SoHBCU is ourvillage’s dedicated space for research, commentary, policy, and storytelling focused on Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Formerly known as State of HBCUs, this work continues our commitment to exploring the history, impact, challenges, and possibilities of Black colleges and universities across the country. Be sure to follow our work on our Substack or on ourvillage website.

OVERVIEW

South Carolina is home to eight Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), including: Allen University, Benedict College, Claflin University, Clinton College, Denmark Technical College, Morris College, South Carolina State University, and Voorhees College. Together, they span more than 150 years of institutional history, enroll thousands of students across six cities, and have graduates making a difference in communities around the globe.

For more than 150 years, these institutions have served as engines of innovation, educational attainment, civic leadership, and Black institutional power in South Carolina and across the South.

Born largely in the aftermath of the Civil War and Reconstruction, HBCUs emerged to educate freedmen and women who had formerly been enslaved and systematically excluded from most American educational institutions that existed at the time. Many of these schools were founded through partnerships between Black churches, freedmen’s organizations, Northern missionary societies, and Black community leaders who understood education as central to freedom, citizenship, and economic self-determination.

What developed in South Carolina was one of the South’s most important Black educational ecosystems: a network of colleges that continues to shape the country’s social, economic, and political DNA. HBCUs are responsible for creating agents of change–graduates that went on to among other things–become trained teachers, ministers, civic leaders, and educated generations of Black professionals that helped build the Black middle class.

A CENTURY OF INSTITUTION BUILDING

These institutions responded to the immediate needs of the emerging Black communities. In doing so, they emerged as vital centers of political resistance and professional advancement. Their impact can be traced through generations of Black leaders shaped within these institutions. Folks like James E. Clyburn, a graduate from South Carolina State University, and one of the longest serving and most influential members of Congress. Civil rights activists like Cleveland Sellers emerged from the same institution and became closely tied to the student movement surrounding the 1968 Orangeburg Massacre. And educational innovators like Ernest A. Finney Jr., a graduate of Claflin University, the first Black Chief Justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court since Reconstruction.

The institutions themselves were often built under extraordinary conditions. Elizabeth Evelyn Wright founded Voorhees College in 1897 despite racial violence, financial scarcity, and intense political resistance. Leaders like Modjeska Monteith Simkins drew from the intellectual and organizing traditions rooted in South Carolina’s Black colleges while leading statewide efforts around voting rights, public health, and educational equity.

For more than a century, South Carolina’s HBCUs have functioned as lasting institutions of Black civic infrastructure — places where leadership, professional networks, political movements, and community advancement were cultivated across generations.

SOUTH CAROLINA’S EIGHT HBCUS AT A GLANCE

CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES

Despite chronic underfunding, aging infrastructure, and historic inequities in state and federal investment, South Carolina’s HBCUs continue to produce outsized social and economic impact. The history of South Carolina’s HBCUs is ultimately a story about institutional imagination under conditions of exclusion. These schools were created because Black communities understood that education was inseparable from freedom, citizenship, and power.

For more than a century, South Carolina’s HBCUs have educated generations of leaders while sustaining communities that larger systems often neglected or excluded. Their survival through Reconstruction, Jim Crow, desegregation, and chronic underinvestment is itself evidence of institutional resilience.

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APPENDIX.

OVERVIEW OF SOUTH CAROLINA’S EIGHT HBCUS

Allen University

Founded in 1870 by the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Allen University was established to educate newly freed African Americans during Reconstruction. Named after AME founder Richard Allen, the institution has long emphasized faith, leadership, and social justice.

Benedict College

Founded in 1870 by formerly enslaved woman Bathsheba Benedict through the American Baptist Home Mission Society, Benedict College became one of the South’s major centers for Black higher education. The college has historically focused on liberal arts, leadership development, and community engagement.

Claflin University

Founded in 1869, Claflin University is the oldest HBCU in South Carolina. Established by Methodist missionaries, Claflin became nationally recognized for academic excellence and remains one of the country’s leading private HBCUs. The university’s alumni include legal pioneer Ernest A. Finney Jr., whose career symbolized the dismantling of barriers that institutions like Claflin were created to confront.

