The USA is home to 101 public and private Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Established before the enactment of the Civil Rights Act 1964, the law that finally provided African-Americans with federal legal protection against racial discrimination, these institutions were safe havens for Black students who often found themselves excluded from many of America’s other institutions of higher learning.

America’s first HBCU

America’s first HBCU, Cheney University of Pennsylvania, was set up in 1837 as the ‘African Institute’, then later the ‘Institute of Colored Youth’ and much later Cheyney University, by Richard Humphreys, a Quaker slave-owner who left $10,000 in his will for the creation of an institution to:

“Instruct the descendants of the African Race in school learning, in the various branches of the Mechanic Arts, trades and Agriculture, in order to prepare and fit and qualify them to act as teachers.”

Another well-known HBCU is Lincoln University, founded in 1854, which became the first degree-granting HBCU in the USA and which counts the first presidents of Nigeria and Ghana among its alumni. Indeed, Lincoln’s campus security office, ‘Azikiwe-Nkrumah Hall’, is named after them. Other notable Lincoln alumni include Thurgood Marshall, the first Black US Supreme Court justice, and the great poet, writer and Langston Hughes.

Single-sex HBCUs

There are also some single-sex HBCUs, like Morehouse College, founded for Black men in 1867 and the alma mater of many greats, including Martin Luther King Jr, and Spelman College, founded for Black women in 1881 and the alma mater of many icons such as Stacey Abrams. Many Black students look at their time at their respective HBCU with pride, from Kamala Harris and Taraji P. Henson to Ta-Nehisi Coates and DJ Envy.

And many HBCUs have long-running rivalries with one another, like Howard and Hampton who meet every year in a football match to decide who is the ‘Real HU’. In fact, some HBCU alumni even purport there to be a ‘Black Ivy League’- the crème de la crème of HBCUs- which are: Fisk, Dillard, Morehouse Tuskegee, Spelman, Hampton and Howard.

Whatever the case may be, HBCUs have long been known for having both excellent academic and extra-curricular programmes. For instance, Fisk University, founded in 1866, was and continues to be the home of the Fisk Jubilee Singers who put arranged spiritual music on the map in the nineteenth century and even performed for Queen Victoria in 1873.

The importance of HBCUs today

Indeed, due to the strength and historical importance of HBCUs, many continue to receive regular donations and federal funding in support of their work. Since 1990 Oprah Winfrey has spent at least $25 million to fund the education of over 400 young Black men at Morehouse and within recent years both Presidents Obama and Trump have dedicated millions of dollars in federal funding to support HBCUs.

And because of their strong reputations, HBCUs now not only attract Black students but students from many other backgrounds as well. Today some HBCUs, like West Virginia State University, have majority white students, and in 2008 Joshua Packwood made history as Morehouse College’s first white valedictorian. Notably, the 2017-2018 BET series ‘The Quad’ included various white characters, serializing what interactions between Black and non-Black students may be like at HBCUs.

However, aside from ‘The Quad’, HBCUs have featured in a lot of popular American media including classic films like Stomp The Yard, Drumline, School Daze and The Great Debaters. And of course, it’s hard to forget Beyoncé’s use of HBCU iconography in her game-changing concert film ‘Homecoming’ that premiered on Netflix in 2019…and on that note, I’m going to go and watch it again!