Abstract

Excerpted From: Jennifer M. Smith and Elliot O. Jackson, Historically Black Colleges & Universities: A Model for American Education, 14 Florida A & M University Law Review 103 (Winter, 2021) (331 Footnotes) (Full Document)

Race and racism have shaped American education. Those factors continue to play chief roles in shaping American schools and in local, state, and federal involvement in education. Having an education is paramount to one being able to participate fully and equally in public and private life in America. In Brown, Chief Justice Warren stated:

Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments. Compulsory school attendance laws and the great expenditures for education both demonstrate our recognition of the importance of education to our democratic society. It is required in the performance of our most basic public responsibilities, even service in the armed forces. It is the very foundation of good citizenship. Today it is a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional training, and in helping him to adjust normally to his environment. In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.

As education became a priority in the United States, it did not prioritize education for African Americans.

Before the Civil War, the opportunity for Blacks to receive any education was virtually nonexistent as education for the enslaved was seen as a threat to slavery. Even after slavery was abolished, local, state, and federal governments still denied or severely limited the ability of Blacks to obtain an education because an educated Black person was still deemed a threat to the farcical belief in white superiority. Thus, historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) emerged in the mid-1800s to provide higher education to Blacks who were unwelcome in predominately white institutions (PWIs).

To qualify as an HBCU and receive federal funding, an institution must have served a majority Black population prior to 1964. Thus, once designated as an HBCU, the institution is always an HBCU, even if the HBCU now serves a majority white population. Today, 101 accredited HBCUs exist with the first, Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, having been established in 1837, even before the Civil War, to educate Blacks.

HBCUs emerged as a result of segregation, but they have not engaged in segregation. On the contrary, from their inception, HBCUs educated Black, white (often the poorer ones), Native American, and Asian students; were often created and led by both Blacks and whites; and were “more racially desegregated, with respect to their ... staff, than predominately white institutions (PWIs).” Although HBCUs emerged principally to educate Black students, the schools have always enrolled whites and students of other races, nationalities, cultures and ethnicities, and even have employed many non-Blacks as professors, and the diversity is ever-increasing. In 2018, non-Black students comprised twenty-four percent of enrollment at HBCUs, compared to fifteen percent in 1976, and that population includes white, Hispanic, Asian, Pacific Islander, and Native American.

Although linked by shared experiences of racism, Black people are not a monolithic group. There is great diversity among melanated people - Black people - in important identities such as cultures, ethnicities, ideologies, and ancestral nationalities. Thus, unlike PWIs, which - with few exceptions - prohibited Black students, diversity at HBCUs has always existed and been welcomed. From their founding, HBCUs created and exemplified the model of diversity and inclusion before that model was ever an institutional goal or aspiration in America and the world.

According to the Department of Education, HBCUs are a “vital resource in the nation's educational system” and have “played an historical role in enhancing equal educational opportunity for all students.” Of course, considering the underfunding of HBCUs, the educational opportunities were never equal and still are not. Nevertheless, HBCUs have been transformative for their students.

Studies have compared HBCU students to their counterparts at PWIs. [They] found that Black students attending PWIs have more negative experiences, suffer higher attrition rates, and lower academic success than their counterparts. Further, they argue that in contrast, these students at HBCUs experience better psychological adjustment and self image than those who attend PWIs. Blacks at HBCUs also have higher aspirations; many go on to attain doctoral degrees.

A recent study found that Black graduates of HBCUs are more likely to flourish in purpose and financial well-being than Blacks who did not attend HBCUs. The study also found that Blacks at HBCUs are more than twice as likely as Blacks at non-HBCUs to have experienced “a professor who cared about them as a person, a professor who made them excited about learning and a mentor who encouraged them to pursue their goals and dreams.”

Although HBCUs comprise only three percent of America's colleges and universities and enroll only ten percent of Black students, twenty to twenty-five percent of bachelor degrees earned by Black students are earned at HBCUs. As for careers, nearly 40 percent all Black congressional representatives, 12.5 percent of Black chief executive officers (CEOs), 40 percent of all Black engineers, 50 percent of Black teachers, 50 percent of Black professors at non-HBCUs, 50 percent of Black lawyers, 70 percent of Black veterinarians, 75 percent of Black military officers, 80 percent of Black judges, and up to 85 percent of Black medical doctors and dentists are graduates of HBCUs. Additionally, unlike Black students' experiences at PWIs, white students were often satisfied with their experiences at HBCUs, gained an appreciation for Black peers/classmates, and enjoyed amicable relationships with both Black and white faculty at HBCUs.

Notwithstanding the widespread, positive impact of HBCUs, HBCUs and other educational institutions for Blacks have always been underfunded as compared to education for whites. Thus, for African Americans, integration in education was not about blending the races but about the unequal funding allocated to Black institutions. That is, Blacks thought integration would provide access to equal resources for Black students.

In 1935, Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois, a Fisk University and Harvardtrained cum laude scholar and a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), originally opposed the establishment of Black schools, but later posited that “the Negro needs neither segregated schools nor mixed schools. What he needs is Education. What he must remember is that there is no magic, either in mixed schools or in segregated schools.” In 1955, a year after the Brown ruling, Zora Neale Hurston, an activist and widely acclaimed author, wrote to the Orlando Sentinel opining:

If there are not adequate Negro schools in Florida, and there is some residual, some inherent and unchangeable quality in white schools, impossible to duplicate anywhere else, then I am the first to insist that Negro children of Florida be allowed to share this boon. But if there are adequate Negro schools and prepared instructors and instructions, then there is nothing different except the presence of white people.

