(NON) EDUCATION BEFORE EMANCIPATION | Enslaved people were typically barred from learning to read and write to keep them from rising up. Punishment for attempting to do so could be beatings and even death. Prior to the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, a small number of Black people who were freed attended college. But these colleges, like Washington and Lee, were often the product of slave labor or still predominantly white institutions with an abolitionist lean, such as Oberlin College, where Mary Jane Patterson was the first African American woman to earn a bachelor’s degree in 1862.
EARLY HBCUS | The first institution created specifically for Black students was the African Institute, established by Richard Humphreys in 1837 in Philadelphia. The university was renamed several times before becoming Cheyney University of Pennsylvania in the 1980s, and it is widely considered to be the country’s oldest HBCU. Nearby Lincoln University was the first institution created to confer degrees to Black students.
POST-CIVIL WAR COLLEGE BOOM | North Carolina’s Shaw University was founded in 1865, becoming the first HBCU founded after the Civil War. Four years after the abolishment of slavery in 1867 came the founding of the largest number of institutions including: Howard University, Alabama State University, Barber-Scotia College, Fayetteville State University, Morehouse College, Morgan State University, Saint Augustine’s University and Talladega College.
ACADEMIC SEGREGATION | Though HBCUs were centered around educating Black students, several HBCU founders were white men, many of whom fought in the Civil War. According to the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, the early iterations of institutions geared toward educating Black students “reflected the universal view prevailing in the nineteenth century that Negroes were a lesser breed possessed of inferior intelligence.” Black students weren’t viewed as being capable of studying in areas like philosophy, physics, chemistry or business, and white individuals and organizations who founded these schools also didn’t think Black people were capable of running their own higher education institutions. “As a result, the Black colleges were established by whites as industrial schools that would train Black people to learn a trade or to prepare them as teachers and preachers for other Blacks,” the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education says.
LEADERSHIP | Howard University, founded by white abolitionists and Civil War veterans in 1867, eventually became a college geared toward the “education of the youth in the liberal arts and sciences,” but it wouldn’t have a Black president for nearly 60 years. Lincoln University didn’t have a Black president until its eighth, Horace Mann Bond. According to the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, the eventual hiring of Black presidents was largely brought on by financial difficulties. Black presidents were hired “to set up a convenient scapegoat if the institution were to fail,” and more prestigious and well-funded institutions like the Rockefeller family-backed Spelman College held out longer before hiring Black leaders. Some schools still hadn’t yet hired a Black leader into the ’70s.
BLACK-OWNED HBCUS | Some schools were founded and owned by Black people. In 1856, Wilberforce University became the first HBCU to be founded, owned and operated by Black people when it was jointly founded in Xenia, Ohio, by the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) and the Methodist Episcopal Church.
DIFFERENT SCHOOLS FOR DIFFERENT STUDENTS | The U.S. Department of Education currently identifies 107 colleges as HBCUs. This is down from a peak of 121 in 1980. The Pew Research Center notes that as of 2017, HBCUs have 293,000 enrolled students and have seen an increase in both Black and non-Black students in the last three decades. About 24% of all HBCU students today are non-Black. However, the growth in enrollment HBCUs have seen has only been about 60,000 students overall, while other schools’ enrollment has more than doubled in the last four decades. The school with the largest enrollment according to Pew is St. Philip’s College with 11,200 students, followed by North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University with 10,900 students and Howard University with 10,000.
GRADUATION RATES | While some HBCUs like Spelman College, Howard University and Hampton University exceed 60% graduation rates, many have a less than 50% graduation rate and some, like Texas Southern and and Central State Universities, matriculate a quarter or less of their students. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education notes that financial constraints and family obligations can cause students to have to drop out of school or take longer than the six-year window that determines many school’s graduation rates. “Not to be discounted,” The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education continues, ” is the fact that many students entering these universities have not been well prepared for college-level curriculum during their K-12 years.” However, recent research has noted that, when controlled for factors like age, income level, gender and high school success, HBCU students are 6 to 16% more likely to graduate than their counterparts at predominantly white institutions.
DEGREES CONFERRED | As of the 2017-2018 school year, HBCUs awarded more than 43,000 degrees to students. Sixty-eight percent of those degrees were bachelor’s degrees, 16% were master’s degrees, 11% were associate’s degrees and 5% were doctorates. Currently, HBCUs award 27% of all STEM degrees granted to Black students and have trained close to half of all Black teachers, according to The Hechinger Report and U.S. News World Report.
HBCU GRADUATES AND THE 2020 ELECTION | The 2020 election shined a positive spotlight on HBCU graduates, not only with the election of Howard alumna Harris as the nation’s first Black and Southeast Asian vice president, but also with the appointment of several HBCU alums into key cabinet positions. HBCU grads were also integral to the 2020 election in other ways, whether it was mobilizing voters or taking elected seats in lower offices. Here are a few of the country’s newest HBCU-bred leaders.
