NAACP Calls for Bluefield State Investigation

Black Issues in Higher Education, Sept 2, 1999

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. -- West Virginia should investigate employment practices at Bluefield State College because of the school's lack of minority faculty and staff, according to a resolution approved by state NAACP members last month.

The resolution was one of several approved during the final day of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's 55th annual state convention, a two-day meeting held at Huntington's Radisson Inn.

Bluefield State was for years the only historically Black college in the United States with no Black faculty members, according to the unanimously approved resolution. The institution receives $1.1 million in federal grants annually for being a historically Black college.

"The president of Bluefield State, Dr. Robert Moore, has not seriously and sincerely taken adequate steps" to hire Black professors, and the school has discouraged minority employment, according to the resolution.

Last year, Bluefield professor Garret Olmsted, claimed he was fired after criticizing the administration for its failure to recruit Black students and faculty. An administrative law judge ruled in November that the school had to rehire Olmsted (see Black Issues, Nov. 26, 1998).

Bluefield State at the time had two Black professors and only 205 Black students out of a student body of 2,500, according to published reports. An il-member task force had been appointed in November 1997 to advise Moore on recruiting minority faculty and students. At that time, the school had no Black faculty or administrators (see Black Issues, June 11, 1998).