Faculty Spotlight: Mary Frances Berry

Mary Frances Berry is the Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought and Professor of History. She is the former chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, former Assistant Secretary for Education in the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and the author of thirteen books. Dr. Berry is a Fellow of the Society of American Historians and of the National Academy of Public Administration and a Distinguished Fellow of the American Society for Legal History. In recognition of her scholarship and public service, she has received 35 honorary doctoral degrees and many awards, including the NAACP's Roy Wilkins Award, the Rosa Parks Award of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Ebony Magazine Black Achievement Award, and the Roy Rosenzweig Distinguished Service Award of the Organization of American Historians. She was 1990-91 President of the Organization of American Historians. She is one of 75 women featured in I Dream A World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America, and the Sienna College Research Institute and the Women's Hall of Fame designated her one of "America's Women of the Century."

You were a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 1980 to 2004 and served as Chair from 1993-2004. Can you tell us more about that experience? How have your thoughts on civil rights in America changed over time?

I became a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights when I left the Carter Administration, where I had been in charge of federal education programs. The Commission, which was established by Congress upon the recommendation of President Dwight Eisenhower, was put in place to monitor the government’s efforts in enforcing civil rights laws, and to report to the public and to Congress where changes were needed.

Ronald Reagan was elected President shortly after I became a member. His policies were very negative: he refused to let the Justice Department enforce what he regarded as objectionable civil rights laws, especially voting rights laws, and a number of career attorneys left the department in protest. He started his campaign in Mississippi at the place where three civil rights workers—Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman—were killed in 1964.

Many people think that Trump is the first President we’ve ever had that had anti-civil rights policies. The other day I heard someone say: “Trump is the first president who was a racist.” Well, that’s not true. We’ve had many in our history who engaged in racist behavior.

So, there was plenty to report about Mr. Reagan. Not only on race, but also on things like the AIDS crisis—he refused to even mention the word “AIDS” until very late in the crisis. It was a very bad time for civil rights. Mr. Reagan fired me and some other commissioners because we criticized his policies. I and one other sued him and won reinstatement in federal district court, because the judge said that we were watchdogs at the commission. And watchdogs can't be fired for biting.

It was a terrible time. Civil rights in this country have improved by fits and starts, but we have never really confronted the issues, whether on gender or disability or any issue. Changing polices to relieve racial inequity has been one of the toughest problems. It still is.

In 1977, President Carter appointed you Assistant Secretary for Education in the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Can you tell us about that experience?

I was Chancellor at the University of Colorado in Boulder when the President asked me to run the federal education programs. I had not been partisan—I really never have been—and I was puzzled as to why he asked me. But the Chairman of our Board of Regents said he thought that when the President asks you to do something for your country, you do it—so I went to Washington.

Jimmy Carter’s main priority in education was to carve a “Department of Education” out of the “Department of Health, Education and Welfare.” I supported that objective, but until the Department was enacted into law headed the Education activities and worked very hard to get funding increased for poor students and for historically Black colleges and universities in the South.

The most important litigation in that period was the Bakke case [Regents of the University of California v. Bakke decision], which supported diversity in higher education. This hasn’t turned out to be as effective as we might have hoped, especially on the question of race. It’s been more effective on gender.

I enjoyed the work I did, although I found that it was hard to enforce civil rights laws even though Jimmy Carter stood up for them. He was a reconstructed white Southerner, and they are the best people you can find on issues having to do with race.

In History Teaches Us to Resist: How Progressive Movements Have Succeeded in Challenging Times (Beacon Press, 2018), you document resistance movements throughout American history and demonstrate that protest is an essential component of the political process. Do you see parallels in today’s protest movement with what has happened in the past? What are the differences?

I am so pleased with the Black Lives Matter protests—these protests around the killing of unarmed Black people, around “Karens” (the white women who complain about Black people doing ordinary things, like walking in the park or jogging), and around the lack of fair or affordable housing for so many people, especially for Black people.

The Black Lives Matter protests have been effective so far, I think, first because they’ve occurred during a pandemic and a time of economic dislocation. Many people are working from home, some are unemployed, and students are not in school. There’s a force of people available to sustain the protests.

Also, protestors have tried to be very systematic about staying on message. A successful protest needs two things: persistence and a message that is simple. The recent activity around federal force being involved in suppressing protests has, in a sense, distracted from the central message.

