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The HBCU: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

The existence and contribution of the HCBUs in the history of U S higher education are undeniable. The role and function of these unique institutions, however, have always been and are today the objects of controversy and debate. Since the founding of Cheney State University in 1837 to the present, there have been threats to the HBCUs that have forced them to examine their role and function with special care and candor. Looking back at a few instances when these institutions were particularly challenged can provide a useful framework for reflecting on the then, now and tomorrow of the HCBU and higher education for Blacks in U. S. society. The dilemma surrounding the HBCU has traditionally been posed around three interrelated questions: Should the HBCU exist? What kind of education should it provide? How should the HBCU relate to the dominant political, economic and social environment that prevails in U. S. society? The leading thinkers on higher education for Black Americans have attempted to answer those questions. The Black Titan thinker, W. E. B. DuBois, leaves no doubt in the minds of anyone about the relevance and importance of the HBCU to Blacks in the U. S. when he declared that "had it not been for the Negro schools and colleges, the Negro would to all intents and purposes, have been driven back to slavery" (DuBois, 1935). In his landmark study, An American Dilemma, to which several leading black scholars contributed their research, Gunnar Myrdal viewed the origin of the development of higher education opportunity for Black Americans as a manifestation of the overwhelming interest among freed Blacks for education and of the impact and financial support for higher learning provided by the northern missionaries and industrial philanthropists. That this effort was tolerated after the Restoration by southern "liberals" he attributed to the fact that they "never had the nerve to make of the Negro education an accomplished instrument to keep Negroes in their caste status" (Myrdal 1944, Vol. II. p. 896). The less than enthusiastic "liberal" support he attributed to at least a partial allegiance to the so-called "American creed and egalitarian virtues on the part of some southern state and municipal authorities" despite the rabid radical racists who considered any education for Blacks a threat to the maintenance of their white dominant racially stratified social system. The attitude of the "liberal" southerner was quite simple and clear. The freedmen might have schools and colleges, but the education must remain poor and bad. The graduates of these colleges could contribute in a proscribed way to the well being of the New South, but not concern themselves with "rights" or pose a threat to the dominance of white labor. Northern philanthropists and missionary associations were not prohibited from developing private Black Colleges so long as these institutions would accommodate the dominant/subordinate relationship between Whites and Blacks in the South. After 1890, a separate group of publicly supported land grant and state normal institutions would be established for Blacks. (Twenty-eight years earlier President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Morrill Land Grant College Act of 1862 after President James Buchanan had vetoed the bill several times before). White boards and state legislatures, however, would control the Land Grant Colleges and normal institutions for Blacks. Given the fearful reaction among Whites to growing black dominance during Reconstruction and the virulent white racism of "Jim Crow" at and after the turn of the century, Myrdal wondered that southern white authorities did not attempt to eliminate statutory rights of Blacks to an education altogether. In spite of the ambivalence and outright opposition to their existence, HBCUs continued to be founded and spread throughout the South and in parts of the North. …