Entrepreneurial Appetite
HBCUs, Shelters In Times of Storm: A Conversation with Jelani Favors, PhD
Support the From A&T to PhD Endowed Scholarship
How do Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) continue to shape our society? Join us as we welcome Dr. Jelani Favors, the renowned author of "Shelter in a Time of Storm: How Black Colleges Foster Generations of Leadership and Activism." Dr. Favors shares his deeply personal journey and connection to North Carolina A&T State University, reflecting on the historical significance of the Greensboro sit-ins and how these moments have informed his life's work. You'll hear about his transformative experiences as an A&T student and how the unwavering support from professors propelled him to an illustrious academic career.
In this episode, we celebrate the rich history and ongoing influence of HBCUs through powerful personal anecdotes and historical exploration. Discover the impact of the "second curriculum" that nurtured race consciousness and cultural nationalism among Black students, turning them into formidable advocates for democracy and social change. From the pivotal roles of Fisk, Morehouse, and North Carolina A&T to the compelling stories of alumni like Kamala Harris, Stacey Abrams, and Raphael Warnock, we underscore the enduring power of these institutions in combating white supremacy and producing influential leaders.
We also examine the current state and future prospects of HBCUs, acknowledging both the challenges and triumphs faced by these vital institutions. From the rise of A&T under Chancellor Dr. Harold Martin's visionary leadership to the increasing spotlight on HBCUs due to social media and high-profile alumni, we discuss the necessity of robust curricula and intentional programs that foster student activism and community engagement. Join us for an inspiring conversation that highlights the resilience, success, and crucial role of HBCUs in our society today.
Support the From A&T to PhD Endowed Scholarship
How do Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) continue to shape our society? Join us as we welcome Dr. Jelani Favors, the renowned author of "Shelter in a Time of Storm: How Black Colleges Foster Generations of Leadership and Activism." Dr. Favors shares his deeply personal journey and connection to North Carolina A&T State University, reflecting on the historical significance of the Greensboro sit-ins and how these moments have informed his life's work. You'll hear about his transformative experiences as an A&T student and how the unwavering support from professors propelled him to an illustrious academic career.
In this episode, we celebrate the rich history and ongoing influence of HBCUs through powerful personal anecdotes and historical exploration. Discover the impact of the "second curriculum" that nurtured race consciousness and cultural nationalism among Black students, turning them into formidable advocates for democracy and social change. From the pivotal roles of Fisk, Morehouse, and North Carolina A&T to the compelling stories of alumni like Kamala Harris, Stacey Abrams, and Raphael Warnock, we underscore the enduring power of these institutions in combating white supremacy and producing influential leaders.
We also examine the current state and future prospects of HBCUs, acknowledging both the challenges and triumphs faced by these vital institutions. From the rise of A&T under Chancellor Dr. Harold Martin's visionary leadership to the increasing spotlight on HBCUs due to social media and high-profile alumni, we discuss the necessity of robust curricula and intentional programs that foster student activism and community engagement. Join us for an inspiring conversation that highlights the resilience, success, and crucial role of HBCUs in our society today.
What's up everybody. Once again. This is Dr Langston Clark, the founder and organizer of Entrepreneur Appetite, a series of events dedicated to building community, promoting intellectualism and supporting black businesses. I want to welcome you to a special series of our Thank you. Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, an endowment that I co-founded to support teachers and educators who are on their journeys to get graduate degrees.
Speaker 1:For those of you who have joined our live discussions, you know that typically, 10% of the profits from the podcast go to support this endowment.
Speaker 1:However, for the months of June and July, I am thrilled to announce that 100% of the profits will be dedicated to the From A&T to PhD Endowed Scholarship. If you are inspired to support this cause, a link to contribute to the endowment can be found in the show notes. We're asking listeners to generously support the From A&T to PhD Endowed Scholarship to help more educators increase their education so that they can better support the students in our community. This special series will feature testimonials from A&T alumni who have gone on to earn their PhDs, sharing their journeys and impact of their education on their lives and career. It will also feature some new episodes from authors who have written books about HBCUs and a few throwback episodes. In this throwback episode from 2021, we partner with the Atlanta chapter of the North Carolina A&T Alumni Association to feature a conversation with the award-winning Dr Jelani Favors, author of Shelter in a Time of Storm how Black Colleges Foster Generations of Leadership and Activism.
Speaker 2:So, jelani, how are you feeling today? How's everything going?
Speaker 3:It's good man, everything is great and it's good to be back with you to touch mics once again. Ernie and I actually had this similar conversation for the Jimmy Carter Presidential Center here in Atlanta. I guess it was back in November.
Speaker 2:I want to start off February 1. That's kind of you know holiday at North Carolina. I mean North Carolina A&T's campus in Greensboro, and it's a significant date in the history of this country. I don't want to downplay that. Tell me about and we're going to get into your origin story a little bit but tell me about you walking onto that campus for the first time, looking at that statue, what that meant, and we're going to talk later about how that relates to your scholarship. But just what does that statue and what does this date mean to you?
Speaker 3:Well, the statue wasn't up when I was there, but you could feel that shadow and that presence cast all across that campus. You know February 1, you know I was going to say to the folks here maybe we should get a petition going. You know, I don't know if we have an Aggie Pride Day, but you know this is it. I mean this is an Aggie holiday and it should be celebrated as such. When you think about what this date means and more specifically, about what that event meant for America and for the civil rights movement, this is the embodiment of Aggie Pride. If there's one day out the year where Aggies can stick out their chest and say had it not been for some Aggies, where would we be? This is that day. And so when I arrived on campus that's the thing about people often say Aggie born, aggie bred. When I die, I'll be Aggie dead. I was Aggie born. Both my mother and my father were Aggies. I'm going to share this now. I'm not sure if I shared this with you in our last conversation, ernie. I hope people don't cut off their cameras when I say this.
Speaker 3:I went to North Carolina Central my freshman year. I'm sorry, you probably should have stayed. I was trying to be the black sheep of the family. I wanted to get away because my mother had went to A&T, my father had went to A&T, my brother went to A&T. I just wanted to do something different and so I went to Central my freshman year in college and my father passed away my freshman year in college and I transferred to A&T to be a little close to my mom who at that time was living in Winston-Salem, a little close to my mom who at that time was living in Winston-Salem.
Speaker 3:And you know, when I arrived and this is, you know, my story is similar to a lot of other folks when I arrived on campus at A&T, I was fully embraced. You know, this was a very tragic moment, a crossroads in my life. And you know, as I say, and I'm sure many of you often say as well, I had professors who believed in me at times when I didn't believe in myself, and that made the entire difference in my trajectory as a student at A&T, but not just as a student but as a young man. So I had people who were sowing into me, who gave me full confidence in my intellectual abilities, and that provided the platform for me to move forward into grad school. And so, you know, when I arrived on campus I knew exactly what I was getting into Because, again, a&t and my family runs long and it runs deep.
Speaker 3:And so, you know, as a kid I had gone to A&T homecomings and, you know, gone to A&T events across campus. So A&T was not a stranger to me in my life, but it came to me in my life at a very crucial moment. And so, again, aggie born, aggie bred, and when I die I'll be Aggie dead. I can say that with all truth. And so now I'm just working on trying to get my daughter there. But my wife I am Tony and we have constant arguments about that. So, okay, okay, wife of Hamptonian and we have constant arguments about that.
Speaker 2:Okay. So when you were at A&T, did you know you wanted to be a writer and a professor? College professor.
Speaker 3:It was law school or writing for me, you know, or being a professor for me. The crazy thing about it is my father was a history major and my brother was a history major. So when I got on campus, history and engaging in intellectual thought and critical thought is what I did. Well, you know, shout out to the STEM fields and engineering and the College of Business. Those were all really hot areas on campus. But it was Gibbs for me, all day, every day, you know Gibbs and the faculty in the history department, political science, those folks welcomed me with open arms and so, you know, that's what I wanted to do. And there was, you know, by the time I got to grad school. I went to grad school at Ohio State, as you heard, and I did the master's program in African-American studies. And I wasn't sure at that point whether I wanted to go to law school or go for the PhD, and I decided I wanted to become a public intellectual and to to write, and so for me, that was was going to the PhD program.
Speaker 2:Okay. Okay, so you were. I mean, you're going to write a million books before you're, before you're done, you're going to write a lot of books. Did you think you know and I think I read in one? I read somewhere that you were encouraged to write about activism at HBCUs when you were at Ohio State Right? Who encouraged you to do that, and did you think that that was where your scholarship was going to take you?
Speaker 3:Well, ironically, when I got to campus at A&T, talking about student movement and student activism was the last thing I wanted to do, because we talk about it a lot at A&T. You know the history program, you know, again, it's the A&T, for we talk about the cities, we talk about the legacy of that institution. And so when I arrived on campus at Ohio State, I wanted to go into a different direction, but it was one of my graduate professors, dr William Nelson Jr, who has now passed on. He was the one who encouraged me to take a deeper look into student activism and more specifically in the HBCUs. He was encouraging me, saying look, this is really kind of a virgin territory, which is really hard for me to believe because of the legacy of black colleges. But so so he was the one who really kind of pushed me into that direction. And and lo and behold, you know, as I began to do the research, he was right this really was kind of virgin territory. There really hadn't been any book length treatments of HBCUs in terms of a depth and a dearth of studies. So I knew that I was on to something. In fact, I did my master's thesis on the Greensboro generation that emerged there and I had opportunity to interview Ezell Blair Jr and you know who go, of course, goes by the name Jabril Kazan.
Speaker 3:Now, and I'll never forget, jabril Kazan told me because I'm interviewing him he said you know, look, you know, when we were kids and I'm paraphrasing here, but this quote is actually in the book but he says you know when we were students.
Speaker 3:You know, when I say students, I mean when he was students in elementary school, in middle school, when we were students, we had teachers essentially telling us that we were going to be the leaders of freedom, that we were going to it was our generation who's going to move forward and to take Black folks to higher heights and to deal with this great American paradox of white supremacy and Jim Crow. And then he said something that knocked me out of my seat. He said that was before Dr King came along, that's before Rosa Parks came along. That's what I was taught in my segregated school system in Greensboro and that's a direct quote, that last part. And again, you know, when you're a young writer, young scholar and you're interviewing major revolutionary figures like Jabril Kazan, and then he says something like that, because I knew from having read so many materials at that point that no one had ever talked about really who those teachers were.
Speaker 4:Right, you know.
Speaker 3:so I want so immediately the question, you know, came up in my mind. Well, who was teaching? Who was teaching?
