Counting Black students at UNC, 1969–1991

By December 1969, answering an alumnus's charge about the number of Black students, Chancellor J. Carlyle Sitterson reported 321 Black students at UNC out of more than 16,000, including 166 undergraduates and 95 graduate students. Black Ink figured the share at about 2 percent in a state whose people were about 30 percent Black. In 1981 Associate Dean Hayden Renwick said the University had reached 400 Black freshmen only once, with 420 in fall 1979.

The 1980 Report on Minority and Female Presence, which Chancellor Christopher C. Fordham III released to the General Faculty and Faculty Council on October 17, 1980, counted 1,637 Black students, 7.9 percent of 21,465, the largest number and share in the University's history and above the Board of Governors' goal of 6.8 percent; Black faculty held at 57 of 1,887. About 470 Black freshmen entered in fall 1981, the most ever, according to Renwick, and the admissions committee's report to the Faculty Council counted 460 among the 3,201 freshmen who enrolled that August, 14.4 percent. The annual report released on October 23, 1981 counted a record 1,809 Black students, 122 more than a year earlier. Weeks later a report from the Office of Institutional Research found that 47.9 percent of the Black freshmen who entered in 1975 had graduated within five years, down from 56 percent of the 1973 entrants, while 73.7 percent of white 1975 entrants had graduated; Vice Chancellor Harold Wallace said he would study why. Black enrollment reached a record 1,927 in fall 1982, 8.8 percent of the student body, and the registrar's October count put Black undergraduates at 1,481, about 10 percent, against 662 in fall 1977.

The UNC system's third annual report under the 1981 consent decree, filed in U.S. District Court in Raleigh in late December 1983, put the eleven traditionally white campuses at 8.1 percent Black enrollment against a 10.6 percent goal for 1986. At Chapel Hill Black enrollment held at 8.65 percent, up from 7.78 percent when Judge Franklin Dupree approved the decree. In April 1984 Richard Braddour, the law school's dean of minority affairs, said only 7 percent of its students were Black, slightly fewer than a year earlier, and that two of about 30 law professors were Black. Black freshman enrollment then fell: Renwick counted 343 in fall 1984, down from 427 in 1983, and the University's report on minority presence put the figure at 346. He blamed weak support systems and poor retention as well as stronger recruiting by historically Black colleges. Presenting the 1984 Minority and Female Presence Report to the Faculty Council on November 16, 1984, Fordham said Black undergraduate and graduate enrollment had fallen and called student recruitment unsatisfactory; the report counted 50 Black faculty members in tenure-track positions, about 4 percent, against a goal of 83 by December 1986. A week earlier the Board of Governors had been told that Black students made up 8.2 percent at the system's mostly white campuses, short of the 10.6 percent sought under the decree, and that Chapel Hill had fallen from 8.7 to 8.3 percent. Only 66 percent of the Black students admitted in 1984 enrolled; Wallace blamed federal aid cuts among other causes, and BSM leaders called for a Black cultural center. An annual report to the Board of Governors on November 8, 1985 put Black enrollment at Chapel Hill at 1,712 of 21,875 students, 7.83 percent, its third yearly decline in a row, while Black enrollment rose at nine of the system's 16 campuses. Black Ink counted 303 Black freshmen in fall 1985, the smallest class since 1978, and in February 1986 Renwick put minority freshman enrollment that fall at 322.

The Affirmative Action Office's Minority and Female Presence Report put Black students at 7.8 percent of Chapel Hill's enrollment in fall 1986. By February 1987 figures from the Office of Institutional Research showed that of the Black students who entered in 1982, 33 percent had graduated and 49 percent had dropped out four years later, against 59 and 21 percent of white students; for the class entering in 1978 the Black dropout figure had been 40 percent. Vice Chancellor Harold G. Wallace said recruiting would have to reach down to the elementary schools. By April the admissions office had 949 applications from Black students for fall 1987, against 790 at the same point a year earlier, a rise of 20 percent, after Black applicants had fallen from 1,082 in 1983 to 791 in 1985; officials credited Project Uplift and a student field recruitment program. About 900 Black rising seniors came to Project Uplift's three-day sessions that summer, and admissions officials said many of the fall's 650 minority freshmen had attended. On June 25 the trustees approved all 16 recommendations of a Board of Visitors task force on admissions, which called for continued efforts to admit qualified Black students and allotted $300,000 over three years, and that fall the Admissions Office added a minority recruiting position to visit high schools.

Fall 1987 figures released by the Board of Governors on November 13 put Black students at 7.48 percent of Chapel Hill's enrollment, 1,703 of 22,775, and a week later the admissions report to the Faculty Council showed that 318 of the 521 Black students admitted had enrolled as freshmen, against 311 of 513 in 1986. Affirmative action office figures later printed in Black Ink showed Black students falling from 10 percent of undergraduates in fall 1983 to 8.3 percent in fall 1987, while undergraduate enrollment grew from 12,810 to 13,562. On March 1, 1988, at a press conference in the Black Cultural Center, Black Student Movement president Kenneth Perry cited University figures showing that 45.6 percent of the Black freshmen who entered in 1981 had graduated within five years, against 75.9 percent of whites, and called for a stronger Office for Student Counseling. By late March minority applications were up 28 percent from a year earlier, and the first 25 Chancellor's Scholarships for minority students were to be awarded for 1988–89 after the federal agreement aiming at 10.6 percent minority enrollment ended. The Affirmative Action Office's 1988 report found Black students 13 percent of the freshman class, up from 10.2 percent in 1987, but 8.8 percent of all undergraduates, about 9 percent of 13,835 by Black Ink's figures, with Black shares falling in the graduate school, from 5 to 4.5 percent, and in the professional schools, from 9.4 to 8.8 percent.

Of 1,281 Black applicants for fall 1989, the University accepted 646 and enrolled 400, about an eighth of the entering class, and figures released that fall showed 50.8 percent of Black undergraduates graduating within five years, against 30 percent nationally. On November 10, 1989 figures released at the Board of Governors meeting put Black enrollment at Chapel Hill at 1,907, 8.14 percent, up from 1,838, 7.83 percent, in fall 1988; it was one of four traditionally white campuses where the Black share grew.

Admissions figures reported in January 1990 showed freshman applications down almost 5 percent in 1989 after two record years, while applications from Black students rose and the number of Black applicants admitted fell 7 percent, from 750 to 646. An Institutional Research report in October 1990 put minority students at 14.5 percent of UNC undergraduates that fall, up from 13 percent, with African-American students at 10.2 percent after 113 more enrolled; 18 percent of the freshman class were minority students. Black student leaders said retention and campus climate now mattered most, and noted that UNC-Greensboro's freshman class was 17.4 percent Black against UNC-Chapel Hill's 12.3. On November 8, 1991 a Board of Governors report showed Chapel Hill's freshmen with the highest average SAT score in the system, 1,120, while the number of Black students enrolled fell from 2,045 in 1990 to 2,010 and Native American enrollment held at 142; system president C. D. Spangler called the drop a concern.