When one considers the possibilities for a new progressive era in American higher education, the author contends that it is wise to review the past because there are lessons to be learned. In fact, the latter part of the 20th century was one of great progress for diversity in higher education, generally speaking, and for African Americans in particular. Unfortunately, for the first two-thirds of its history, American higher education had a decidedly apartheid-like character. It was not until the late 1960s that the nation finally broke through the barriers that had effectively separated races, religions, and genders into separate colleges. Today, only four decades after that era, the American higher educational system has one of the most inclusively diverse student body compositions in the world. To set the larger framework for the changes that dramatically reconstituted U.S. higher education and the shifting relationship of African Americans to this system, it will be useful to examine some of the key social, economic and political forces that generated these changes. After reviewing this history, the author turns his attention to India and South Africa, two nations that have used the U.S. as a model for their own responses to insurgent claims from previously excluded groups. (Contains 14 endnotes.)