ALBANY, GA. — Every freshman who enrolls at Albany State University knows the saga of this small, proud school.
In a mandatory class, they learn how Joseph Winthrop Holley, a son of slaves, built the campus in 1903 to educate his fellow African Americans here along the banks of the Flint River. They learn how the historically black school survived the roiling race issues of the 20th century -- from Jim Crow to desegregation and beyond -- and how it survived the muddy Flint, which has flooded the campus time and again.
But today, there is talk of a new kind of deluge at this public school, one that many students fear would do even greater harm: The potential influx of white students from a nearby two-year college, who could go to Albany State under a proposal to merge the campuses that is floating around the Georgia Statehouse.
Bernard Postell, 25, an Albany State senior, worries that a merger with Darton College -- a school of 5,000 across town that is 53% white -- would dilute Albany State's status as an HBCU, or Historically Black College and University.
He and many other students enrolled at this grassy southwest Georgia campus, he said, for the special experience of attending a majority-black school, with its step shows, its show band and its small but significant role in the civil rights struggle.
"It's not that we don't want to be with other races," Postell said. "It's that we don't want to lose our culture that we've been building since 1903."
The proposal was introduced this month by Seth Harp, chairman of the Georgia Senate's Higher Education Committee. Georgia, like many states, is in the midst of a dramatic budget crisis, and Harp said the proposal would help close an estimated $2-billion shortfall.
Under the plan, Darton would be folded into Albany State, whose current undergraduate enrollment of 3,800 is 92% black. Harp proposes a similar plan for historically black Savannah State University and a nearby majority-white college, Armstrong Atlantic State University.
Harp, a white Republican from the Columbus, Ga., area, said his plan was about more than saving money -- it was also about tearing down what he called "the old vestiges of segregation": Darton College, he noted, was founded during the mid-1960s as a haven for white students. In 1966, the school's first year of operation, all of the 620 students enrolled at Darton were white, according to school records.