Speaker 3:Jabril Kazan, right, you know he's saying that he had teachers sowing those seeds and that really wasn't a conversation that had really been fully had, because, of course, the next step is finding out that all, mostly all those teachers were trained at HBCUs, and so that's a conversation that really had not fully taken place within academia, and I knew that that's a missing page that I wanted to fill in and isn't that kind of basically the philosophy.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't think he started, but WEB Du Bois about the talent intent that many of us would lead the 90 percent of us.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, I mean. And Du Bois. And Du Bois, of course, later moved off of promoting the talent intent because he felt like the talent intent that let let black America down at various points. You know young black folks, young academics, young college students, were too preoccupied with partying and and, and, and, and and all the type of other frivolous things, and that was in the thirties. He was saying stuff like that. So, so that that's what I always say to young folks Don't worry about people saying, hey, you, you're unfocused. Black folks have been saying that you know for generations.
Speaker 3:But Du Bois was very much concerned. Not only that, but he believed in the power of educated Black folks, and particularly educated Black folks who had some type of exposure to the humanities and social sciences. And Black colleges provided that type of exposure. So you're right, you know. And black colleges provided that type of exposure. So you're right, you know. Certainly HBCUs became a haven, and not just a haven but also a incubator for talented 10th but not just, again, talented 10th who were concerned about themselves. There were talented 10th young black people who were concerned about the future of black America and who saw themselves as cultural change agents because of what they had been exposed to at HBCUs.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I want to get back to something you said. So 1837, the Institute for Colored Youth starts, which sets the foundation for what we have today with historically Black colleges. And you talked about how well we haven't talked about how HBCUs have built the middle class, the Black middle class, but you talked about your advisor at Ohio State said that this is something that hasn't really been tapped into on a scholarly basis. I know when I did my series in 1996, there had never been a newspaper in the whole country who had done as much work as I had done chronicling historically black colleges. So when you started doing your research and we're going to get into some of that as well why do you think that Black colleges as rich as this history is? Why do you think that Black colleges have been so understudied and under-evaluated or understudied as an academic field?
Speaker 3:Right so you know there had been a couple of studies that had examined HBCUs, but they looked at them from a very episodic, very narrow lens. Right so there have been scholars who had talked about colorism on black college campuses and paternalism on black college campuses and elitism on Black college campuses, but none of that and again, these are all realities that indeed define some of the experiences for Black folks attending HBCUs, especially going back to the late 19th into the early and mid 20th century. Colorism was a real thing, paternalism and elitism was a real thing, but none of that ever explained how we got someone like Ella Baker, how do we get someone like Stokely Carmichael, how do we get someone like a Dr Martin Luther King Jr or John Lewis or Diane Nash? If indeed HBCUs were this sort of conservative bastion of elitism, then how do we produce these activists and these leaders? And again, that's what really had not been fully answered.
Speaker 3:You know I took a class at Ohio State called the History of Black Education. It was transformative, very powerful course that I took, and it was in that class that I read a book called, written by a professor by the name of William Watkins, who wrote a book called the Architects of White of Black Education, the White Architects of Black Education, and just reading the title alone I was like whoa, wait a minute. The White Architects of Black Education. As if HBCUs and Black educators and teachers who work at these institutions did not have some sense of agency, right?
Speaker 3:But in that book he goes on to say that Black colleges produced Black folks and Black students who were conformists, who did not speak out, who essentially were tools of a white supremacist system. And that class, probably more than any other course I ever took, left me with the feeling that, okay, you know what. Somebody needs to correct this, someone needs to really kind of tell the story of what these institutions truly represented. And so that's my path towards, towards writing that book. Certainly, the white architects of black education. That is certainly framed in my mind. The fact that a number of scholars have really gotten that story wrong.
Speaker 2:So you mentioned, you ran out a list of people like Diane Nash and Martin Luther King and you asked the question how were they produced? How were, where did they come from? I mean, where did this activist mind come from on these Black campuses?
Speaker 3:Well, the great thing about it is, you know, these students came from all walks of life, right, you know. So if you're someone like like Diane Nash who's going to Fisk or a Martin Luther King Jr who's going to Morehouse, those institutions have a different kind of ilk and a different type of vibe to them. Because they cater to the black elite, right. But if you're going to a school like Alcorn or if you're going to a school like North Carolina A&T, these were institutions which often catered to and were the home of the black, blue collar or working class folks sent their kids to schools at these institutions. Greensboro was a meal town, right, you know. And not only that. So you had folks come in who were the sons and daughters of folks who worked in the meals and sons and daughters of folks who worked as sharecroppers down east, in eastern North Carolina, and so those are the type of students who arrived in these type of spaces. But one of the things that I attempt to do in my book is talk about how these spaces were similar, moving forward. So whether it's the Institute for Colored Youth in 1837, or whether it's Alabama State University in the 1940s and 1950s, or whether it's North Carolina A&T State University in the 60s and 70s. There's a similar thread that connects these institutions and I make the argument that that thread is something that I come up with in the book called the second curriculum. And so, at these institutions, black students are being exposed to essentially three basic issues and topics One is race consciousness, the other is idealism and the other is a sense of cultural nationalism. That space was radically different from what UNC, chapel Hill, was offering. It was radically different from what Duke was offering. It was radically different from what all these other PWIs were offering a counter-narrative to white supremacy. Because, again, you can imagine 1837, right, when the Institute for Colored Youth opens up, black folks are still enslaved. Black folks in the North are fighting to remain free. You have minstrel shows which are emerging in the North in the 1830s and 1840s, which are pushing out images of Black folks in sand bowls and jigaboos and lazy and coons, right. And so what HBCUs do is they become, as I argue, a shelter in a time of storm, where you can actually expose Black young folks to a counter-narrative, a very powerful counter-narrative. So race consciousness becomes a part of that right. And as we celebrate Black History Month and I made this post today on Instagram.
Speaker 3:One of the reasons why someone like Carter G Woodson was so successful is that he leaned upon Black colleges and Black teachers to help him promote what they used to call Negro History Week, right. And so it's Black teachers and educators who are promoting and pushing that message of race consciousness, the same teachers and educators who laid their hands on, spiritually, someone like an Isaiah Blair Jr and remember, isaiah Blair Jr said hey, it was my teachers, right, who told me that I was going to be somebody and that and that idea of being somebody connected to helping my people get free, right. And so, again, you have teachers who have been exposed to this long history of race consciousness, race consciousness emerging from these institutions. Then you have idealism, right.
Speaker 3:And when I say idealism, you know two of the concepts that came up over and over again in the primary sources that I was using, which was largely black student newspapers, by the way. Two of the concepts that came up over and over again were citizenship and democracy. Citizenship and democracy I mean, students were being drilled in these ideas, constantly talking about citizenship and democracy, which always struck me as odd, because citizenship and democracy was two of the things that Black folks were being denied every day and so. But yet these students have been exposed to the ideals of citizenship and democracy and why they are important.
Speaker 3:Then the last one is the idea of cultural nationalism. Right, these young black folks were being taught, and really kind of drilled in this message that black institutions matter, that supporting black businesses matter. These were young men and women who proudly called themselves race men and race women and knew going back to your point about the town to town, that it was their job to uplift the race. And so those three concepts cultural nationalism, idealism, race consciousness that was found at a Hampton, that was found at a Howard, that was found at a Fisk, but it was also found at Alabama State and a Southern University and a Grambling and North Carolina A&T. So that was the thread that really connected these institutions. That allowed me to really take seven different institutions and tell their stories but also understand why these institutions were very similar.
Speaker 2:Okay, so we're going to get into the book first in a second. But I think I asked you this question at the Carter Center, growing up in Winston-Salem, I grew up in Rocky Mount. You know we grew up around colleges. You know we knew colleges from the time we were in kindergarten because of, basically, atlantic Coast Conference basketball. So we knew colleges all along, plus the fact that I think when we were in school there were probably 12 HBCUs in North Carolina, active HBCUs in North Carolina. So did you always know your parents did go to A&T and you went to Central, which was a great decision initially for you? Did you always know that you were going to go to an HBCU or were you going to go to Carolina or Duke or State?
Speaker 3:Aggie, born Aggie bred. I never questioned it from the jump. You know, my father was born and raised in Athens, georgia. Okay, all right, he came to A&T on a football scholarship. Okay, he was recruited. So my father played football in the late 1960s in North Carolina A&T State University. So, as I said before, you know, going to homecomings, going to A&T, winston-salem State games, I mean that was life for us in the fall. But not only that, not just football, but, as I said before, my father went on to go to law school at North Carolina Central University. My mother had also attended A&T. Both of them became very successful professionals.
Speaker 3:So you couldn't tell me as often as trotted out, you can never tell me that, hey, you can't be somebody. If you go to HBCU You're going to get an inferior education. If you go to HBCU you can't be successful, it doesn't prepare you for the real world. Those were concepts which were completely foreign to not just myself but to other young Black folks. So again, that exposure to HBCUs, it mattered.
Speaker 3:I think about my cohort and my friends who I went to high school with. Many of us went on to attend HBCUs because we had all these successful examples of Black college graduates around us. So, but not only that, as I talk about in the conclusion of my book, I mean the 80s and the 90s was a very special time in Black colleges, right, I mean you had different world, you had school days, you had. You know everybody was wearing this black college gear. You know it was, as I argue in the conclusion of my book, you know it was a golden renaissance for HBCUs in the 80s and 90s. And so you know I didn't want to go anywhere else and most of my friends didn't either. So, like I said, you know mistakes happen. I went to Central first and then I made. I corrected that, right, you corrected the mistake.
Speaker 2:So let's talk about the book, which I love, the book. But what, what, what? What really struck me in the book is your framing mechanism to pick these seven colleges. Or the book is seven chapters for those of you who haven't read it. So it's kind of I don't want to say easy is seven chapters for those of you who haven't read it. So it's kind of I don't want to say easy, but it's a unique way to just kind of present this as seven different narratives, if I'm saying this correctly. You basically you visit Cheney State University, which I've been to, a great looking, beautiful campus Tougaloo, bennett, alabama State, jackson State, southern and, of course, north Carolina A&T. So talk about your framing, why you picked these seven schools and you know, was there thought about expanding it or why seven and why?