Clinton College

Founded in 1894 by the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, Clinton College has historically emphasized religious education, teacher preparation, and community uplift. Its mission has remained closely tied to faith-based educational leadership.

Denmark Technical College

Founded in 1947, Denmark Technical College is South Carolina’s only public two-year HBCU. Originally created to expand vocational and technical education opportunities for Black students during segregation, the college continues to focus on workforce development and technical training.

Morris College

Founded in 1908 by the Baptist Educational and Missionary Convention of South Carolina, Morris College has long served students from rural and underserved communities while emphasizing liberal arts education and leadership development.

South Carolina State University

Established in 1896 as the state’s land-grant institution for Black students under segregation, South Carolina State University became one of the South’s most important public HBCUs. The university played a defining role in the Civil Rights Movement, particularly through student activism connected to the Orangeburg Massacre. It also produced national leaders like James E. Clyburn and Cleveland Sellers, reflecting the university’s long tradition of civic leadership and political engagement.

Voorhees College

Founded in 1897 by Elizabeth Evelyn Wright, a student of Booker T. Washington, Voorhees College was created to provide industrial and academic education for Black students in rural South Carolina. Wright built the institution under extraordinary conditions of racial hostility and economic scarcity, making Voorhees itself a lasting monument to Black institutional vision and self-determination.

Welcome to SoHBCU! SoHBCU is our dedicated space for research, storytelling, and policy updates focused on Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Here, you can expect thoughtful, insightful, and engaging analysis of the people, institutions, and movements shaping Black higher education.

You may remember us as State of HBCUs. For years, State of HBCUs explored the challenges, culture, history, and possibilities surrounding Black colleges and universities. That work now continues here through SoHBCU. In many ways, SoHBCU is both a continuation and a play on that original name. “So” is short for “State of”, creating space for: SoHBCU.

We aim to examine and document the institutions that have shaped Black intellectual, civic, and cultural life across the country and around the globe!

Whether we are writing about funding inequities, student movements, HBCU history, public policy, alumni legacies, or the future of Black higher education, our mission remains the same: to tell the stories, elevate the conversations, and explore the issues shaping HBCUs and the communities they serve.

Many of the stories and reflections longtime readers may remember from State of HBCUs are now part of this new home. Readers can revisit pieces like:

• Zora Neale Hurston: The Howard University Years

• 7 Books Every HBCU Student Should Read

• Heart and Soul of the Movement

These essays, along with future work, reflect the spirit of SoHBCU: thoughtful, historically grounded, community-centered, and unafraid to ask difficult questions about Black education and institutional life.

We are excited to continue building this work with you.

We are SoHBCU!

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Editor’s Note: This piece was originally published as part of our stateofhbcus blog series and is shared here as part of the SoHBCU archive

Were there white founders of Historically Black Colleges and Universities? Yes. Does this fact contradict the legacy and mission(s) of these colleges? Absolutely not. Following the Civil War (1865), the only entity with the resources and financial backing that could help accomplish this goal was the Freedmen’s Bureau. Officers of the Bureau by nature were ex-Union officers, like Oliver O. Howard and Samuel Armstrong. Were some of these officers self-seeking, sure they were. However, the majority were well-intending Christians, honestly interested in equipping freedmen with the tools and training to elevate themselves socially and economically. A major proponent of this idea was Samuel Armstrong.

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Howard, director of the Freedmen’s Bureau appointed Samuel Armstrong to lay the foundations of Hampton Institute. Armstrong was born in Wailuku, Hawaii, to American missionaries, Richard Armstrong and Clarissa Chapman. It was here in Hawaii that Armstrong was introduced to missionary work. A major influence in his life was his father, as minister of public instruction, the elder Armstrong was in charge of building 500 Hawaiian free schools and schools of higher educational work. This example left a lasting imprint on the young Samuel. Of this impression he recalled, “it meant something to the Hampton School, and perhaps to the ex-slaves of America, that, from 1820-1860, the distinctly missionary period, there was worked out in the Hawaiian Islands the problem of emancipation, enfranchisement, and Christian Civilization of a dark-skinned Polynesian people in many respects like the Negro race.”[1]

