Week 3-Thurs-HBCUs- Racial injustices in education

Week 3-Thurs-HBCUs

Attempts to address racial injustices in education
(Historically Black Colleges and Universities)

HBCUs and Early Black Educators

Education to over the
Black Codes

White Southerners sought ways to control newly freed African Americans

They wrote Black Codes to regulate civil and legal rights, from marriage to the right to hold and sell property

In many ways the codes guaranteed African Americans would continue working as farm laborers

Blacks set up and helped pay for many private elementary, secondary schools, and colleges

Initiative of many blacks themselves, along with the support of the American Missionary Association (AMA) and the Freedmen’s Bureau - set up private colleges and universities for the education of blacks.

African American churches ran their own elementary and secondary education for southern blacks, preparing them for vocations or advanced studies.

This created a demand for higher education, particularly for the institutes to train teachers for work in black schools.

Between 1861 and 1870, the AMA founded seven black colleges and 13 normal (teaching) schools.

What are HBCUs?

There are 100 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) across the nation

and nine percent of all African American college students attend HBCUs.

In 1965, in Title III of the Higher Education Act of 1965, Congress officially defined an HBCU as:

a school of higher learning whose principal mission was and is the education of African Americans and was accredited and established before 1964.

What are Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)?

The 100 HBCUs represent just three percent (3%) of the nation’s institutions of higher learning

But they graduate nearly 20 percent of African Americans who earn undergraduate degrees.

In addition, the institutions graduate more than 50 percent of African American professionals and public school teachers.

Most HBCUs are 50 to 100 years old.

Of the 100 HBCUs, 17 HBCUs have land-grant status.

Today, HBCUs have a significant percentage of non-African American student populations that consist of Asian, Hispanic, International and white American students.

The National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education (NAFEO): a professional association that represents the nation's HBCUs.

HBCUs- Civil War and After

During war in 1862, senator Justin Morrill spearheaded a movement to improve public higher education

Emphasis on applied sciences, agriculture, and engineering.

1862: The Morrill Land-Grant Act gave federal lands to the states for the purpose of opening colleges and universities to educate farmers, scientists, and teachers.

Very few of the new land grant colleges were open to or inviting to free blacks, particularly in the South.

Although Cheney and Lincoln University opened in the north before Alcorn State University in Mississippi. In the south, Alcorn was the first explicitly created black land-grant college in 1871. (Following the Civil War, 13th Amendment: abolition of slavery-1865).

28 years after first Morrill Act, second Morrill Land-Grant Act of 1890: specified that states using federal land-grant funds must either make their schools open to both blacks and whites or allocate money for segregated black colleges to serve as an alternative to white schools.

Sixteen exclusively black institutions received 1890 land-grant funds.

Historically Black Colleges
and Universities before Civil War

Before the Civil War (1861-1865) a few free Blacks attended primarily White colleges in the North. But  such opportunities were very rare and nonexistent in the slave states of the South.

A limited number of Black students attended white schools like Oberlin College in Ohio and Berea College in Kentucky.

The Institute for Colored Youth, now Cheyney University (1837), was established by a group of Philadelphia Quakers.

First HBCU- 1837
The Institute for Colored Youth
Now Cheyney University, Pennsylvania

Lincoln University, Pennsylvania,
second oldest HBCU

Chartered in April 1854 as Ashmun Institute.

Horace Mann Bond, eighth president (Education for Freedom):  claimed this was "the first institution found anywhere in the world to provide a higher education in the arts and sciences for male youth of African descent." (Cheyney- 1837 actually the first)

Founder, John Miller Dickey, and his wife, Sarah Emlen Cresson.

The Institute was renamed Lincoln University in 1866 after President Abraham Lincoln.

The University admitted women students in 1952.

Famous Lincoln Univ. Alumnae

Alcorn State University (Miss.)

Second oldest state supported institution of higher learning in Mississippi.

Founded in 1871.

Alcorn’s first president was Hiram R. Revels, who resigned his seat as the first African American to serve as a United States senator to assume the post.

Alcorn: Academic and Vocational Education

The students spent the mornings from seven o’clock until noon in classes.

In the afternoon, they worked in the various shops for eight cents per hour.

Room and board, including laundry, equated to five dollars a month.

The difficult financial state of some HBCUs

“The economic issues that bedevil higher education in general are even more disruptive in the HBCU community,

in part because many of the students are first in their families to go to college,” a New Times piece read.

“Forty-six percent of students at historically black colleges come from families with incomes lower than $34,000,

and half qualify for federal low-income Pell grants, according to the United Negro College Fund, which finances scholarships for 37 private black colleges.”

Some HBCUs face hard times

In addition to the financial disadvantage that comes with serving low-income students, particularly in a tough economy,

HBCUs were also rocked in recent years by an unannounced policy changes out of the U.S. Department of Education that tightened federal loan eligibility.

Subsequent loan denials led to decreased enrollment at many of the nations HBUCs.

A New York Times article detailed that HBCUs lost an estimated 17,000 students, costing the schools more than $150 million in revenue.

HBCUs with financial difficulties

Among the historically black institutions facing economic woes are Bethune-Cookman University and Florida Memorial University.

Money troubles have translated into accreditation issues and warnings for Alabama A&M University, Florida A&M, Fisk University, Tennessee State, Bennett College, Tugaloo College, Saint Paul’s College, Morris Brown College,  Southern University, Virginia Union University, Grambling State University and others.

Loss of accreditation affects a university’s reputation, fundraising and access to financial aid— which is crucial to the well-being of HBCUs.

Pres. Obama aided HBCUs in 2010

The Department of Education announced in 2010 it provided $228 million in grants to 97 historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in 19 states.

The funds will be used for campus expansion, counseling programs, science equipment and faculty training.

Top-ranked, all-female Spelman College

Top-ranked, all-female Spelman College received an A1 rating last November by Moody’s Investors Service.

Moody’s: “Spelman has been able to weather an “extremely competitive admissions environment” with historically strong philanthropic support and healthy student demand. Its success is one that other HBCUs hope to replicate.

(from website: www.Griot.com)