Speaker 3:these seven. Well, there were always thoughts about expanding it and in fact there were a number of schools that originally were supposed to be in this book. But one of the things that you learn very quickly as a graduate student and as a young professor trying to achieve tenure is that time is not your friend, and so I had to make some hard choices about the institutions that I wanted to include, in fact the original. So this book started off really as my dissertation, which was a comparative study of two institutions, two Llewellyn, jackson State. Originally I wanted to do a comparative study of Southern and North Carolina A&T, but it's really difficult to get from North Carolina to Louisiana when you're trying to in your grad school, and so my advisor at that time, dr Hassan Jeffries, said look, we need to narrow this down and, more importantly, you need to find maybe some two institutions that are in the same, in the same setting, right? And so I looked at Mississippi, because I thought that by telling the story of Jackson State and Tougaloo, both of them, if you've never been to Tougaloo, tougaloo essentially sits right outside of Jackson, mississippi, so it's essentially in the suburbs of Jackson. So that allowed me to get two institutions tell a story of one private school, one public school, and that became the basis for for the dissertation. But when I left Ohio state again, it was my, my advisor, dr Hassan Jeffries, who said look, you may be onto something here. Why don't you try to hit the home run and tell a broader story by incorporating other schools into the book? And so are into what will become the book. And so I began to look. So I knew I really wanted to start close to the beginning.
Speaker 3:And so Lincoln and Cheney if you're not familiar with Lincoln and Cheney, they go back and forth with arguing about who's the first HBCU. So Cheney's founded in 1837, but they were not granting degrees. Lincoln's founded in 1854 or 56. And they of course pride themselves saying that the first degree granting institution and then Wilberforce comes in, it's founded also in 1856 or 1858. And they say that, hey, we're the first HBCU because they were founded by the AME Zion Church or the AME Church, right, the African Methodist Episcopal Church. And so they say, well, we're the first HBCU because they were founded by the AME Zion Church or the AME Church, right, the African Methodist Episcopal Church. And so they say, well, we're the real HBCU because Lincoln was being run by white folks and Cheney was basically handing out non-credential degrees, if you will. So all three of them go back and forth in arguing this. But when you look at the history of Cheney, it's founded in 1837.
Speaker 3:And I opened up the Cheney chapter with the story of this gentleman, octavius Caddo. And when I was exposed to the story of Octavius Caddo I knew that's where I wanted to start my book. Here you have a black college professor being assassinated in the streets of Philadelphia because he promoted and played a critical role in helping to bring about the 15th Amendment, which gave African-American men the right to vote. That's such a powerful story and I knew I wanted to start there. So the Institute for Colored Youth became the first chapter and where I began it's 1837. It's the beginning of HBCU. So there was no better place for me to start and then moving forward. You know I'll come back and talk. I don't want to be too long winded here, ernie, but you know. So let me talk about the schools that didn't make the book.
Speaker 3:So at one point, and I say that because you know there may be, you know, folks here who are researchers themselves. Or you know, have you know, students who are thinking about going into history and searches themselves? Or you know, have you know students who are thinking about going into history? And there are a number of stories that need to be told Right One of them is Virginia Union. Virginia Union originally was going to be one of the stories. Virginia Union and Howard University combined probably produced the most black ministers, and Virginia Union had a very powerful seminary. By very powerful, I mean it was radical. A lot of the ministers who came out of Virginia Union became early civil rights activists themselves.
Speaker 3:I want to tell Virginia Union story. I want to tell South Carolina State story. I want to tell Fisk story as well, and I'd go on to Fisk and do some preliminary research there. I also want to tell Talladega. In fact, I kind of joke in the book. I can say this now because the book came out in 2019. It's been a while. Talladega was originally going to be one of the chapters in the book, but the archivist there told me you know what you know, I'm glad you're writing, but you're only going to be able to get access to the archive maybe two times out the week, and you know we've got all these limitations and these struggles, and that's real for a lot of black college archives. They're very underfunded, they're not supported, which is problematic in itself because we have to become better stewards of our history, right and cherish our history and not only that, but promote and celebrate our history. So Talladega, because Talladega has a very powerful story of becoming an incubator for activism, even going back to the early 20th century, and I want to tell that but I had to end up chopping them.
Speaker 3:So I end up with those seven schools, and I mentioned earlier that three of them deliberately are state institutions, because again, that kind of runs counter to this narrative. Not four of them are, but I focused on three. In the same time frame I looked at Alabama State, jackson State and Southern in the 1920s, 30s, 40s and 50s, because it's in that era that really radicalism is the most prime on Black college campus, that post-war era, world War II era, that Double V campaign and Black students talking about double victory. And hey, we went to go, fought Hitler and the Nazis, and when we come home we're damn sure going to fight Jim Crow too.
Speaker 3:I mean HBCUs were explosively radical in that era, and so I wanted to again provide a counter-narrative, because so many other historians have concluded that, hey, these state schools, you know, you have these racist white state legislators who are making sure that you know nobody's engaging in radicalism and they're shutting down college presidents. But I found a completely different story and so I really I think the heart I mean I like the entire book but I really love the heart of the book because it tells the story of these state institutions and how they really challenge white supremacy.
Speaker 2:When people thought white supremacy cannot and should not be challenged. So we talked earlier about you know the HBC story is being untold and how frustrating and you and I talked about this at the Carter Center how frustrating is it and what needs to be done to be able to get that stuff out. How frustrating was it for you to be able to go to these archives and not be able to get what you need or that's not available.
Speaker 3:It's tragic, ernie, it really is. I've told this story a couple of times, I'm speaking to different audiences, but I'll never forget being at Cheney State University, the Institute for Colored Youth, and working with the archivist there, who was really a great guy and said look, you know what? I'm glad you're writing on our history, I'm going to open it up. You got free access, which is what any historian wants to hear from a archivist saying hey, come on in, this is what we got, take a look at it. Right. But I'll never forget looking at one of their old, rusted out file cabinets and there was an obstruction blocking the file cabinet. And I reached back into the cabinet to see what was obstructing the cabinet from fully closing and it was a wrinkled up letter. And I pulled it out and it was a handwritten letter from WEB Du Bois to the college president, handwritten, right. This is how we're restoring our history, and so you know, and other HBCUs have these same stories, and so it's critical that we support celebrating and cherishing, but also preserving our history at HBCUs. Tip your hat and write your check to support the archives at North Carolina A&T State University, to support the archives at North Carolina A&T State University, and I will say this, that, again, of the institutions that I work with, one of the reasons why I work with them is that, again, the archivists they opened up the door for me and there were still some challenges that they had, and sometimes the copier wasn't working and papers that should have been preserved were in tatters because they had never been fully taken care of. And that's history, right? I mean, when those newspapers crumble, we can't get that back right. And so this is one of the reasons why people support digitizing the history and digitizing the archives and trying to preserve this. Somebody get a photo of this because you know those things don't last, right, you know.
Speaker 3:And so the other flip side of that which is ironic flip side, is that you know, but it's also a hard reality is that one of the other sources for the book, especially in the latter chapters, were oral histories, talking to folks and much like papers. Guess what? People don't survive either, and so this is a nod If you do family histories, you got older folks in your family. Talk to these folks, get them on, get them on tape, because again, people pass away and sometimes they take that knowledge with them. And so where I could fill in those gaps. I did, for instance, the Bennett chapter.
Speaker 3:The Bennett chapter opens up with the story of Hattie Bailey, this 90 plus year old woman who was a former student at Bennett in the 1930s, late 1940s. I never forget being a researcher. I was on fellowship at Duke and I said you know what? It's a shot in the dark, but I'm going to try to see if this woman is still alive. You know what I'm going to. It's a shot in the dark, but I'm going to try to see if this woman is still alive. And so I did some combing around and sure enough, I found her and I called her. And she was living in Philadelphia. This is a Bennett Bell. She's in her nineties. But so I called her. I said you know, look, ms Bailey, I'm Dr Jelani Favors. I'm doing research on Bennett.
Speaker 3:And before I could even go further, the first thing she said to me, which I point out in the book, she said Bennett College. She said I learned how to speak at Bennett College. I mean and not speak in the literal sense. What she's saying is is that somebody at Bennett sowed seeds of confidence in me, right, and they encouraged me and they emboldened me and this woman went on to become a major player and a major activist on campus in the 1930s at Bennett College. But she learned how to speak, she found her voice at Bennett College, and so that's. Those are the type of stories that we can't. We can't preserve that Right. And again, that was in 2013. I don't know if Ms Bailey is still with us because I haven't spoken with her in years, but you know, if I didn't get that story now, we were never going to know about Hattie Bailey and what HBCUs have meant to generations of young black people, how generations of young black people found their voice, found their confidence in HBCUs. You say.
Speaker 2:I love that quote. That's where I learned to speak and one of the things you know for those of you who follow me on Twitter, instagram I've been wearing T-shirts every day since the pandemic started.
Speaker 3:Shout out to.
Speaker 2:Shaw, huh, shout out to Shaw.
Speaker 3:I saw you at Shaw University today. Yeah, I did Shaw today, mother Shaw.
Speaker 2:I've switched over to sweatshirts. I've switched over and I wore Shaw today. But one of the things that I don't think a lot of people talk about, and you mentioned, institute for Colored Youth, lincoln and Wilberforce are all northern colleges and HBCUs started. Basically, we think of the South when we think of HBCUs. I think a lot of people do, and it wasn't until what 1865, that Shaw University started as the first Southern HBCU. I think Atlanta University started in 1865 as well, but I think Shaw gets that distinction of being the first. So talk about, when you talk about finding a voice, what kind of voice did Black colleges give the South, which had been, up until then, disenfranchised? Blacks had been disenfranchised, we were disenfranchised all over the country, but particularly in the South. And what Shaw University kind of opened up?
Speaker 3:as for Southern HBCUs, right, and you know what's very clear. I know, you know there are a lot of educated folks in here and we're all HBCU graduates, many of us, and we already know this legacy and part of the history, and that is this it was illegal to educate black folks. Black folks were considered dangerous as as literate, as a literate part of the population. You can go back to incidents such as Nat Turner in the 1830s. You know people say, hey, we're going to make sure that we ban reading. Why? Because Nat Turner and David Walker, these are folks who are literate, who are dangerous to the population.
Speaker 3:So fast forward to 1865, we get Black institutions in the South beginning to train and educate young African-Americans who are many of them are newly freed themselves and many of them are the sons and daughters of folks who are newly freed. And so this was, you know, back in the nineties. I'm sure many of y'all will remember this, but y'all remember what was it? Dangerous and black and educated t-shirts. I mean that's real. Right, you know that's real. In fact, I opened up the book with a quote from Du Bois who said let me see if I can just find it right, quick, he says this in the Soul of Black Folks right, he says, for the South believed an educated Negro to be a dangerous Negro. And the South was not wholly wrong, for education among all kinds of men always has had and always will have an element of danger and revolution, of disaffection and discontent. I knew from the jump I wanted to open up my book.
