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Drs. Jelani Favors and Joshua Myers discussed their new books regarding the histories, legacies, and politics of HBCUs, Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
See/hear also our previous interviews and discussions with Dr. Favors regarding his new book and Dr. Myers on the legacy of Cedric Robinson.
Jared,
Another excellent program!
As a HBCU Grad and retiree (In Student Affairs), I found the conversation illuminating, inspiring and challenging to those of us who love our institutions while at the same time we remain realistic about their limitations. I continue to appreciate and am sometimes amazed at the resilience of HBCUs.
The circumstances of their survival explain, in part, the complex character of their institutional ‘conservatism,’ while they continue to generate, incubate and provide ‘shelter’ for the progressive elements that make me so proud.
What at first seems a negative and a contradiction seems to me, at least, clearly a necessary combination (conundrum?) to ensure institutional survival simultaneously with the flowering of the “community” that the panelists described.
Lasima tushinde mbilishaka! (We will win without a doubt!)
Damani Keene
“In this country, there’s no black space that compares to the campus of an HBCU. In the past few months, people have been referring them as the original ‘Wakanda” from “Black Panther”: Stanley Nelson from his film– [Tell Them We Are Rising.]
Beautiful campuses, indeed, but as jazz icon Thelonious Monk would say- “It’s an ugly beauty.” So where”s the my country tis of thee federal funding that would continue the beautiful future of many HBCUs?.
What is one to make of the controversial legacy of the nations first black president when it comes to federal treatment of the HBCUs
Just months after taking office in 2009, President Barack Obama did not push to renew a temporary $85 million pot of money earmarked for HBCU’s by his Republican predecessor George Bush.
The move by the new president left many black college leaders indignant.
“Why is it that a recalcitrant Bush would do more for HBCUs than an ostensibly sympathetic Obama would”? [ Julianne Malveaux, then president of North Carolina’s Bennett College. [ Michael A. Fletcher @ FletchPoint ].
There is the tradition of activism on HBCU campuses, lets not forget the role Morehouse College played in shaping Martin Luther King Jr. and his contemporaries. Also Mary Mcleod Bethune, the founder of what’s now Bethune- Cookman University & one of the chief architects of black higher education.”
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