retrieved 2020-04-14.
  9. Hebel, Sara (2007-09-04). "Lead Plaintiff in Tennessee's College-Desegregation Case Will Work for Flagship Campus". The Chronicle of Higher Education. ISSN 0009-5982. Retrieved 2020-04-14.
  10. Brown II, M. Christopher; Dancy, T. Elon (2017-12-01). Black Colleges Across the Diaspora: Global Perspectives on Race and Stratification in Postsecondary Education. Emerald Group Publishing. pp. 56–57. ISBN 978-1-78635-521-8.
  11. Cass, Michael. "Attorney George Barrett dies at 86". The Tennessean. Retrieved 2020-04-14.
  12. Smith, Jessie Carney; Wynn, Linda T. (2009-01-01). Freedom Facts and Firsts: 400 Years of the African American Civil Rights Experience. Visible Ink Press. pp. 173–174. ISBN 978-1-57859-231-9.
  13. Williams, Carole A. (1981). The Black/white Colleges: Dismantling the Dual System of Higher Education. U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
  14. "The End of a Journey". Diverse. 2006-10-19. Retrieved 2020-04-14.
  15. "Geier v. Dunn, 337 F. Supp. 573 (M.D. Tenn. 1972)". Justia Law. Retrieved 2020-04-14.
  16. Geier v. Alexander, 801, September 5, 1986, p. 799, retrieved 2020-04-14
  17. Geier v. Sundquist, 372, June 18, 2004, p. 784, retrieved 2020-04-14
  18. Geier v. University of Tennessee, 597, October 18, 1978, p. 1056, retrieved 2020-04-14
  19. Epstein, Gail (June 1, 1980). "Desegregation of Public Institutions of Higher Education: Merger as a Remedy". Chicago-Kent Law Review. 56: 701–729.
  20. Winn, Jewell (2008-01-01). "The Geier Consent Decree years: Fulfilled or unfulfilled promises?". ETD Collection for Tennessee State University: 1–242.
  21. Geier v. Bredesen, 453, September 21, 2006, p. 1017, retrieved 2020-04-14
  22. Emery, Theo (2006-09-12). "After Steps to Desegregate, Plaintiffs Drop Tennessee Suit". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-04-14.
  23. "An examination of the matriculation outcomes of the Geier mandated pre-university programs - ProQuest". search.proquest.com. Retrieved 2020-04-14.
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