Speaker 3:That's the very first thing in the book. That's the very first thing I wrote, because what that speaks to is what these institutions represented. White folks already knew that the idea of educating black folks was a dangerous proposition, which is why they tried to make sure that the black folks were not permitted to read during slavery. But coming out of slavery, we see Shaw, we see Fisk, we see many of these institutions, tougaloo. Many of these institutions were created by something called the AMA, the American Missionary Association. So Fisk, morehouse, talladega, these are all AMA schools and what you see and again, this is why the title of this book is so important here, right, shelters in a Time of Storm. Because many white folks who have become the benefactors of these institutions, who are writing the checks, they assume, right, like William Watkins said, that, hey, these young black kids are being taught to comply, they're being taught to be complicit, to not question, to not push back against Jim Crow and white supremacy. And so many of them supported these institutions with that understanding.
Speaker 3:You know, probably the best example of this is Tuskegee Right and Booker T Washington played that to a T Right Believing that, hey, I'm going to coddle up to white folks and tell them, hey, we can be one as a hand and separate as the fingers, right? That's what Du Bois says. I'm not Du Bois, but that's what Booker T Watchman says, you know, to white folks in order for them to write those checks, to create Tuskegee. And guess what? Fast forward to 2021, tuskegee is still here with us, right, it's still the pride of the Swift growing South, right? But what we know is that within Tuskegee, within North Carolina A&T, within Shaw, we do see a second curriculum emerging, right. So on the outside, you know, white America believes that, hey, these HBCUs are creating a group of docile workers who will be complicit with Jim Crow and white supremacy. But what we know is taking place on the inside, especially in the deep South, is that young Black students are finding seeds of radicalism, and young Black students are finding seeds of radicalism and many of them are planting seeds of radicalism within the HBCU environment.
Speaker 3:So if I could really quickly Ernie the other thing I talk about in my book, I borrow a term called communitize, which is a term I borrow from a cultural anthropologist by the name of Victor Turner, which is a term I borrowed from a cultural anthropologist by the name of Victor Turner. But communitize simply gave me another way to describe HBCU space. Okay, because in the concept of communitize, what this cultural anthropologist, victor Turner, really suggesting and arguing is that communitize was about relationship and and and and rites of passage, and that was the perfect description of what Black colleges really represented during this. It was a different and radical different space, right, I mean, as I said before, chapel Hill is not A&T right, harvard is not Howard right.
Speaker 3:In the 1830s and 1840s and 1850s, predominantly white institutions are actually leading the charge in teaching that Black folks are inferior. Right, they're promoting the idea that Black folks should not be allowed to vote. Meanwhile, the Institute for Colored Youth, octavius Caddo and his friends, are saying, hey, not only are we going to vote, but we're going to lead the charge to vote. Why? Because that's the type of energy that flows within this space. Right, and again that that energy is a second curriculum and the communitizes the space. And when you combine those two together, you get these seedbeds for activism. And this is why the creation of institutions of higher learning throughout the South becomes vitally important. It creates now a platform where generations of Black folks can graduate from the Shaw's and the Fisk and the Talladega and the Tougaloo's and they can assume their place in the long movement for Black liberation.
Speaker 2:It seems like I guess around since the last time we talked. Since November, HBCUs have gotten a lot of attention because of Kamala Harris Gawain, howard Stacey Abrams, who was just announced today that she was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. She went to Spelman. Raphael Warnock went to Morehouse College. So do you see HBCUs getting a lot of attention now? Do you see that as an uprise and is that a good thing?
Speaker 3:It's a great thing. Attention is always good, right, and. But also I want that attention to be placed on HBCUs, in a way, in reshaping and remaking the social and political contours of America through activism. Right Again, happy Aggie Pride Day, right, february 1st matters, because and February 1st isn't the beginning of student activism at HBCUs but what it really signaled is that HBCUs were going to be a powerful weapon in the deconstruction of white supremacy and in doing so it continued to produce people like the folks that you've mentioned. It also produced people like Jesse Jackson, right, you know, who was the first to make a strong, aggressive run for the presidency of the United States of America.
Speaker 3:Of course I'm not diminishing the impact of Shirley Chilton's health, but clearly, jesse, you know, he again in the 80s, as HBCUs are experiencing this renaissance, this golden renaissance of black college life, it's, jesse saying keep hope alive, right, that's really kind of pushing the movement forward and bringing attention to HBCUs.
Speaker 3:And so black colleges have been that type of space and producing this type of leadership.
Speaker 3:And so I think one of the things that I hope that we see moving forward is that increasingly we understand that black colleges simply aren't about bands, they simply aren't about parties, they aren't about the social atmosphere. Again, shout out to Beyonce who said, hey, if she could do it all over, again, you know she would have gone to HBCU and that's a beautiful thing, right. But again you're celebrating the cultural pageantry of Black College of Life without also understanding the political role of HBCU life and how it has reshaped this nation. And we have to remember that as black colleges and continue to produce again the Reverend Warnock's and and and and the, the, the Ebram X Kendi's, who of course went to Florida A&M, and the Kamala Harris, and we want to continue to end the shout out to our mayor, keisha Lance Bottoms, who also went to Florida A&M. You know we're we're still producing that type of leadership, but we also need to keep focus on that second curriculum right Of race, consciousness, idealism, cultural nationalism if we're going to continue to do that moving forward.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one of the frustrating things for me and I, you know I love HBCUs. I've traveled to probably not as many as you have, but you know, when we do get on television you know Central's basketball tonight there is a lot of focus on the band, you know, and step shows and the Greek fraternities, and I think sometimes we get overshadowed by what you're talking about, that kind of glitz about how fun it is to go to an HBCU when you're kind of missing out on the STEM programs and the history programs and the history of the universities. Right, I think that's kind of just one of my little frustrations.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm happy for the attention. Sometimes I think that's kind of just one of my little frustrations.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm happy for the attention. Sometimes I think it's kind of misguided and I wholeheartedly agree, you know. I mean, let's be very clear, and I said this the other day in a talk I was given in Louisiana before there was ever a phrase of black boy joy or black girl magic or black excellence, hbcus provided that type of space for joy, for magic, right, for excellence, and so generations of young people who came to that space, they felt the freedom to be themselves, right To be unapologetically black, and that's a beautiful thing and we need to continue to celebrate that. And so, again, the pageantry of D9 life, the pageantry of Black college life in terms of parties and bands. That's a very large part of who we are, right.
Speaker 3:But we can't lose sight of what we've done, the best and the most important contributions we've made in this country, and that is challenging America to look into the mirror and deal with that great American paradox, right To confront who we are as a racist nation and to again to begin to deconstruct that. That's the power of the second curriculum and what students who've come to these institutions, what they've been exposed to and how they've left these institutions, not just as leaders within their respective fields of life, but also how they have served as cultural change agents. Hbcus have to continue to push that and promote that if we're going to remain relevant, moving forward.
Speaker 2:And A&T. You know A&T obviously is now the largest HBCU in the country. It's doing very well, Central's doing well.
Speaker 3:I didn't hear you, ernie, say that again, something's wrong with my speaker.
Speaker 2:You got. A&t, admittedly, is doing very, very well. You guys are doing a great job and congratulations. Central's doing well, howard, morehouse, spelman, the typical colleges. But where do you see? You know there's. You know I've wrote a series of stories about three or four years ago about black colleges and a lot of experts are saying that, you know, maybe in 50 years we're only going to have about 75 or 50 black colleges. Where do you see us going in the next 50 to 75 years, 50 years?
Speaker 3:well, you know, I would love to look at that crystal ball and say that all of us will be here. Um, I think the reality shows that perhaps that's not the case right when we look at the legacy of these institutions. Contraction has been a part of that legacy, that a number of institutions have indeed diminished and many of them have closed their doors. But I think it's also it's exciting to see schools like Morris Brown get a lifeline Right and perhaps headed back into the fold, and perhaps headed back into the fold. You know, I'm excited and I'm hopeful about the future of our school across the street, our sisters being in college and what the future represents for them. We need these institutions, ernie. That's simple and plain, is that we need Black colleges to survive and to thrive, and that's going to take an all hands on deck effort, not just from from from the state and from federal benefactors. But as alumni, we've got to open up our pocketbooks, we've got to give back to these institutions. We can't simply say Aggie pride and not cut a check with it Right. And so if we want to be proud of our institution and support our institution and wear the colors of our institution, then we have to support that institution financially as well. We can't wait for the handout Now. Again, that does not also disconnect the fact that and I've said this before in a number of different talks, and let's be very clear black colleges are old.
Speaker 3:Reparation right, you know we talk about reparations and the significance of the reparations argument, but clearly states and federal governments maintain a system of separate and unequal right. They said separate but equal. But it was separate and unequal and for generations Black colleges floundered underneath that and suffered underneath the great weight of debt, of crumbling infrastructure. I gave a talk about a year ago In fact it was probably almost a year to a date at Tennessee State University Shout out to Tennessee State and the Tigers of Tennessee State University.
Speaker 3:But when I arrived on that campus it was heartbreaking to see some of the crumbling infrastructure at Tennessee State, knowing that at UT Knoxville it's a completely different looking campus. So you have two state institutions, two state schools who clearly have a different type of environment, which clearly have been impacted by segregation and racism in funding, and yet that has not been fully addressed. Yeah, and so you know. Again, we look at what just occurred in Maryland, where many of the state institutions HBCUs in Maryland have sued the state essentially for back pay, saying, hey, pay us what you owe us. Because, again, if you want to talk about the crippling state of HBCUs in terms of infrastructure, in terms of support, we know that that has been impacted by a legacy of disproportionate funding fueled by racism.
Speaker 2:Well, let's get back to the book a little bit. I saw earlier, before we jumped on, that there are a few people online who are not Aggies, so and there are. There are some people who just bought the book. So let's talk about the A&T chapter for a little bit, about you know what, you what, what, what was going on in that space that you were writing about and and how, what kind of impact did that have?
Speaker 3:So I wrote that chapter. A lot of people, you know, kind of dig into me. So you wrote that chapter because you went to A&T right. That's why you wrote it right. And you know, of course I make no qualms, no type of regrets whatsoever for about writing about North Carolina A&T. But I knew I wanted to write about North Carolina A&T in the Black Power era because even in A&T that's an area that we don't really discuss enough, right and again, this is not to diminish the significance and the impact of the A&T 4 and the sit-ins. We talk about the sit-ins a lot, right, but we don't talk about it nearly. We don't talk about the 69 revolt. You know nearly enough, right, and what that meant to have the National Guard storm our campus and to shoot up our campus and for Willie Grimes to be killed. We don't talk about that nearly enough. But it was actually this book which really kind of inspired me. If you haven't read this book, I encourage you to read this as well. This is Civilities.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I read that freshman year at Central Right. Yeah, so I read it when I was at A&T as well.
