Memphis University Majors in Diversity

The protesters who waved Confederate flags and carried “Civil Rights for Whites” signs at Memphis State University are long gone.

So are rules that banned black students from the campus cafeteria and student center, and that relegated them to the “Negro” section at football games.

These days, the University of Memphis -- a name taken in the early 1990s to accompany a new image -- is one of the most diverse college campuses in the country. Some call it an affirmative action success story, one in which a third of the school’s 16,000 undergraduates are black, and where students of many races mingle with little thought of the past.

But still, Errol Harmon, a second-year law student, knows that some of his white peers on this quiet campus question his presence and the university programs that have helped get him there.

The law school has about 50 black students, about 11% of the total -- not as diverse as the undergraduate population, but certainly more than it was in decades past, when pictures of graduating law school classes included only a scattering of black faces.

Many of today’s black students, including Harmon, got there with the help of the Tennessee Institute for Pre-Law, a university program that helps black undergraduates who are state residents prepare for and win admission to law school.

The program and various scholarships for black students are funded by the state, which is still under federal mandate to desegregate many of its institutions of higher learning.

“Without it, I don’t think I would’ve been prepared for this rigorous environment,” Harmon, 30, said of the pre-law program. “Law school is very, very, very demanding. It’s really survival of the fittest, so to speak.”

Hard work and a supportive family also have helped Harmon achieve his goal, one that his grandmother always told him was within reach.

“You’re not going to be ignorant like I am; you’re going to school,” Callie Mae Smith, whom he called “Big Momma,” often told Harmon. She was the one who kept a watchful eye as he walked to and from school in their working-class Memphis neighborhood -- and who, to this day, keeps track of him with a pager that he carries just for her.

Harmon’s grandparents, descendants of slaves, quit school in their early teens to earn money farming cotton, peas and corn on land just south of what would become Elvis Presley’s estate, Graceland.

His parents, a church secretary and a landscaper, finished high school. But college opportunities eluded them, too, in an era that saw the hope of the civil rights movement often replaced by heartache -- including the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. just a few miles from their Memphis home.

But life has been different for Harmon, the youngest of two sons and the first member of the family to graduate from college.

A football scholarship got him to Austin Peay State University outside Nashville, where he majored in public management. While there, he says, an injury caused him to more seriously consider his career options.

He came home to Memphis to earn some money working with his father and, eventually, enrolled at the Tennessee Institute for Pre-Law, which students attend over three summers.

Those who successfully complete the program -- and meet the minimum required composite score for grade-point average and their results on the Law School Admission Test -- are all but guaranteed admission to one of the state’s two law schools.

Now Harmon is well on his way to becoming a lawyer. Earnest and articulate, he made it through that first tough year of law school and, in his second year, is president of the law school’s chapter of the Black Law Students Assn.

He also regularly defends the case for affirmative action when white students, such as Cristy Braun, question it.

“It is a wonderful experience to have diversity in the classroom,” said Braun, a law student from Florida who sits in front of Harmon in a class about criminal procedure. “However, I don’t believe in forcing diversity into an environment by lowering standards and lending a helping hand.

“People should be admitted on their merits on an even playing field,” Braun added, noting that neither of her parents finished college -- and that, even before she came to law school, she worked as a paralegal to help prepare herself on her own.

Harmon and other black law students argue that the pre-law program simply helps get the word out to qualified students who otherwise might never consider law.

“It’s almost similar to the slaves being freed -- and someone who’s never been off the plantation,” said Cedrick Wooten, a first-year student who attended the pre-law program while he was an assistant principal for the Memphis public schools. “Access means nothing if you don’t know about it.”

Tameka Turner-Perry, who attended the pre-law program and graduated from the Memphis law school in 2001, agrees.

“Really, the thing being given to us is just a chance,” said Turner-Perry, who took a job with a civil litigation firm in Memphis after clerking for a Tennessee Supreme Court judge. “When I got into law school, grades weren’t given to me. I earned those.”

Not that it’s easy for some black students.

University statistics for Turner-Perry’s class, for example, show that a little over half of the black students who began law school with her -- 11 of 19 -- ended up graduating. That compares with about 80% of white students.

Turner-Perry particularly remembers one student -- “a really bright girl” -- who dropped out because her family expected her to get a job and help care for her nieces and nephews.

Don Polden, dean of the Memphis law school, says that kind of story is more common for black students who -- like Harmon and Turner-Perry -- are often the first in their families to attend college. He and his staff recently added support programs to help black students deal with work and family issues once they’ve been admitted. He says the pre-law program also has been made tougher to better prepare them.

“We try to get the best students we can here -- and then keep them,” said Polden, who believes that creating opportunities for black students is simply the “right thing to do.”

The retention statistics and special attention causes some white students to grumble. Still others in Tennessee say the state should be putting more focus on improving its K-12 education system to better prepare all students.

Harmon wholeheartedly agrees with the latter thought.

But that doesn’t change his feeling that he belongs at the law school -- and that the perspective he brings adds to the overall educational experience at Memphis.

“Whether they know it or not, they’re actually participating in a diverse forum,” Harmon said of debates with his peers. “So we actually learn from one another.”