#deferments

Technically the deferment system did not racially discriminate against minorities, because it was just as easy for a black student to get a college deferment as it was for a white. Future associate justice of the Supreme Court Clarence Thomas was a student at Holy Cross in Massachusetts during the war and received a deferment, to cite just one example. But the Selective Service System was inherently biased along class and economic lines and clearly favored those who could afford the cost of a higher education. Most black families could not. In 1967 the median income for the average white family was $8,274 a year. For African American families it was only $5141 a year. Only one in five urban black families earned more than $10,000 a year, and more than 30 percent of all African American families were at or below the poverty line.        Many African Americans were also kept out of college because of a substandard precollege education in underfunded and segregated schools, which did little to prepare them for university admission. White families could often afford to hire a tutor or to shop around for a school with lower entrance requirements. Black families seldom had this kind of economic flexibility or these options.