STACEY ABRAMS | Stacey Abrams, a graduate of Spelman College, ran for governor of Georgia in 2019, losing to current Gov. Brian Kemp. Despite the loss, Abrams continued her fight for free and fair elections and worked with several organizers in Georgia, including Georgia Stand Up, led by Deborah Scott (a graduate of Clark Atlanta University), to mitigate voter suppression and increase turnout during Georgia’s runoff elections in January. Abrams’ organization Fair Fight Victory and other organizers are largely credited with the voter mobilization that led to Georgia electing two Democratic senators, ultimately securing the Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate.
REV. RAPHAEL WARNOCK | Rev. Raphael Warnock graduated cum laude from Morehouse College in 1991, and at 35, he became the youngest senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, where fellow Morehouse graduate Martin Luther King Jr. also served as pastor. In 2021, Rev. Warnock beat Sen. Kelly Loeffler in Georgia’s runoff election, becoming the first Black Democratic senator representing a southern state since Reconstruction.
KEISHA LANCE BOTTOMS | Keisha Lance-Bottoms is the mayor of Atlanta and a graduate of Florida Agricultural and Manufacturing (A&M) University. As mayor of Atlanta, Bottoms often came in conflict with mandates from Gov. Kemp in her efforts to reduce COVID-19 case numbers. “It would be disingenuous to say it didn’t hamper our relationship,” Bottoms told Rolling Stone, “but we never let it stop us from working together.” Bottoms also faced growing protests against police brutality and fired the officer responsible for shooting 27-year-old Rayshard Brooks just weeks after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Bottoms was revealed to have been on President Biden’s shortlist for a running mate and recently turned down the position as head of Biden’s Small Business Administration in favor of seeking out another mayoral term.
MICHAEL REGAN | Michael Regan is the current secretary of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, and President Biden’s pick for the job of Head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). His nomination, if confirmed, would make him the first Black person to head the EPA in its 51-year history. Regan holds a bachelor’s degree in earth and environmental science from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and a master’s degree in public administration from George Washington University.
LETITIA JAMES | Letitia James is a Howard graduate like Vice President Harris with a juris doctorate from Howard’s School of Law. James is the attorney general of New York.
CEDRIC RICHMOND | Congressman Cedric Richmond, who was the only Black American in the state of Louisiana serving in either chamber of congress, headed up President Biden’s campaign as national co-chair and was instrumental in the selection of Harris as his running mate, according to Black Enterprise. Following his appointment to director of public engagement and senior advisor to President Biden, Rep. Richmond will be the most senior African-American serving in the incoming administration, according to the Congressional Black Caucus.
JIM CLYBURN | Congressman Richmond’s mentor and also a South Carolina State University alumnus, Congressman Jim Clyburn is credited with having suggested that President Biden select a Black woman as his running mate, according to NPR. Clyburn is also the majority whip in the U.S. House of Representatives.
FINANCIAL STRUGGLES | Despite having many distinguished alumni, HBCUs are often disenfranchised compared to their predominantly white counterparts. According to a recent article from Elle Magazine, between 2003 and 2015, HBCUs saw the biggest decline in federal funding and their endowments are 70% lower than non-HBCUs. A report from the American Council on Education notes that HBCUs are more dependent on tuition than other schools. This lack of funding is largely due to structural racism, inequitable federal support and lack of continued alumni contributions, according to the Hechinger Report.
LOSING ACCREDITATION | Throughout the nearly 200-year history of HBCUs, closings due to financial struggles or disasters — like the fire that destroyed Guadalupe College in 1936 — have been an unfortunate reality. Between 1989 and 2018, seven HBCUs closed, with Concordia College in Selma, Alabama, being the most recent due to financial problems and low enrollment. Many more are struggling, such as Morris Brown College, which lost its accreditation and currently only offers four degree-conferring majors to less than 100 students. In 2019, women’s HBCU Bennett College was able to hold on to its accreditation through a successful crowdfunding campaign that raised more than $8 million.
ATHLETICS | For institutions of higher education, athletics can be a lucrative revenue stream. HBCUs were once a breeding ground for elite Black athletes with football champions like Walter Payton and Jerry Rice coming through Jackson State and Mississippi Valley College, respectively. However, following greater recruitment efforts from predominantly white institutions (PWIs), there was what Jemele Hill in an article for The Atlantic dubbed a “flight” of Black athletes from HBCUs. Today, HBCUs spending per athlete is dwarfed by PWIs, and they struggle to garner the revenue to update their facilities. The Black Lives Matter movement led to increased attention toward supporting HBCUs. In 2020, the organization HBCU Jump was founded to encourage recruitment of top-tier Black athletes to HBCU programs.
INCREASED SUPPORT | Recently, MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, announced more than $4 billion in gifts to minority-serving institutions, including Alcorn State University, Clark Atlanta University, Dillard University, Lincoln University and Morgan State University. The National Trust’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund also announced its plan to give $650,000 in grants to historically Black colleges and universities to preserve their campuses. Other companies have joined the charge to inject millions of dollars into preserving and growing HBCUs, including FedEx, Diageo, FanDuel and The Washington Football Team. The NBA All-Star Game also announced plans to commit more than $2.5 million in funds and resources to HBCUs.