In 1976, Derrick Bell, activist, lawyer, and law professor, posited that the United States Supreme Court would have served Blacks better by enforcing the “equal” portion of the 1896 Plessy “separate but equal” ruling that allowed for segregation in public facilities, including schools. Desegregation did have a positive effect on Black and white children, but many Blacks concluded that integration was not the panacea that Blacks thought it would be.

For decades, studies, articles, and outcomes have highlighted the inequities in education for Blacks and whites. For instance, in 1982, Erwin Chemerinsky, lawyer, law professor, and law dean, criticized inequality in education. He stated that a dual system of education based on race must end and stated that segregation may be tolerable if schools were otherwise equal, but they are not, resulting in white students outperforming Black students.

Dr. Du Bois also accurately predicted that the South would not comply with the Brown ruling for years, “long enough to ruin the education of millions of black and white children.” The Brown desegregation ruling eventually brought funding, opportunities, and experiences, which had a positive impact on Black children's education. A recent study showed:

In the aftermath of Brown, it took considerable time before schools were substantially desegregated, but by the 1970s and 1980s there was noticeable desegregation of schools, which is also the time when the black-white test score gap closes. After 1980, the rate of desegregation slows to a near stop, and so does the closing of the black-white gap.

“Undoing the racism that muffles achievement requires teaching the scions of privilege who will likely end up running systems that fail students of color.” Thus, Black and brown school administrators and teachers are critical. In addition, a recent study showed that all students “have more favorable perception[s] ...” of teachers of color, in particular, Black and Latino teachers.

The unequal distribution of money and resources negatively impacted the education of Black students and still does today. In America, “predominantly white school districts get $23 billion more than their nonwhite peers, despite serving a similar number of children.” A recent educational report affirms:

But a single fact is clear - financially, it is far better in the United States to have the luck and lot to attend a school district that is predominantly white than one that enrolls a concentration of children of color. That is the inherent shame of the system we've built and one we haven't gone far enough to fix.

Clearly, white-dominated legislatures were adamant that schools be separate but not adamant that school funding be equal. The single factor of funding is critical at every level of education - unequal funding based on race has hindered Blacks' access to education, even though the law required impartial provision. This is American education past and present.

HBCUs are “[n]oted for their contributions in educating 'black, low-income and educationally disadvantaged Americans.”’ HBCUs successfully pour into America's most underprivileged students even with exiguous budgets. The sustainability of HBCUs evinces that those schools are not inherently unequal or inferior as they are often unfairly labeled, but that unequal funding based on race remains an issue for HBCUs. In 1935, Dr. Du Bois stated:

Howard, Fisk, and Atlanta are naturally unable to do the type and grade of graduate work which is done at Columbia, Chicago, and Harvard; but why attribute this to a defect in the Negro race, and not to the fact that the large white colleges have from one hundred to one thousand times the funds for equipment and research that Negro colleges can command?

HBCUs have led with a model of inclusion and rejected the possibility of becoming institutions of segregation, so as not to mimic the discriminatory PWIs, which refused to admit Black students solely due to their race, or that permitted Black students' admission but then treated them with disdain and hostility. HBCUs created educational environments that foster and promote learning conducive for all students. If HBCUs received funding commensurate with PWIs, HBCUs would be leading the charge as the American educational model for all students.

This article posits that HBCUs should be studied as a model for the American educational system. Part I explores the historical foundation and underfunding of HBCUs, including how and why they emerged. Part II examines the impactful HBCU model and why after over a century and a half HBCUs still matter. Part III discusses the efforts that undermine HBCUs, funding inequities, and why the inequities must be remedied. The article closes by discussing the current renaissance that HBCUs are experiencing because of the HBCU model, traversing through racial injustices against African Americans that ultimately affect HBCUs, and concluding that the HBCU model should be emulated as a model for American education.

[. . .]

HBCUs are on the upswing again. “The campuses that served as incubators for the Civil Rights Movement in the mid-20th century are experiencing something of a renaissance. Freshman enrollment is up at 40% of HBCU schools.” There is new interest from CEOs to private donors, who are learning about and understanding the outsized impact that HBCUs make to America and the world. college athletes who generate billions for PWIs, “while the HBCUs that some of [those athletes] socialize at flounder financially” are coming home to HBCUs. entrepreneurs are finding ways to financially pour into HBCUs because they “understand how vital the HBCU system is to the Black ecosystem.” Artists are creatively paying homage to HBCUs. Scholars with numerous college options are choosing HBCUs. PWI graduate programs are opening new opportunities for HBCU graduates. Innovative college course curriculums on HBCUs are emerging so that “HBCUs can rightfully move from the periphery of African-American history, to take their rightful place as a central part of American and educational History.”

HBCUs have mastered creating learning environments that develop greatness. History, studies, analyses, findings, reports, outcomes, opinions, experiences, and statistics show that with funding commensurate to PWIs, HBCUs would lead the charge as theAmerican educational model. “The question isn't why [HBCUs] still exist; the issue is really, how excellent can [they] be?”

Historically Black Colleges and Universities Matter.

Jennifer M. Smith is a professor at the Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University College of Law.

Elliot O. Jackson is a student at the Florida Agricultural & Mechanical University College of Law. He earned a B.S. degree from Fayetteville State University, where he was initiated into the Epsilon Beta Chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc. Southern Illinois University Law Journal