The following op-ed was submitted by Lamija Grbic, a member of Freedom at Emory, and written as a collaborative piece with the group's members.
February 1, 2016 commemorated the 56th anniversary of the non-violent sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina, where four African-American students integrated the lunch counter at a Woolworth department store, ultimately causing the chain to end its segregationist policies. This historic action sparked hundreds of student-led demonstrations of nonviolent civil disobedience that eventually helped desegregate public facilities throughout the Jim Crow South.
In honor of this event, 25 undocumented students and 70 of their allies integrated college classrooms at three of the five public universities in Georgia that deny admission to undocumented students, in a courageous act of civil disobedience that came to be known as the #GreensboroNow action. #GreensboroNow was coordinated by Freedom University, an Atlanta-based freedom school for undocumented students. Undocumented students were joined by student allies from seven universities in Georgia: the University of Georgia, Georgia State University, Georgia College and State University, Kennesaw State University, Emory University, Spelman College, and Morehouse College. More than 25 undocumented students traveled from colleges outside of Georgia, including Harvard University, Smith College, Bard College, and the College of Charleston. While the fight for racial justice and equal opportunity has experienced important successes in the decades since the Greensboro sit-ins, there is still a long way to go, and students in Georgia are mobilizing to continue the struggle against historically embedded inequalities. The purpose of the action was to demand that the presidents of the three institutions - Jere Morehead of UGA, Mark Becker of GSU, and George Peterson of Georgia Tech - publicly denounce the discriminatory policies implemented by the Georgia Board of Regents. Implemented by the Board in 2011, Policy 4.1.6 and Policy 4.3.4 ban undocumented students from the top five public universities in Georgia and prohibit them from qualifying for in-state tuition, despite the fact that in 2012 undocumented immigrants paid over $352 million in state and local taxes. Georgia is one of only three states, along with Alabama and South Carolina, to implement an admissions ban against undocumented students in public higher education. This movement and its cause point to a larger reality. As the South continues to struggle with its history of racial oppression, Georgia policymakers are using documentation status as a means of constraining the opportunities being given to young people. Citizenship has long been used by the U.S. as a social construct to legally exclude and oppress people of color. The Supreme Court ruling in Dred Scott v. Sanford in 1857 determined that African-Americans who fled to the North to escape slavery could not be American citizens. In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act prohibited the immigration of Chinese laborers. After centuries of genocide and displacement, Native Americans were finally granted provisional citizenship status by Congress under the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. The Immigration Act of 1924 sought to regulate immigration through a national origins quota which favored Western European immigrants and excluded Southern and Eastern European, African, and Asian immigrants (who were actually excluded altogether from the national origins quota due to a stipulation that allowed for 100 people to come annually from Asian countries, provided that none were of Asian descent). Although today’s immigration debate has been heavily racialized to center around Latin American immigrants, issues surrounding documentation status also affect a large number of Caribbean, African, and Asian immigrants. The question of who may be granted citizen status has always been slanted in favor of the group that has historically possessed the power to craft immigration policies: white Americans. In light of this long history of racism within U.S. immigration policy, Freedom University emerged in 2011 as a safe space for undocumented students to continue their education. Freedom University offers tuition-free classes in a variety of subjects—such as human rights, history, music, theater, and debate—in order to prepare students for college and leadership roles. Colleges around the country are taking notice: nearly one in five students who enters Freedom University leaves with a full-ride scholarship to colleges with inclusive admissions and financial aid policies, such as Dartmouth, Smith, and Berea College. Since its inception in 2011, Freedom University has worked to raise public consciousness on the issue of educational segregation in Georgia through a strategy of nonviolent direct action. In January 2015, Freedom University students integrated a UGA classroom with documented allies from the UGA, Emory, and Kennesaw State, in which nine students were arrested. In November of 2015, a group of Freedom University students joined allies from UGA, GSU, and Emory in a silent disruption of a Board of Regents meeting at the State Capitol. At this month’s #GreensboroNow action, Emory allies joined undocumented students from Freedom University in order to integrate a classroom at Georgia Tech. The undocumented students each wore a pair of butterfly wings to symbolize migration. Dr. Shannon Speed of UCLA and Dr. Angela Steusse of the University of South Florida led a class on the history of immigration in the United States. Seventeen students remained in the building for approximately 11 hours, despite being told to leave by Georgia Tech police. During this time, the students danced, sang freedom songs, and chanted “Education not segregation!” and “Undocumented unafraid!” with fists in the air and at times linking arms. At approximately 2 am, the 17 students exited the building in pairs, with their fists in the air. By that time, a growing number of allies had congregated outside the building to stand in solidarity. Despite the apathy of some of the Tech students, a number of students came to speak with the protesters, learn about the action, and state their support for undocumented students’ rights. Numerous local, state, and national news outlets, including the Huffington Post, have reported the demonstrations. Although the university presidents at the affected institutions have yet to issue formal statements, within two weeks of the action, Georgia State University’s Student Government Association passed a resolution supporting in-state tuition rates for DACA students. Fourteen students were charged with criminal trespassing and are awaiting impending hearings and trials in the state of Georgia. Last April, Emory University agreed to extend need-based financial aid to undocumented students who meet DACA qualifications. This decision was a crucial step toward broadening educational access, but the fight for undocumented students’ rights is far from over. Georgia has placed barriers in the path of undocumented students seeking to attain an education, thus perpetuating long-standing inequalities that stigmatize and marginalize immigrants. By emphasizing that undocumented students are indeed welcome at our institution and establishing mechanisms to help them thrive on campus, Emory can be an active agent in advancing educational equality in the South. Undocumented students deserve equal access to higher education and the opportunity to pursue their goals without being subject to discriminatory policies. By limiting the life choices of undocumented students and preventing them from reaching their full human potential, the state of Georgia puts itself on the wrong side of history, while also forcing some of its brightest and most capable students to leave the state. As members of the student group Freedom at Emory, we applaud Emory for opening its doors to academically qualified undocumented students, and we encourage our university to continue welcoming some of our generation’s most courageous freedom fighters, who can not only enrich our classrooms but help us create the just and equal world we all deserve.
