Center for Civil Rights in Education

The Robert M. Bell Center for Civil Rights in Education, established at Morgan State University, unites research, teaching, training and advocacy on integral civil rights issues in education at the pre-kindergarten, elementary, secondary and postsecondary levels. It is instituted for the identification and study of current issues and challenges related to equal educational opportunity, particularly with respect to African American and other minority students seeking real and meaningful opportunities for educational excellence and advancement.

The Center convenes the needed intellectual capacity by bringing together academia, the legal profession, advocacy groups, policymakers, civic and community leaders and organizations, and students to develop and promote substantive research and collaboration of research, strategies, remedies, solutions, programs, public policy initiatives and appropriate legal and community-based advocacy necessary to overcome obstacles to educational achievement, eliminate continuing policies or practices that foster discrimination or perpetuate segregated conditions in education, and enhance educational opportunity for all students regardless of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status or background. Its mission and purposes are national in scope, providing critical leadership, resources and focus to the relevant educational issues at home and in communities throughout the nation.

Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments . . . it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.
-Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, et al.