Speaker 3:But it's written by William Schaaf, who was one of my mentors when I was at Duke. He taught at Duke for a number of years before retiring. But it's in that book that Bill Schaaf documents the fact that A&T he didn't say A&T but he says Greensboro was the headquarters and the center of the Black Power movement in the 1960s for the entire South. So he kind of lays the template and the blueprint for saying if you want to talk about Black Power in the South, it comes through Greensboro. It was one of the most significant centers for that in terms of the energy that's centered around that Of course you have the Greensboro Association of Poor People. You have the Student Organization of Black Unity. That Of course you have the Greensboro Association of Poor People. You have the Student Organization of Black Unity. You have all these different entities. You have the presence of Malcolm X Liberation University, which relocated from Durham to Greensboro.
Speaker 3:But the whole reason why all those entities and organizations are existing at that point is because the energy being generated by A&T, and so A&T was that powerhouse of radicalism and had been going back to February 1st 1960, all the way through the 1960s, and so I knew I wanted to tell the story of A&T during the Black Power era because, again, it's such a rich story about how the communitas and how the second curriculum really continues to unfold even into the late 60s and early 1970s. Black students are being exposed to race consciousness and idealism and cultural nationalism. There's a part in the book where I talk about Dr Dowdy, who was president of A&T in the late 1960s. Dr Dowdy coming out and saying hey, I agree with y'all. You know, I think we should build a black grocery store. Let's bring dollars back to the black. That's our president.
Speaker 3:Our college president in the late 1960s, arguing about cultural nationalism, arguing about, you know, this idea of black is beautiful and how we should support economically the community. And then he goes a step further and he creates a partnership and a relationship with local black folks in the community and they're in conversation with black college professors at A&T, black college administrators, and they're prescribing solutions to their problems. How do we solve East Market Street? How do we, how do we begin to address the? That's just a powerful story to tell and A&T gave me the platform and the ability to really kind of construct that story and to make it known that, hey, when we say Aggie pride, that goes from 1891, all the way through the Black Power era included, as well as up to this very day.
Speaker 2:You guys say Aggie Pride a lot. I got to tell you that.
Speaker 3:I don't get it, but I don't know you get it, Ernie you know what Aggie Pride means.
Speaker 2:Okay, so you write a lot about activism. You know that's what. That's where you are, so is are you seeing that now on on black college campuses? Now you know we got the Black Lives Matter movement going on, but is that coming out of black colleges? Is it coming out of black college leadership? That's a great question.
Speaker 3:You know. So one of my major concerns and this is a concern that again, is rooted in the legacy of the civil rights movement and what so many students in the 60s, what they wanted to eschew and not be a part of. They didn't want to be reactionary, they wanted to prescribe solutions and be cultural change agents themselves cultural change agents themselves. And so you fast forward to 2021. One of the things I think that we see sometimes emerging, particularly from the social media universe that so many of our students love and not just our students, but, you know, americans in general, we fall in love with social media is that it has the tendency to be reactionary. Right, things begin to trend on Twitter, right, a name begins to trend, an event begins to trend, but then what happens when it's not trending anymore, right? What happens when that energy begins to dissipate? And so I think, moving forward, hbcus can still be that shelter in a time of storm. I don't think that's questionable. In fact, I think one of the reasons why you see an uptick now in Black college enrollment is because a number of Black students are deciding they want to come home. They don't want to be exposed to the hostile, racist environment that they find in a lot of these PWIs.
Speaker 3:But again, as I make this argument in the book, what type of space are we going to welcome them back to? Is the second curriculum still alive and thriving? And well, how are humanities and social sciences at these institutions? Are we supporting them? Are we funding them? Are we making sure that our students can be exposed to classes and to a curriculum where they can learn about the legacy and history of white supremacy and how black college students have been agents for social and political change? Because, again, this is no disrespect to the STEM fields, but there are certain conversations that go on in a history class that isn't going on in computer science, right, there's certain conversations that go on in political science classes that aren't going on in other spaces, and so supporting those curriculums are vitally important. In a couple of weeks I'm giving a talk at Prairie View A&M where, dr Simmons, they just opened up the Ruth Simmons Center for Race and Social Justice, prairie View and A&M. So shout out to Prairie View A&M for doing that.
Speaker 2:Dr Simmons was the first black president of an Ivy League right.
Speaker 3:She was president of Brown College for a long time left. Brown came to Prairie View. So again, shout out to her for making that move. But the question is how is it that an institution that led the push for deconstructing white supremacy and fighting the civil rights on February 1st 1960, how is it and why is it that we don't have a center for race and social justice? Where is A&T Center for Race and Social Justice? Where is Winston-Salem State Center? Where is North Carolina Central Center? All HBCUs need to have and fund efforts to develop policy right which can help us think critically about how we can solve some of the problems in our communities, but also to serve as a rebuke of white supremacy as we find it within our societies. And again, I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but I mean January the 6th was a moment in American history where we clearly see white nationalism, white supremacy, is alive and well, is alive and well, right, and so, if there was ever a need for shelters, in a time of storm it's now.
Speaker 6:We are in a storm, right.
Speaker 3:But again, what are these students going to find when they arrive in these campuses and, like you, I think you were alluding to Ernie are they going to come to these institutions and are they going to learn to prescribe solutions for these problems? Are they simply going to be reacting to what they see in here on social media, and when that's no longer trending, will the conversation move somewhere else, right?
Speaker 2:It's kind of like a different path. But one of the chapters you write about Jackson state university. I'm not sure if you've been watching what Deion Sanders is doing. For those of you who don't know Deion Sanders, the you know, primetime is in now the new head football coach for Jackson State University and he's trying to get these five-star football players to come to Jackson State to kind of change the narrative of you know, why not come home to play for us so they can perhaps challenge A&T in a football game.
Speaker 3:That's not going to happen. Yeah, I know I'm going to say that they can still take that. L meet us on the corner of Sullivan and Lindsey, right.
Speaker 2:But he's still opening up that conversation about come here, come back home, you know, especially with all that's going on in the country and it's a timely conversation right.
Speaker 3:And again it's not just students who are making that decision but, as you're pointing out, ernie, it's student athletes, because and I touch on this in the epilogue of the book right, and what we clearly understand and know is that integration really kind of killed the athletic supremacy that HBCUs had exhibited for years in this country, because all the top flight Black elite talent attended and went to HBCUs. They went to the Gramblins, they went to the Florida A&Ms, they went to the Southern Universities and they went to the North Carolina Antistate Universities and I guess in some ways they went to North Carolina Central as well, right. But what we clearly see now is a moment in history where a number of them are making a conscious decision. You know what? I can still get to the pros and go to a North Carolina A&T which someone like Tariq Cohen has exhibited, right, someone like a Brandon Parker has exhibited that. These are athletes from A&T who are now playing professional, professional ball Right, and so are Darrell Johnson as well for Buffalo.
Speaker 3:So we see that trend now beginning to take place and I hope that it continues, because I think what it touches on is not just simply saying we can be a catalyst and a catapult for you to move to the next level of professional sports, but that you are going to be treated not just as a number here. Right, you are not an object for us to simply cheer on and to celebrate while you're running the football. Right, you know I often get sick to my stomach. Right, to watch, you know, shout out to SEC football. Right, we're in Georgia.
Speaker 3:But I mean you look at these crowds who fall in to the football stadiums at Ole Miss, right, and the University of Alabama. Right, these are the same people who have voted for and supported policy and continue to support policy and politicians who clearly do not believe in the same type of freedom dreams for Black people that we do. Right, they'll cheer our students on while they're playing for them. Right, and then completely ignore Black folks when they're attending the classroom. Right, and then completely ignore black folks when they're attending the classroom right, you know, when they are average, everyday students on this campus. And so I think what is taking place, and what I hope is taking place, is that black athletes are realizing that. You know what? I wanna chart a different course. You know, I wanna write a different story and I'm gonna attend HBCU and I can thrive there and I could be loved there, whether I'm playing on Saturday or whether I'm in class on Monday or Tuesday, and I think that's something that that that more HBCUs need to promote.
Speaker 2:OK. So I see there's like ninety nine comments in the chat. I'm not sure how many of those are questions, so I want to ask you two more questions before we jump over to if that's okay with you, tina before we jump over to viewer questions. When you think about HBCUs, you know you have the standard ones, you have Dispelment and More Houses. Those are ones that people talk about a lot. A&t, over the last 10 years, has been a school that people have started to talk about a lot. What do you, where do you attribute what and this is for the people who will probably aren't Aggies who are on the call, including myself but what do you attribute to where A&T has gone? How'd you've gotten there and it seems to me that you've gotten there very fast and do you have any thoughts about you know just what A&T perhaps is doing right Visionary leadership. Okay, you know just what A&T perhaps is doing right Visionary leadership.
Speaker 3:Okay, you know, I think, the leadership of our chancellor, Dr Martin, and again, it's not to diminish. You know, I'm a I'm a Fort baby, so you know, my president was was Dr Fort, but Harold Martin has has come to A&T and he is on fire in terms of the decisions that he's he's making. And not only that, but we also see, you know, it's an era where STEM is involved, right, you know, everybody's talking about STEM. So why not come to the HBCU that produces the most Black engineers in the country? Why not come to an HBCU that has incredible programs, other STEM-related programs? And so that's part of that charge, and I think some of it too has been. And I'd be remiss in saying but and I know we probably feel a certain way about this in Atlanta but the celebration bowl didn't hurt, you know, being able to turn on ABC and and watch HBCUs battle it out and be successful four times out of of five that that has that bowl is taking place. Even our own administrators say that they saw an uptick in enrollment during that time, and so it's simply about achieving a platform. Right, and ABC. The Celebration Bowl gave us a platform that we might not have had in the past, but, but social media now is giving these institutions platforms. In the past, but social media now is giving these institutions platforms. I wouldn't be surprised to see Jackson State's enrollment going up because of all the attention that Deion Sanders is attracting.
