The Past. The Present...and Now the Future
America's welfare is forever connected to the past, present, and future of the Historically Black College and University (HBCU).
The Present: A Revival?
HBCUs serve as an environment that nurtures empowerment, belonging, and a sense of self-determination that black Americans have often battled to attain in society at large. This was particularly true in the century between the abolition of slavery and the passage of the Civil Rights Act outlawing segregation in all its forms. While some scholars understand the past contributions of HBCUs, few fully grasp their continuing significance today and into the future (Mustaffa, 2017). The nation must invest heavily in HBCUs to make them “comparable and competitive” with TWIs. It is important to resist “one size fits all” notions given HBCU differences by history, financial viability, size, mission, demographics, and classification.
References
Allen, W.R., Audrey, D., Mack, C. (2020). Hidden in Plain Sight: Historically Black Colleges and Universities in America, Quaderni di Sociologia, 83- LXIV | 25-46.
Mustaffa J.B. (2017), Mapping violence, naming life: a history of anti-Black oppression in the higher education system, «International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education», 30, 8, pp. 711-727.
HBCUs on the Rise: Black College Club TV
Tennessee State University Collections, Outreach, and Resources
In Our Main Campus Library Holdings
Land-Grant Universities for the Future by Land-grant colleges and universities have a storied past. This book looks at their future. Land-grant colleges and universities occupy a special place in the landscape of American higher education. Publicly funded agricultural and technical educational institutions were first founded in the mid-nineteenth century with the Morrill Act, which established land grants to support these schools. They include such prominent names as Cornell, Maryland, Michigan State, MIT, Ohio State, Penn State, Rutgers, Texas A&M, West Virginia University, Wisconsin, and the University of California--in other words, four dozen of the largest and best public universities in America. Add to this a number of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and tribal colleges--in all, almost 300 institutions. Their mission is a democratic and pragmatic one: to bring science, technology, agriculture, and the arts to the American people. In this book, Stephen M. Gavazzi and E. Gordon Gee discuss present challenges to and future opportunities for these institutions. Drawing on interviews with 27 college presidents and chancellors, Gavazzi and Gee explore the strengths and weaknesses of land-grant universities while examining the changing threats they face. Arguing that the land-grant university of the twenty-first century is responsible to a wide range of constituencies, the authors also pay specific attention to the ways these universities meet the needs of the communities they serve. Ultimately, the book suggests that leaders and supporters should become more fiercely land-grant in their orientation; that is, they should work to more vigorously uphold their community-focused missions through teaching, research, and service-oriented activities. Combining extensive research with Gee's own decades of leadership experience, Land-Grant Universities for the Future argues that these schools are the engine of higher education in America--and perhaps democracy's best hope. This book should be of great interest to faculty members and students, as well as those parents, legislators, policymakers, and other area stakeholders who have a vested interest in the well-being of America's original public universities.
ISBN: 9781421426853Publication Date: 2018-11-15Models of Success by This edited book contains chapters related to the excellent management and leadership practices currently taking place at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in the context an economic recession. Each chapter highlights successful operations at HBCUs from management, leadership, and administrative standpoints in a manner that is not comparative of or overly reliant upon dominant literature, standards, or theories. Amongst the deficit-laden literature regarding the fiscal, accreditation, and governance status of HBCUs are few studies highlighting those institutions successfully operating in a difficult economy. This book fills that gap of information by offering chapters on excellent management and leadership practices occurring at a variety of HBCUs today.
ISBN: 9781681239910Publication Date: 2017-12-01Setting a New Agenda for Student Engagement and Retention in Historically Black Colleges and Universities by As more Americans are attending college, historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are now in a position where they must directly compete with other institutions. While other colleges and universities might have more resources and stronger infrastructures, HBCUs provide better opportunities to meet the needs of students of color. Setting a New Agenda for Student Engagement and Retention in Historically Black Colleges and Universities explores the innovations that HBCUs can enact to better serve and prepare the next generation of African American leaders, and to be more competitive in the higher education landscape. As students need different forms of support throughout their academic career, it becomes necessary to engage them through mentorship, programming, and classroom management. This book is a valuable resource for educators and administration at HBCUs, sociologists, policy makers, and students studying education science and administration.
ISBN: 9781522503088Publication Date: 2016-06-27Shelter in a Time of Storm by 2020 Museum of African American History Stone Book Award 2020 Lillian Smith Book Award Finalist, 2020 Pauli Murray Book Prize For generations, historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have been essential institutions for the African American community. Their nurturing environments not only provided educational advancement but also catalyzed the Black freedom struggle, forever altering the political destiny of the United States. In this book, Jelani M. Favors offers a history of HBCUs from the 1837 founding of Cheyney State University to the present, told through the lens of how they fostered student activism. Favors chronicles the development and significance of HBCUs through stories from institutions such as Cheyney State University, Tougaloo College, Bennett College, Alabama State University, Jackson State University, Southern University, and North Carolina A&T. He demonstrates how HBCUs became a refuge during the oppression of the Jim Crow era and illustrates the central role their campus communities played during the civil rights and Black Power movements. Throughout this definitive history of how HBCUs became a vital seedbed for politicians, community leaders, reformers, and activists, Favors emphasizes what he calls an unwritten "second curriculum" at HBCUs, one that offered students a grounding in idealism, racial consciousness, and cultural nationalism.
ISBN: 9781469648330Publication Date: 2019-04-16Stand and Prosper by Stand and Prosper is the first authoritative history in decades of black colleges and universities in America. It tells the story of educational institutions that offered, and continue to offer, African Americans a unique opportunity to transcend the legacy of slavery while also bearing its burden. Henry Drewry and Humphrey Doermann present an up-to-date and comprehensive assessment of their past, present, and possible future. Black colleges fully got off the ground only after the Civil War--more than two centuries after higher education formally began in British North America. Despite horrendous obstacles, they survived and even proliferated until well past the mid-twentieth century. As the authors show, however, the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education brought them to a crucial juncture. While validating the rights of blacks to pursue opportunities outside racial and class lines, it drew the future of these institutions into doubt. By the mid-1970s black colleges competed with other colleges for black students--a welcome expansion of choices for African-American youth but a huge recruitment challenge for black colleges. The book gradually narrows its focus from a general history to a look at the development of forty-five private black colleges in recent decades. It describes their varied responses to the changes of the last half-century and documents their influence in the development of the black middle class. The authors underscore the vital importance of government in supporting these institutions, from the Freedman's Bureau during Reconstruction to federal aid in our own time. Stand and Prosper offers a fascinating portrait of the distinctive place black colleges and universities have occupied in American history as crucibles of black culture, and of the formidable obstacles they must surmount if they are to continue fulfilling this important role.
ISBN: 9780691116327Publication Date: 2003-11-02