I think protests are going to have to go on for a much longer period. The “defund the police” message—which really means shift money from the police to social services and redefine the role of the police—remains controversial. In order to achieve positive results, it’s going to take much more time.

One difference from earlier protests is social media. It’s easier now to organize and inform people—in the old days we had mimeograph machines and phone calls and written letters. Of course, social media also makes surveillance of protesters easier, so it’s a two-edged sword.

There’s also the issue of the November election. A lot of political people are trying to push the protesters to stop protesting and work only on the election. That would be a mistake. We’ve had elections before and they have not upended white supremacy or improved civil rights enforcement. There’s no reason to believe that this election will be any different.

Andrew Young, who was with Martin Luther King and was a UN Ambassador and a businessman, used to say about the civil rights protests in the ‘60s: “Business people and politicians always wanted to get us out of the streets and into the suites, so we could sit down and talk, and stop being trouble.” What John Lewis called “good trouble.”

So while we have to vote—voting is important—it is as true now as it has ever been that protest is an essential ingredient of politics.

Observers point to evidence that inequality has grown in cities in the last several decades (even while urban prosperity has increased overall) and that Covid-19 is likely to worsen these racial and economic divides in cities. Do you agree? How do you think the Covid-19 pandemic will affect inequities in cities?

Covid-19 has already increased economic inequity and racial inequity. Not only in cities, but in rural areas too: wherever the poor are in large numbers.

Cities have become gentrified. Gentrification has brought resources, but those resources haven’t been distributed equally. Many people have been pushed out of the cities—and even after being forced out, many still can't find affordable housing. Homelessness has become a national crime, and it has been worsened by the virus.

The educational divide has also been made worse by Covid-19. Not finding a way to open schools—outdoors or distanced or something—is having the effect of leaving behind the most disadvantaged. Private schools, especially those that are well-endowed, are opening, so the children who go to them will be even further ahead than they were before. And employment, of course, is a disaster. All these things make the idea of reducing inequity laughable; increasing inequity will be more likely.

A recent Wall Street Journal article (Lenders Oppose Federal Effort to Weaken Housing-Discrimination Rule, July 13, 2020) reported widespread opposition among lenders to the current administration’s efforts to weaken an Obama-era regulation aimed at combating discrimination in housing. Can you comment on the importance of this opposition?

This story about the Trump Administration weakening this housing regulation that was intended to increase housing integration had legs for a while—it was one of a million stories that showed the faults in the things that Trump does.

But the story to me was ironic, because anyone who lives in a major city sees that housing segregation is a reality. It’s always been a reality: it was a reality the day Obama went into office, and it was reality the day he left, and it is still a reality. The regulation to improve housing integration had minimal, if any, effect. Housing segregation, neighborhood segregation, the lack of affordable housing, and the resistance to building it—these are as much of a problem now as when the regulation was put in place.

You could say that the regulation was symbolic, and it was nice to have. But anybody who lives in any neighborhood in any city should know that housing segregation is persistent.

How do you think current civil unrest and calls for equity will affect cities? Do you think this moment could lead to more equitable cities?

I think that the movement has already created a lot of symbolic change, with “Black Lives Matter” written on the streets and posted in store windows, and businesses and institutions vowing to redouble their efforts to do something about racism and inequality. The challenge will be to maintain that momentum and to create actual—not just symbolic—change. That will require continuous protests and holding people accountable.

What role do you see for research and instruction in informing efforts to make cities more equitable?

Researchers should disaggregate data when doing work on diversity and inclusion. Too often, data on underserved people and minorities is aggregated. For instance, some people report data on African Americans without disaggregating the data so that we can see people from the Caribbean, people from Africa, slave-descended African Americans, people of different income levels, and so on.

When looking at the effects of Covid-19, for example, you might say “Blacks and Latinos have the highest rate of infection”— but if you don’t say which groups within those communities you’re talking about, you can’t tell who is doing okay and who is not. In order to provide applicable remedies, we need more careful analysis. We can't do that if we don’t have good data.

What role do you think Penn IUR, as a cross-university institute, can play in helping to create more equitable cities and a more equitable society?

I hope that the Institute will take up the cry about information and data and begin to focus on producing studies that analyze groups of people by detecting different circumstances and locations. Like, who are the homeless? And who has affordable housing and who doesn’t? Why? We all need to take leadership in being more careful about analysis. That will result in better recommendations.