Rita Geier (née Sanders) is an American civil rights pioneer, attorney at law, and public servant.
She joined the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) in 1979 as Assistant Director for Commercial Litigation and Senior Trial Counsel.
[6][5] She was named Associate to the Chancellor and Senior Fellow at the Howard Baker Center for Public Policy at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville in 2007 and held the post until 2011[8] In this role she oversaw the school's "Ready for the World" initiative[4] which sought to address public policy issues of cultural diversity.
[12] The foundational argument of the case rested on the premise that the expansion of the University of Tennessee-Nashville (UTN) would perpetuate two higher education systems in Nashville by creating competition between the two schools for students, faculty and state funding.
[14] The filing of the case failed to halt construction of the new facility and UTN expanded into an area near the state capitol of Tennessee.
In 1970, Sanders married and the name of the case changed numerous times as new governors were elected and immediately became defendants.
[12] In 1972, TSU professors Sterling Adams, Raymond Richardson and 100 other black Tennesseans joined the case as plaintiffs.
The combination marked the first time in history that a historically black college or university and a traditionally white institution were brought under a single banner.
[12] The merger agreement was further modified in 1984 by Judge Thomas A. Wiseman Jr. who added a stipulation of settlement requiring quotas to ensure that TSU increased its white enrollment while other state schools expand the population of non-white students.
In recognition for his work on the case and his lifelong devotion to civil rights, the downtown Nashville campus of TSU was named after Avon Williams in 1986.
To commemorate the end of the 38-year case, Geier appeared with Governor Phil Bredesen announce that she and the other plaintiffs, would be asking a judge to dismiss the lawsuit, acknowledging that the state had finally met its desegregation obligations.
[25] Tennessee State University is today a fully-integrated institution, offering bachelor, master's and doctoral degrees.