Armstrong graduated from Williams College in 1862, and by August of that same year entered the Army as Captain of the 125^th New York Volunteers. It was here that Armstrong was first introduced to the Black race, taking command of the Ninth U.S. Colored Troops. His first impressions were mixed. In a letter to Archibald Hopkins in December 1862, Armstrong wrote, “I am a sort of Abolitionist, but I have not learned to love the Negro.” This comment is important in gaining a complete picture of Armstrong. Critics have categorized Armstrong as a racist, who was only interested in developing submissive industrial workers. While it is true that Armstrong’s familiarity with Blacks before founding Hampton Institute was minimal, Armstrong’s perceptions of race rapidly evolved, maturing during his tenure as commander of Black troops.[2]

By January 1863, his views were steadily changing. He wrote, “as Lieutenant Colonel and Colonel of the Ninth and Eighth Regiments of U.S. Colored Troops… my experiences convinced me of the excellent qualities and capacities of the freedmen. Their quick response to good treatment and to discipline was a constant surprise.” Armstrong was more ignorant than racist. Certainly, his two years experience working with Black troops completely altered his unenlightened and previous prejudices toward Blacks. He concluded that their enslaved conditions were only preconceived barriers, and that they deserved as good a chance at making their own way as any other people. By September 1863, Armstrong had committed himself to assisting freedmen in finding a place in American society. As George Foster Peabody, the second president of Hampton Institute, recalled of Armstrong in 1918, “the work to which his later life was dedicated was not based on emotional sympathies, nor on traditions of abolitionism but on a maturing view of life and duty.”[3]

Armstrong was responsible for approximately 35,000 free Blacks, primarily for overseeing the distribution of nearly 20,000 rations per day. His duties also consisted of visiting and reporting on the conditions of the freedmen, reuniting scattered families, settling legal disputes, and maintaining overall order. Armstrong observed that “trouble was expected but there was not a ripple of it… their resource was surprising; the Negro in a tight place is a genius.” These conclusions pushed Armstrong more and more to the idea of creating a permanent school for the purposes of educating the freedmen.[4]

After the war however, Armstrong found himself unemployed. Armstrong eagerly wrote a letter to Oliver Otis Howard, soliciting work. Howard obliged. Armstrong was placed over the Fifth sub-district of Virginia, covering ten counties, with its headquarters at Hampton. It was here that Armstrong united with the efforts of Mary Peake, and the “Standard of Excellence” was put into motion.

Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute was initially created to fulfill a specific need as well as to meet a unique social and economic condition. Armstrong’s plan for educating Blacks was, “to train selected Negro Youths who should go out and teach and lead their people, first by example, by getting land and homes; to give them not a dollar that they could earn for themselves; to teach respect for labor, to replace stupid drudgery with skilled hands, and in this way to build up an industrial system for the sake, not only of self-support and intelligent labor, but also for the sake of character.” Armstrong was vehemently committed to community building and providing the means for Blacks to become self-sufficient.[5]

For Armstrong, self-sufficiency could only be accomplished by first establishing strong examples of Black independence. Armstrong elaborated on this concept stating, “it was to be an institution where “in the home, or the farm, or the schoolroom, students were to have the opportunity to learn the three great lessons of life, how to love, how to labor, and how to teach others.” It was to be a socially conservative, yet an academically progressive Institute. Meaning, as students matriculated through Hampton, the wider American society would be forced to accommodate, politically, economically, and socially to the emerging “new Negro,” thereby forcing the creation of new opportunities and upward mobility. Through this progression, Hampton would gradually come to include more and more academic majors to the curriculum in supplementation of manual training. Armstrong wrote, “this Institute should, I think, be polytechnic, growing step by step, adding new industries as the old ones shall become established and remunerative.”[6]

By 1880, Armstrong had accomplished one of his primary goals of encouraging land and home-ownership, as over 60 percent of graduates from Hampton owned their own homes and cultivated their own farms. Indeed Armstrong’s approach to eradicating social problems in America may have had flaws, but his methods yielded unwavering results. One of his most significant contributions manifested out of the work of one of his students, a graduate by the name of Booker T. Washington. Washington arrived at Hampton in 1872, and grew to embody the potentiality of what Armstrong envisioned. Arguably the brightest student to graduate from Hampton, Armstrong contended, “If Hampton had trained no other student in the seven years of its existence, the one now coming to the platform would justify all the costs and the sacrifices entailed by its founders.”[7] This prophecy proved true in ways Armstrong never imagined.