Speaker 3:But again, I think my concern is and I think all of our concerns should be is that when they arrive at a place like A&T, what type of space is going to envelop them? What type of curriculum are they going to be exposed to? And I have no doubt, like A&T, what type of space is going to envelop them. You know what type of curriculum are they going to be exposed to. And I have no doubt that A&T will continue to produce luminaries, continue to produce activists, continue to produce leaders within their respective fields. But I also hope that we'll continue to produce politically and socially conscious individuals who will serve as change agents within the local communities, and not just A&T, but all HBCUs, I hope, are continuing to strive to do this. And again, that goes through supporting the STEM fields and also goes to supporting humanities and social sciences as well.
Speaker 2:Okay, let's talk last question and I'll get some more questions after some of the other questions, but I want to talk a little bit about resilience and resilience that we've learned at HBCUs. So I was reading something and kind of researching you about when you're writing, and writing a book is tough. I've been working on a book for a while. Writing a book is tough. That's tough work. There's a lot of mental work, there's a lot of scholarship that goes into that, and you were teaching at HBCU in Baltimore and you hadn't finished the book and your department was unsatisfied with that. So they let you go or you left right at the I didn't leave, but right when your tenure discussion was going to start happening. Right, you know you left, but I'm not sure how quickly it happened, but things started to go right for you. So talk about just how, how you were able to get back up from that and and and and how you know, yeah, Okay, Just how you were able to get back up from that.
Speaker 3:Ernie, first of all, I want to say I've been, you know, speaking, you know, since the book came out, in quite different places. You're the first person to ask me that and thank you for asking me that and I really appreciate that because it is a part of my story. You know, as I said before, when I was at A&T, I had folks who believed in me when I didn't believe in myself, and there were people who believed in my research, who knew that I was not some scholar wasting time. I had already produced, you know, academic work, published academic work. You know, I had one.
Speaker 3:I was the inaugural recipient of a major fellowship at Duke, and Morgan State simply made the decision that they didn't want to invest in me anymore, and there's tons of reasons why that decision was made that I don't really want to get into right now. But again, I left Morgan, or they left me, and I made a call actually, I made a call to Duke University, where I had my first fellowship in 2009. And I didn't. You know, I was simply wanting advice from some of my mentors at Duke University about what's next Right, where should I, what should I do? You know how do I pick myself back up Because, again, the book was, you know, over halfway done and I wanted to get it out and it was, as I said before, I'm simply calling for advice. But it was one of my mentors at Duke who said, look, come back here. I want you back at Duke, right, and what we're going to do is we're going to fund the project, again Right, which which resulted in me becoming a humanities writ large fellow, which was again sadly ironic is that I have established elite PWI, believing more in me as a scholar than an HBCU, who knew that I was producing a book on black colleges. So visionary leadership is important for HBCUs, but it's also important for us to make sure that we rid ourselves of of poor leadership, and there was. You know, the decision to get rid of me was a bad decision and I think Morgan State understands that now.
Speaker 3:But you know I went back to Duke on fellowship while I was there, when I was in Baltimore. Taylor Branch is a resident of Baltimore. He and I actually served on a panel together and I sent him an email to simply saying hey, you know what? You know, I'm a young researcher. You know I'm being informed by your Pulitzer Prize winning work on Dr King and other stuff that he had written. And that was really it. I just want to kind of introduce myself.
Speaker 3:After he and I had been on this panel and he gave me a call out the blue when I was working at Duke, saying hey, I'm about to teach this class on the civil rights movement. Are you interested in teaching this class with me? You know, as a co-teacher, you interested in teaching this class with me? You know as a co-teacher? And again, that was one of those fall out of seats moment where wait a minute, I have a Pulitzer Prize winning author asking me if I want to teach a class with him at the University of Baltimore. So it was just. You know, it's God's blessing man, you know divine providence. And so I'll never forget when Morgan made that decision, one of my friends good friends told me and you know you never want to hear stuff like this when you're going through but one of my friends told me she said you know, they just did you the best favor that they could ever ask. I'm like what do you mean? They did me a favor by letting me know.
Speaker 3:But you know, again, from there I got a call to come teach at an institution I had never heard of before Clayton State University but at an institution I had never heard of before Clayton State University. But I knew Clayton County, as I said before. I got family in the area so I said wait a minute, is this Clayton? That's in Atlanta, you know what I mean. Who black doesn't want to live in Atlanta, right?
Speaker 3:And so my wife actually, as I said before, she's a Hampton grad, but she went to grad school at Emory oh, okay, okay, public health. So we were dating when I was at Ohio State, she was at Emory, we were doing this sort of long distance thing and and so that gave us the opportunity to reconnect in a city that we both love. So we moved to Atlanta in 2014 and the book contract came in 2016. And then it came out in 2019 and it hit the ground running and it's just been an incredible road. As I said before, this is a rag to riches kind of story, but I'm glad to tell the story of HBCUs and what they've represented, and I'm glad that it finally got out there, because again, there was an HBCU who tried to make sure that the story never got out, and that's sad, but that's the reality of it. But it did get out and it's won multiple awards and it's doing well and I'm excited about that.
Speaker 2:Before we jumped on, faye Smith talked about reading the book reading a couple of chapters, and she talked about how great the book was and about reading the book reading a couple of chapters, and she talked about how great the book was and she told you how great the book, how much she loved it. When you hear that, what do?
Speaker 3:you think about when people respond to you that way about the book. Honestly, you know it's emotional. Even as she was telling me, I was kind of choking up and fighting back tears because you know, this is it's. It's something that almost didn't happen, and all I ever wanted to do, ernie, was to represent and tell the legacy of Black colleges, which is a powerful story to tell, and so to hear people say, hey, you know what? Not only that she read the book, but you know, I got on Google and started looking for Ebenezer Bassett and I wanted to know more and you kind of led me on this path. That's, as a historian, that's what you want to hear, right? You know I mentioned this previously. I didn't expound upon it.
Speaker 3:When I was at A&T, there was a conference that we used to used to put on in the history department, and the name of the conference was called Missing Pages. Ok, and as a historian, that's all we ever really want to do, right, is fill in these missing pages. One of my favorite rappers used to say put some paint where it ain't right. We want to put a little paint where it ain't right, and I think that what Shelter in Time of Storm has really done is that it's filled in those missing pages. It's put some paint where it ain't been before, and that is filling in the legacy of Black colleges and what they represent, and so I'm happy that the book has received that type of love and again I thank you, faye, for that comment because it means that the book is doing what it was intended to do, and that is to reach not just an academic audience but also to reach a lay audience of folks who are, who are junior historians and part-time historians and folks who simply love black college life and want to learn more about black college life. That's the other thing that I'll quickly say that I've really been emotional about.
Speaker 3:Again, I talk about seven HBCUs in this book, right, and I can't tell the story of all of them, but I've had so many people come up to me from Morehouse, from Spelman, from other institutions, who didn't attend any of these schools and say, hey, this is my story too. There's some really great news. I won't tell the full part of it because it hasn't been officially announced yet, but there's an institution that's going to a very well-known institution that plans to adopt this as its first year reader. Oh, wow, congratulations, and that's huge. And so that's what I want. I want this book to get into the hands of, of, of of black college students so they can simply, so they can know that again it's not simply about the cultural pageantry and the bands. And again I want to pledge AKA, I want to pledge Delta, I want to pledge Alpha, you know, but also understanding that you are part of a long legacy of Black activism that's emerged out of these institutions and we're expecting you and we need you to be a part of that legacy moving forward.
Speaker 2:All right, all right Now, before we turn it over to Tina, you mentioned the conferences that you guys had. I was only aware of the Aggie Fest as a conference. I didn't realize you guys had actual academic conferences.
Speaker 3:Oh, the Aggie Fest was a different type of conference.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly Tina. Do we have any questions from the audience?
Speaker 6:Yes, first of all, I want to thank both of you. This has been an awesome program thus far, and we do have several questions. Cheryl Graham is co-hosting with me, and her and I are just going to tag team. So, cheryl, did you want to go ahead and ask the first question?
Speaker 7:Yes, but first I want to address Dr Favors. This was amazing. Thank you for opening up and sharing this light with us, and it makes me think of, I don't even know, the sermon or the book in the Bible, but God put you on a hill to shine your light, and now it's time to shine your light, and it's shining brightly for us all. And so I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart, because I'm so emotional right now and everybody knows I'm all hype about A&T.
Speaker 7:That got me even more hype about A&T and I thank you for shedding the light on HBCUs in general.
Speaker 3:So, thank you. I'm a crier, so it don't take much, but thank you, sherry, that means so much to me. Aggie Pride look, I'm a crier, so it don't take much, but thank you, sherri, that means so much to me. Aggie pride, sister, I really appreciate it, aggie pride, aggie pride.
Speaker 7:Okay, so the first question, when you read the statement from WEB Du Bois speaking on the benefits of our meeting and congregating, how could you not reflect on how A&T has glamorized our GO?
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, you know, glamorization of homecomings, and again I refer to it as the cultural pageantry of Black college life. That's a part of what we do, right?
Speaker 2:As I said before.
Speaker 3:I think that's, and I think it's a necessary part of what we do, right? You know, again, you know there's so few spaces throughout Black America where Black folks are free and unbridled to engage in joy, and you know what better space than G-Ho? Right, you know, and that's what G-Ho is really representing, that's what all Black college homecomings and the space itself have represented a space where Black folks can be free, black folks can celebrate, black folks can reflect on their achievements as a people, and so Black college life and Black college homecomings are an extension of that. That, and that's a necessary part of who, that's a survival mechanism for Black folks. Right To be able to celebrate and to be joyous and to develop camaraderies.
Speaker 3:And again, I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but we all have had friends who we've connected with when we were A&T, many of whom we're still friends with today, right, whether it's fraternity brothers, sorority sisters or just friends you met in the dorm, you know friends that you met in the cab. That becomes a part of that nurturing community right that you develop. As I said before, communitize is about developing social relationship, right, and so social relationship in itself becomes an act of activism, right, an act of protest right, that we refute the pressures of white supremacy, which are crushing us on all sides, and we embrace the fact that we have something to be joyous about and to celebrate and to develop friends while we're doing it, friendships that will last a lifetime, and we'll come back here every year at the greatest homecoming on earth to remember and to reconnect those bonds. That's a very important part of what black colleges represent.
Speaker 5:If I could. The reason I brought that question up, dr Fabers, was because of the tone in which WEB Du Bois references that in his book the Education of Black People, I believe the Ten Critiques the Education of Black People and he mentions specifically the vulgar exposition of liquor extravagance and fur coats. Right Whoa, that's kind of a geo kind of thing. So to speak and not to knock.
