Where Everybody Looks Like Me

Where Everybody Looks Like Me PDF

Author: Ron Stodghill

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2015-09-22

Total Pages: 169

ISBN-13: 006232327X

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A richly reported account of the forces threatening America's historic black colleges and universities—and how diverse leaders nationwide are struggling to keep these institutions and black culture alive for future generations. American education is under siege, and few parts of the system are more threatened than black colleges and universities. Once hailed as national treasures, historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) such as Spelman College, Morehouse College, and Howard University—the backbone of the nation's black middle class which have produced legends including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Thurgood Marshall, and Oprah Winfrey—are in a fight for survival. The threats are numerous: Republican state legislators are determined to merge, consolidate, or shut down historically black colleges and universities; Ivy League institutions are poaching the best black high school students; President Obama's push for heightened performance standards, and cuts in loan funding from the U.S. Department of Education. In this tightly woven narrative full of intriguing characters, Where Everybody Looks Like Me chronicles this near breaking point for black colleges. Award-winning journalist Ron Stodghill offers a rare behind-closed-doors look into the private world of the boards of directors, the black intelligentsia, the leaders of business, law, politics, culture, and sports, and other influential figures involved in the debate and battle to save these institutions. Told from the perspective of a family, Where Everybody Looks Like Me shows their struggle to secure the best education for their child. Where Everybody Looks Like Me is a tale of vision and vanity—of boardroom backbiting, financial chicanery, idealism and passion. Here are administrators, celebrities, alumni, and others whose lives are intricately tied to these institutions and their fate—whether they will remain strong and vital, or become a revered part of our cultural past.

Stand and Prosper

Stand and Prosper PDF

Author: Henry N. Drewry

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2012-03-29

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 1400843170

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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.

New Life for Historically Black Colleges and Universities

New Life for Historically Black Colleges and Universities PDF

Author: Vann R. Newkirk

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2014-01-10

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0786490993

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In December 2008, Georgia state senator Seth Harp ignited controversy when he proposed merging two historically Black colleges with nearby predominantly white colleges to save money. Less than a year later, Mississippi governor Haley Barbour sought to unite Mississippi's three predominantly Black colleges. These efforts kindled renewed interest in historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) across the nation and the globe. In this study, HBCU officials and faculty attempt to identify the challenges that HBCUs face, explore the historic origin of HBCU management systems, and identify models of success that will improve the long-term viability of the HBCU. By analyzing HBCUs within a larger framework of American higher education and the cultural context in which HBCUs operate, these essays introduce a new paradigm in the quest to ensure that HBCUs continue to play an important role in the education of Americans of all races.

The State Must Provide

The State Must Provide PDF

Author: Adam Harris

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2021-08-10

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 0062976494

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“A book that both taught me so much and also kept me on the edge of my seat. It is an invaluable text from a supremely talented writer.” —Clint Smith, author of How the Word is Passed The definitive history of the pervasiveness of racial inequality in American higher education America’s colleges and universities have a shameful secret: they have never given Black people a fair chance to succeed. From its inception, our higher education system was not built on equality or accessibility, but on educating—and prioritizing—white students. Black students have always been an afterthought. While governments and private donors funnel money into majority white schools, historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), and other institutions that have high enrollments of Black students, are struggling to survive, with state legislatures siphoning away federal funds that are legally owed to these schools. In The State Must Provide, Adam Harris reckons with the history of a higher education system that has systematically excluded Black people from its benefits. Harris weaves through the legal, social, and political obstacles erected to block equitable education in the United States, studying the Black Americans who fought their way to an education, pivotal Supreme Court cases like Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education, and the government’s role in creating and upholding a segregated education system. He explores the role that Civil War–era legislation intended to bring agricultural education to the masses had in creating the HBCUs that have played such a major part in educating Black students when other state and private institutions refused to accept them. The State Must Provide is the definitive chronicle of higher education’s failed attempts at equality and the long road still in front of us to remedy centuries of racial discrimination—and poses a daring solution to help solve the underfunding of HBCUs. Told through a vivid cast of characters, The State Must Provide examines what happened before and after schools were supposedly integrated in the twentieth century, and why higher education remains broken to this day.

Survival of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities

Survival of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities PDF

Author: Edward Fort

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2013-06-28

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 0739181092

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Survival of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities as edited by North Carolina A&T State University Chancellor Emeritus Edward Fort, conceptualizes the strategies, strategic planning energies, and delivery systems which might be of assistance to HBCU's as they continue to survive in this age of uncertainty. Its insightful chapters, as penned by Fort and a number of his colleagues (including former Presidents and Chancellors of Black campuses) are data driven and experientially based. The challenges encountered by the HBCU leaders are described as multiple and include fiscal accountability and the continued need to assist the public schools as related to the twin problems of the achievement gap and Clark's "Cult of Cultural Deprivation." The author and his colleagues outline viable strategies geared to address these challenges. The latter represent but two of a number of other challenges confronting HBCU's. These include, but are not limited to (1) enrollment competition with majority institutions, (2) cultivation of alumni support, (3) the garnering of fiscal equity via such avenues as increased federal agency and foundation/corporate support. Considerable space is devoted to the critical issue of institutional leadership. Here, strategies and delivery systems are explored as associated with the HBCU leader's aggressive determination to provide the best possible crucible of learning for students attending the institution. The issues of fiscal accountability and its ever-present spectra of prospective gloom and doom lurks as an enemy to be constantly confronted. Many pages are devoted to the conceptualization of prescriptive strategies, which can be applied to present day campus situations. Leaders of historically black campuses can benefit from these writings as these institutions constantly face the heartache of state revenue shortfall, private university funding sources evaporation and the demoralizing impact of cut backs in program, capital construction, and scholarship support. Creativity protocols are described in detail and forward moving processes poised for prospective success enunciated. Navigating the problem of K-12 economic inequality and its impact upon HBCU's is also explored, as well as the need to enhance "leveraging" for federal support, including the United States Department of Agriculture. Ultimately, alumni support is vigorously support, as an HBCU leadership must.

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