A year later (1881) Washington founded Tuskegee Institute. However, none of this would have been possible without the initial help of Armstrong, Howard and the Bureau. Whether we are looking at the creation of HBCUs or the Civil Rights Movement, it is important to understand the dynamics of interracial cooperation. Don’t get it twisted, Blacks have always acted as agents and have been autonomous, however, we must stop criticizing institutions/people who have benefited from the assistance of whites. We can always accomplish more together than we will apart.

[1] The Armstrong League of Hampton Workers, Memories of Old Hampton (Hampton: The Institute Press, 1909), 1.

[2] Peabody, Education for Life, 78.

[3] Armstrong, Memories of Old Hampton, 6; Peabody, Education for Life, 78.

[4] Armstrong, Memories of Old Hampton, 7.

[5] Peabody, Education for Life, 99.

[6] Ibid., 108, 116.

[7] Arna Bontemps, Young Booker: Booker T. Washington’s Early Days (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1972), 57.

Editor’s Note: This piece was originally published as part of our stateofhbcus blog series and is shared here as part of the SoHBCU archive.

One of the most important yet understated contributions of HBCUs were the emergence of Black law schools. Through Black law schools like Howard, Texas Southern, FAMU and NCCU, African Americans have actively fought for legal and economic empowerment, equality and better opportunities. Through these institutions and the efforts of their graduates, Blacks have been given a proportionate chance to gain admittance to law school, succeed in the professional sphere, and to practice law in America. This realization should not be taken lightly as Blacks are disproportionately victims of the judicial system, but misrepresented when it comes to having Black representation.

For African Americans, men like Charles Hamilton Houston, William Hastie, Fred Gray and Thurgood Marshall paved the path to the legal profession. These great African Americans, although Hastie and Houston were fortunate to receive their law degrees from Harvard, still faced immense discrimination and subsequently could only find jobs practicing or teaching through various avenues provided through HUSL and other Black law schools. These men took matters into their own hands, taking their talents to Black schools of law, the results were epic.

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These schools also provided African American women the opportunities to enter the legal profession as well. One of the first [of the women graduates] was Charlotte E. Ray (class of 1872). Although Ray and other [women] graduates successfully passed the bar, they have not received much public notoriety as their male counterparts. However, many women continued to represent the name of HUSL and Black lawyers, women like Mary S. Carey, Ida G. Platt and Lutie A. Lytle.

In 1939, the North Carolina College for Negroes was awarded a charter from the general assembly for the purposes of establishing a law school. NCC served a unique function, offering African Americans who were previously barred from enrolling in nearby Duke or Chapel Hill a golden opportunity to receive a legal education. Since its founding, NCCU’s equivalent to Charles H. Houston, Dean Raymond C. Pierce has cultivated one of the highest achieving law schools along the Atlantic, [B]lack or white.

One of the most important organizations to emerge out of the Black law school movement was the Legal Defense Fund. Founded by Houston and others from Howard U, the LDF has been America’s legal counselor on issues of race, or as they viewed it “the legal arm of the civil rights movement.” Without these HBCU legal graduates, there would be no Murray v. Pearson, Sweatt v. Painter or Brown v. Board. Arguably the most famous case, Brown v. Board was led by double HBCU grad Thurgood Marshall (Lincoln, Howard.)

Today HBCUs remain an invaluable source for producing Black lawyers and Black legal professors. A study conducted by Ronald Ehrenberg details specifically how these schools remain a necessity. Let us always support our institutions and their historical legacies.

Editor’s Note: This piece was originally published as part of our stateofhbcus blog series. This piece includes our updated list and also includes a new introduction!

For the past several years, Black history has been under attack. Across the country many conservative folks have fought and are actively fighting to ban books that celebrate our history and tell our stories. One of the reasons we launched this Substack, is to ensure that our history is told and that we tell our stories unfiltered and authentically.