Speaker 5:that I do understand the significance of reconnecting that way and it has certainly embraced all of those positive things. But it does bother me that somewhere about midway during my tenure at A&T, someone came to my mother and said why you let your daughter go there? That's a party school. And I'm saying what party? Where are you getting that from? But A&T had their reputation back in the early 70s. I just think it's something that as a university and a leading university, we can't afford to be defined by that, and some people unfortunately do.
Speaker 3:One thing that you got to understand about WEB Du Bois if you haven't read a lot about him is that he was approved. Du Bois was. I mean Du Bois didn't like the fact that black folks shouted in church either Right, that made him uncomfortable. I mean Du Bois was from Massachusetts and not even Boston. I mean he was cut from a Victorian cloth.
Speaker 2:There were a lot of things about black life.
Speaker 3:That made him extremely uncomfortable, particularly as it related to the expression of black joy, whether that's via church or whether that's in school. Now I'll say this as well Du Bois was not alone in those critiques. Especially in the 1920s and 1930s, there were a number of other, even black, college administrators who were saying hey, these young black kids we need y'all to all hands on deck. Y'all are doing too much of everything else. What that really, I think is more of a critique of, was what the pressures and dangers of living in black America in the 1920s and 1930s we're talking about being in the midst of a nadir. Racial violence was exploding throughout this country, and what Du Bois and other Black college administrators were and not just Black college administrators, but civil rights activists, many of whom themselves were connected to HBCUs what they really were saying is that, hey, we need a movement. We're expecting a movement to come out of these institutions.
Speaker 3:Now what I think that Du Bois and some of these other folks didn't really square up is how dangerous an overt movement in the Deep South would have been in the 1930s and 1940s. Why the city is as we celebrate them on February 1st was so radical and so important is that it created a dramatic confrontation with white supremacy. Right, black folks all their lives, young Black folks all their lives have been told don't you go in there and mess with them. White folks right, don't you go in there and cause no trouble. Right, but that's what Black college students did on February the 1st, right, and as I often tell students when I lecture on this and talk about this February 1st, we celebrate February 1st. It's really February the 2nd, that's the most important day. Right, because if those four students come back to the yard and start telling other students about what they've done, and that falls flat, right, then we don't get this energy, this movement that really moves forward. But February the 2nd, we get dozens of students showing up and then it spreads to North Carolina Central and to Mississippi State and all these other institutions.
Speaker 3:So I say all that to say you know, people were expecting a movement from young people, when a movement, an overt movement that directly challenged white supremacy in the way in which the sit-ins do and did, that could have cost someone their lives, right, and so, you know, there's another quote in the book which talks about Langston Hughes. Langston Hughes came down to Alabama right during the Scottsboro Boys case. So there are nine young. For those who might not be familiar with this case, there were nine young boys who were lynched or who they were imprisoned, rather, they were threatened to be lynched because they said they had talked to two white women. That proved to be false. But these young men are all in jail, and you know, waiting to try Right.
Speaker 3:So Langston Hughes comes down and he says hey, you know, I went to the college to go talk to the students about this and they acted like they didn't know anything about it, and he condemned in fact, he wrote an article saying that the cowards from the college right, that was the name of this article, but again that loses context. Right? These were young Black folks.
Speaker 3:He was trying to talk and rile up in a place like Alabama in the 1930s where you could get, you could be killed, you could be lynched right for speaking out against the constructs of white supremacy. And so you know that space has been critically important for a number of years and it has evolved and developed over a number of years in different ways. So you know, I hear you in saying that. You know, maybe there's a lot of excess that goes into into G-Home. We only need to look at the words of of Du Bois to really kind of confirm that, that critique. But you know, as I said before, you got to know who, who that critique was coming from and how Du Bois was. And, and more importantly, I think we need to look at the long picture, and the long picture is the HBCUs have been a vital space for developing young Black leadership and producing agents for social and political change.
Speaker 5:Well, my last comment on that is I went to school in the 70s also. Dr Wooten taught me humanities and he taught, had us to read the Souls of Black Folks alongside of the autobiography of Malcolm X. So bam, he gave us the balance. That was clearly his effort to teach that second curriculum.
Speaker 3:And I'll also say this, faye. I'll also say this, faye, before we move forward. Every generation has been criticized for being party apples. They said the same thing about black kids who love jazz in the 20s and 30s. They said the same thing about black kids who started wearing mini skirts and whatnot in the 60s and 70s. And so every generation looks back on the upcoming generation. They find some form of criticism. I mean, look, I hate the hip hop that comes out today, but I love the hip hop from the 80s and 90s. But my mama hated it, right, she thought that we were going crazy. So every generation has kind of looked back at past generations and found some form of criticism, and that's powerful course.
Speaker 6:Thank you. I have a question. Another question that came in the chat was from Langston Clark, and I just want to thank Langston for connecting us. He's on and I believe he has some students that are on as well. So Langston can't thank you enough. Do you have anything you want to say?
Speaker 4:Yes, tina. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak and for just assisting with putting this together. I have a question, dr Favors, if I could ask you. Know I'm an academic too. I work in higher education. I have a question, dr Favors, if I could ask you know I'm an academic too. I work in higher education.
Speaker 4:I appreciate your story about being supported by PWIs, as both of us have. Having gone to PWIs for graduate school, I'm wrestling with how white schools kind of take over the narrative of diversity and inclusion, especially in the midst of, like, all of these Black Lives Matter tragedies that happened over the summer the coronavirus, and the radical me says All that D&I money needs to go to black colleges first, because the white schools don't do a good job with it. Right, they get all this money, all these centers. They got three black people on campus. So I'm just wondering if you could talk to us about how, how do we leverage the history to enact or promote policy that directs resources to our institutions so that they don't get wasted at institutions that really don't appreciate us?
Speaker 3:Well, that falls on the leadership you know. I mean, as I said before, I was on a call today with a group in California and one of the things that I suggested and argued about HBCU life is that Black lives have always mattered at HBCUs Always, right, there were never attempts to discriminate against anyone at HBCUs in terms of who they let in that door, right, but it's Black folks who attended and that's something that we have to begin to wear with a badge of pride. Right, You're right. There's always a lot of money associated with some of these events, especially as it relates to white liberalism not even just white liberalism, but even sometimes, white conservatism.
Speaker 3:I'm speaking at a program in Morehouse at the end of February and it's being sponsored by the Thousand Points of Light or the Points of Light Initiative. And if you remember, points of Light, that's Bush, that's Bush and his family. So the Bushes are sponsoring a program on Black student activism being held at Morehouse and, again, I think that's great that they are funneling that money through Morehouse. But it begs the question, you know, what's the expectation here, right? You know, in terms of the money that's being delivered and being sent out to these programs and to these institutions. So, you know, I think the HBCUs, you know, need to make that argument. I think that we need to become better stewards of our history. I think that we need to. You know, I probably shouldn't say this, but I think we need to promote books like Sheldon and Simon Stone, which shows our true history and our true legacy. As I said before, yes, the cultural pageantry is beautiful, but the most important, the most significant thing that we've ever done is transform and shape the political and social contours of this country. And so, hey, america, if you're worried about the current political state, right, if you're worried about where we are in a resurgence of white supremacy. It's probably best that you look at the institutions, who've always done a great job in dealing with that, and prescribe solutions for them right, and so part of that again is having a leadership that understands that argument and understands the importance of that space. As I said before, I'm speaking also with the Prairie View A&M in a couple of weeks and they've got this brand new in fact it hasn't even opened yet but the Ruth Simmons Center for Racial and Social Justice. We need more centers like that on HBCU campuses, and so therefore, going back to your point, langston, is that those centers can begin to make the argument that hey, funnel that money through here because we're doing the work right, and so we need more type of spaces, institutes like that, that are developed.
Speaker 3:One of the people I'm going to be in conversation with at Morehouse happens to be my good friend and my line brother, who I met in Columbus, ohio, when we were in grad school, dr Derek White, who has a great book, by the way, on Florida A&M that came out, who has a great book, by the way, on Florida A&M that came out and the legacy of football at Florida A&M, and Jake Gaither. But Derek and I are going to be in conversation together at Morehouse and he wrote a great book called the Challenge of Blackness. If you haven't read that book, I encourage you to get that as well, because the Challenge of Blackness documents the creation of the Institute for the Black World IBW, of the Institute for the Black World IBW. The IBW was a black think tank that was created on the campuses of Morehouse, clark, atlanta and Spelman in the wake of Dr Martin Luther King Jr's assassination in 1968. But you have a black think tank emerging in the AUC Now.
Speaker 3:The IBW ultimately ends up crumbling because of a lack of support financial support. But again it begs the question why is it that we don't have more IBWs? Why is it that we don't have more Ruth Simmons Centers for Race and Social Justice on these college campuses? And again, that takes visionary leadership to say hey, it's great that we're welcoming and we're seeing an increase in enrollment, but we're also going to provide a space for our students to. Hey, it's great that we're welcoming and we're seeing an increase in enrollment, but we're also going to provide a space for our students to again be reconnected to the second curriculum and understand their legacy and their role as cultural and social change agents moving forward. So it takes a very deliberate initiative, a very deliberate push from Black college administrators to make that choice. And Ruth Simmons came to prayer view from Brown and said hey, I'm going to be very deliberate in the fact that we want a race and social justice center. I'm going to tap into all of my networks and bring funding in to make that happen.
Speaker 6:I have another question that kind of ties into funding. Given some of the recent unrestricted gifts to HBCUs, ie Mackenzie, Scott, has Mr Favors explored an initiative to work with these institutions to utilize some of these funds to pursue other grants to digitize, upgrade their archival processes and preserve historical records?
Speaker 3:That's a great idea. No, but I'm going to write that down. You know I'm not much, I'm not the grant writer. You know I'm a scholar, I'm an academic and I'm off to pursue my next book, but I have indeed connected a number of HBCUs with outside third parties who are interested in providing funding and resources to them, and so that is indeed a part of what I've kind of been asked to do. Since the book came out, A lot of folks have been kind of hitting me up saying, hey, you know, you're the HBCU guy, right? You know, can you connect us to Morehouse, can you connect us to A&T, and so you know.
Speaker 3:Let's make this really, really quick point about that funding, though and again I think this kind of gets back to what Langston was pointing we see all these unrestricted gifts emerging right, millions of dollars being given, and they're going towards scholarships, they're going towards, again, stem funding, but again, none of them hardly are going to the humanities, none of them are going to social sciences, none of them are going to actually strengthen the archives of these institutions, and, again, I think that's sad and I think that, again, it requires a visionary leadership to understand that these are holes, these are problems that exist on these college campuses and they deserve to be funded in the same way in which the STEM fields and the business fields and other fields are also being funded. Again, this is not to denigrate STEM or business, or even certainly not denigrate the fact that we need scholarship money, but we also need to be able to funnel some of those resources and some of those gifts into supporting the archives and humanities and social sciences on these campuses.
