Page:Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.pdf/146

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

Cite as: 600 U. S. ____ (2023)

7

Sotomayor, J., dissenting

753, 781 (1985). The Bureau also provided land and funding to establish some of our Nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Ibid.; see also Brief for HBCU Leaders et al. as Amici Curiae 13 (HBCU Brief). In 1867, for example, the Bureau provided Howard University tens of thousands of dollars to buy property and construct its campus in our Nation’s capital. 2 O. Howard, Autobiography 397–401 (1907). Howard University was designed to provide “special opportunities for a higher education to the newly enfranchised of the south,” but it was available to all Black people, “whatever may have been their previous condition.” Bureau Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, Sixth Semi-Annual Report on Schools for Freedmen 60 (July 1, 1868).^[1] The Bureau also “expended a total of $407,752.21 on black colleges, and only $3,000 on white colleges” from 1867 to 1870. Schnapper, 71 Va. L. Rev., at 798, n. 149.

Indeed, contemporaries understood that the Freedmen’s Bureau Act benefited Black people. Supporters defended the law by stressing its race-conscious approach. See, e.g., Cong. Globe 632 (statement of Rep. Moulton) (“[T]he true object of this bill is the amelioration of the condition of the colored people”); Joint Comm. Rep. 11 (reporting that “the Union men of the south” declared “with one voice” that the Bureau’s efforts “protect[ed] the colored people”). Opponents argued that the Act created harmful racial classifications that favored Black people and disfavored white Americans. See, e.g., Cong. Globe 397 (statement of Sen. Willey) (the Act makes “a distinction on account of color between the two races”), 544 (statement of Rep. Taylor) (the Act is

↑ As Justice Thomas acknowledges, the HBCUs, including Howard University, account for a high proportion of Black college graduates. Ante, at 56–57 (concurring opinion). That reality cannot be divorced from the history of anti-Black discrimination that gave rise to the HBCUs and the targeted work of the Freedmen’s Bureau to help Black people obtain a higher education. See HBCU Brief 13–15.

[1] As Justice Thomas acknowledges, the HBCUs, including Howard University, account for a high proportion of Black college graduates. Ante, at 56–57 (concurring opinion). That reality cannot be divorced from the history of anti-Black discrimination that gave rise to the HBCUs and the targeted work of the Freedmen’s Bureau to help Black people obtain a higher education. See HBCU Brief 13–15.

[1]