Speaker 6:One other question that came up, acknowledging the role that HBCUs play in civil rights. How do you compare that to the role of HBCUs in Black Lives Matter? Do you think the role has changed or the same, or do you feel any institutions are fulfilling this role?
Speaker 3:It's definitely changed. You know HBCUs were the epicenter of the direct action protests. They were the epicenter of student activism emerging during this period. And not only that, but it really lifted the civil rights movement into an area which it had not been lifted before. You know, when the sit-ins first took place, you know the NAACP didn't support it. You know the NAACP favored litigation. You know they didn't want to get involved in the messy affairs of of having a direct confrontation with white supremacy. When the sit-ins first took place, dr King was nervous, was scared about joining students in the downtown Crest stores in Atlanta. His daddy didn't want him to do it at all, you know. So Black colleges during the 1960s in particular really served as an epicenter for and created the energy that emerged out of this.
Speaker 3:I think what we're seeing now and again this is no critique against Black Lives Matter or any of the movements that are emerging here, but again, a lot of it's being fueled by social media, which is a good thing. I mean in terms of communication and networking. People can get their messages out there very quickly and that's a good. That can be a good thing, but I think it's a double. It's a double edged sword. It can also be a bad thing as well in terms of being able to control that right. That can ultimately help us solve some of these dilemmas and problems and issues, which are not new, which have been in existence for a number of years, and so you know, again, moving forward, I would love to see HBCUs become more forthright and more open about bringing in students in an effort to directly channel them into the type of transformation and change that we need to see coming out of these institutions.
Speaker 3:As it relates to, again, cultural change agents, in other words, a&t, it'd be great if A&T can get a center for race and social justice and create an internship program and put our students connect our students with local policymakers and create relationships and networks with people within the community to develop that. You know we live here in Atlanta and I've said this before to a number of my Morehouse friends and Spelman sisters as well. You know there should be no reason why Southwest Atlanta looks that way, the way that it does around Morehouse and Spelman. Why is it that? Is it that those institutions have not prescribed solutions to the economic and political problems of those communities? So HBCUs have to be more forthright and intentional in promoting policy, promoting and creating students who are going to lead that policy charge to help solve some of these issues, and I think that we've seen some fall off from that. And again, this is something which I talk about in the last chapter of my book, which talks about the corruption of that communitized that space.
Speaker 6:Thank you. That basically ties to a question that was asked with regards to being intentional. What can we do to help HBCUs leverage this moment in a time to be more intentional in support of HBCUs? One of the challenges we have here in Atlanta as the alumni chapter is participation in the chapter and, you know, getting people to give back to the university. So I don't know if there's an answer, but we'd like to hear what you have to say. I don't know, you know.
Speaker 3:I mean like all of you, you know, I witnessed the restructuring of the Alumni Association that they had about, I guess, a few months back now. They decided to restructure and transform and change how they do things. I don't know if that was done in an effort to say, look, we need to do a better job in reconnecting with some of the local chapters. I also don't know how many of you feel about that move. I think what is clearly evident, however, is that, again, you know we see HBCU graduates. You know loving to rock their colors, you know loving to say Aggie pride, but when it comes to cutting the check and it comes to supporting our Black colleges at the local chapter alumni level, we often struggle with that. You know. I applaud A&T and I think they have the young North Carolina A&T Alumni Association. I think they're launching a young alumni give back campaign in the next couple of days, I think I'm sure someone could confirm that, but that's the type of efforts that we need. Right, as we used to say when I worked at Morgan State, we need to make sure the students hear that message on the first day. Right, we need to drill that in their minds as freshmen the act of giving back and the importance of that. And we also need to put in their hands books like Shelton and Thomas Thorne so they can understand why these institutions are so vitally important, right, why they deserve to be preserved and, more importantly, what they have to do with the freedom dreams of Black folks, right? You know and I'm not sure if I mentioned this earlier, but I know I've said this in a number of different talks I talked about Dr William Nelson Jr, who was my professor at Ohio State University, one of my first mentors at Ohio State University, and in his class, you know, dr Nelson used to always look like he was about to fall asleep on you.
Speaker 3:He used to always look like he wasn't really paying attention. But then Dr Nelson would spring to life and he would ask us this singular question Whatever it was that we were talking about, he would say what does this have to do with the liberation of black people? In fact, I talked about that in my speech that I gave for convocation in the fall what does this have to do with the liberation of black people? And when we began to ask that question and then answer that question as it relates to the legacy of HBCUs, they will understand the vital importance of continuing to fund them and support them as alumni moving forward. In other words, hbcus have everything to do with the liberation of Black people and it is essential that we play a critical role and continue to support them moving forward.
Speaker 3:And if I can jump in for For young alumni. That goes for folks who are old Aggies as well.
Speaker 2:If I can jump in for a second, just to kind of emphasize how dire it is, the only 10 HBCUs have alumni given over 15 percent and only four of those have alumni given over 30 percent, and I think Claflin is at about 50 percent, which is amazing. But you know, like you said, you know Aggie Pride, eagle Pride, we talk. You know I saw Wayne Sellers on the call and Wayne and I go back and forth on a couple of Facebook pages talking about Central and A&T. But we got to. You know it takes more than just talking about it. We got to open up our wallets and kind of give that money as well.
Speaker 3:And you know what. I want to connect that comment with what Faye said earlier. You know we'll spend $200 on a singular tailgating space, you know, but then frowned at the idea of giving $200 to our institution. And I've seen that even in my own crew at times that you know people. You know we always get hyped about supporting or not supporting. But coming to G-Ho and we get our gear and we get, you know, dressed to the nines and we get our outfits together and we, you know, we got the tailgate laid with food.
Speaker 3:But when it comes to actually saying, hey, I'm gonna write a check just to support A&T, to support my alma mater, to support the department from which I emerged, you know, folks begin to get tight lipped and again I think that's a cultural issue, I think that's a systemic issue that again, we have to be able to address that and to solve that. The moment the students step on that campus, maybe they need to begin to understand the legacy of these institutions'll see a new generation emerging that understands that, hey, we have to preserve these institutions and we have to financially support these institutions. As I said before, we can't count and wait on the state to do what's right. We can't count and wait on the federal government to do what's right and to correct past wrongs. We have to be the primary promoters and supporters of the colleges that we say, that we love.
Speaker 5:Another question.
Speaker 6:One more. I think we have one more question. It's about it's 8.59, but we'll do one more question and, Cheryl, we'll have you close us out.
Speaker 7:Okay, Wow. Another question was does the second curriculum still exist today?
Speaker 3:I hope so. You know again, when we think about race consciousness, we think about cultural nationalism, we think about idealism. These are beautiful concepts. You know, I mentioned this in the book and in the introduction of James Weldon Johnson arriving on campus at Morehouse, when he was a student at Morehouse. James Weldon Johnson, of course, went on to become one of the major founders of the NAACP, but he said look, when I was in Morehouse, everything we talked about was about race. It's centered around race. It was the subject of essays, it was a subject of, of debates that we would have in our, in our, in our classrooms as well as in our dorm rooms.
Speaker 3:There was an energy and that's what the curriculum is. It's not. It's an energy that flows through that space. It's connected to the freedom dreams of black people. And you know, I dare say you know, when I was in Morgan State and you know, I dare say you know, when I was in Morgan State, I could feel that energy. You know, I would always say that. You know, sometimes you are very discouraged as an educator, as a teacher, but when I open up that door to my classroom, every day I saw the future of black America and some days I was very enthusiastic about what I saw. Some days I was concerned, right, but, but it still allowed me an opportunity to.
Speaker 3:As one of my graduate professors said when he was reading my dissertation, he said you know, it sounds like and this is Dr Hassan Jeffries, who went to Morehouse, and Dr Hassan Jeffries, by the way, his brother is Hakeem Jeffries, who's the congressman from Brooklyn but Hassan said to me, he said you know it. But Hassan said to me, he said you know, it kind of sounds like a church where you have a laying on our hands moment, right, where an old church mother just comes up to you and prophetically just want to lay hands on you and wish the best for you and push you in the right direction. This sounds kind of like what you're describing here and that's what HBCUs have really kind of served a space where we can lay hands on the next generation, right, and we can either mold them and shape them in that second curriculum, right, or we can fall back to the corrupt nature of hyper-capitalism and corporatism and all the other things which have become dominant on many of these campuses. This is not just an HBCU thing. This is a issue in higher education, right, of how higher education has really kind of served as a platform, as a space to advance corporate America. And what does that do to again addressing systemic poverty? What does it do to addressing systemic racism, right? What type of solutions does that prescribe? And so I think HBCUs have to be very careful in this moment that we simply aren't replicating and identifying ourselves as an alternative to Harvard, as an alternative to the deconstruction of white supremacy.
Speaker 3:The creation of a more just and tolerant society is a strong part, a major part of the legacy of these colleges, and whether you attended A&T in the 1970s or the 1980s, or whether you're arriving on campus as a new freshman in 2021, you need to understand your role within that, and the second curriculum is a large part of that, and so I hope that, moving forward, students will embrace that.
Speaker 3:In fact, as I said before, you know, it should be coming out, hopefully in the next couple of weeks, or maybe even months, of an institution adopting Shelter in the Time of Storm, as the first year reader for its students and the person who made that decision said. This is why we want to do that, is that we want to make sure our students understand that part of the legacy. We want them to think of themselves as the next part of that generation. We don't simply want to be known as an institution that has a large band and one of the most successful HBCUs. We want to be known as a space where we're connected, intricately connected, directly connected to the struggles and concerns of Black people in this country, and that's the story and the narrative that I've tried to tell in this book and I hope that, moving forward, that's going to be the story and narrative that Black colleges embrace as part of their future.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to today's show. As I mentioned in the introduction, this episode is part of a special series featuring voices from historically Black colleges and universities. This is part of a larger effort to support the From A&T to PhD Endowed Scholarship at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, an effort that I co-founded with two friends of mine who are also on their doctoral journeys. If you would like to support this effort, please review the show notes to make a donation to the endowment, an effort that I co-founded with two friends of mine who are also on their doctoral journeys. If you would like to support this effort, please review the show notes to make a donation to the endowment. Thank you.