It was at Hampton University, where I was first introduced to books such as Ivan Van Sertima’s They Came Before Columbus, George James’, Stolen Legacy, and WEB DuBois’s, Souls of Black Folk. At HBCUs, students are awakened to a Black consciousness–one that will help them as they matriculate through their lives once they leave those sacred spaces.

Back in 2013, we published a blog, 7 Books Every HBCU Student Should Read. The purpose was to share some of the most important books I read during my time in undergrad and grad school. These books were instrumental to my understanding of the Black America and of the global Diaspora.

Given the social and political climate of the day, we thought now would be a good time to refresh that list. I hope this list can replicate the loud cries of Dap from School Daze, reminding us to Wake Up to a deeper consciousness. So, if you know of current students that should read these, feel free to share! Or even if you are just looking for something new to read, check these out! Let us know what you would add!

1. W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk. A.C. McClurg & Co., 1903.

“The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.”

The Souls of Black Folk - Google Books

2. Paula Giddings, Ida: A Sword Among Lions. Amistad, 2008.

“The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.”

Ida: A Sword Among Lions - Google Books

3. Peter Linebaugh, and Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra. Beacon Press, 2000.

“These same rulers found in the many-headed hydra an antithetical symbol of disorder and resistance, a powerful threat to the building of state, empire, and capitalism.”

Beacon Press: The Many-Headed Hydra

4. Robert J. Norrell, Up from History: The Life of Booker T. Washington. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009.

“Booker would shamelessly curry the favor of white people, but he quietly arranged his affairs to acquire as much independence as possible.”

Up from History - Google Books

5. Howard Thurman, For the Inward Journey. Harper & Brothers, 1961.

“Often, to be free means the ability to deal with the realities of one’s own situation so as not to be overcome by them.”

For the Inward Journey - Google Books

6. Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God. J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1937.

“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”

Their Eyes Were Watching God | National Museum of African American History and Culture

7. John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans. Alfred A. Knopf, 1947.
   
   From Slavery to Freedom - Google Books

“African American history is not a separate history but an integral part of American history.”

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Editor’s Note: This piece was originally published as part of our stateofhbcus blog series and is shared here as part of the SoHBCU archive.

In 2003, Valerie Boyd published an article in the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education entitled, “Zora Neale Hurston: The Howard University Years.” On February 12, 2022, Boyd joined went on to join the Ancestors. In a write up on the impact she left behind, the National Endowment for the Humanities recalled this amazing quote on her literary philosophy:

“The most important lesson I’ve learned as a storyteller–as both a writer and an editor–is to be quiet enough to let others speak. Even if I am the narrator, or the lead storyteller, every character has a story, every person in the room has a voice–and every story deserves space to unfurl, every voice deserves a listener. My job is to listen, to amplify, to synthesize, to distill.”

This blog is our attempt to amplify those words and to allow her words to lift up Hurston’s story and to provide space for readers to listen and learn. And when you finish be sure to go read Boyd’s biography of Hurston, Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston.

Enjoy!

Zora Knew all about Howard’s reputation for scholastic excellence. She knew that it was for Negroes what Harvard was for whites, and that it was a gathering place for “Negro money, beauty, and prestige,” as she put it. She also had heard about the elegant clothes Howard students wore and the elite fraternities and sororities that held sway on campus. Zora believed Howard was out of her league, and said so. But her friends, believing otherwise, tamped down Zora’s doubts and stoked her ambition.

On December 12, 1918, listing 1663 Evergreen Avenue in Jacksonville as the address of her parent or guardian, Zora enrolled in the academy, where she took classes in history, Latin, English and physical geography. After finishing her prepatory coursework, Zora finally earned her high school diploma in May 1919 from Howard Academy. She went directly into college classes that fall.

At her first college assembly, Zora was moved by the stately music, the platform packed with distinguished faculty and the hundreds of students standing shoulder to shoulder with her. Misty-eyed, she whispered to the spirit of Howard University:

“You have taken me in. I am a tiny bit of your greatness. I swear to you that I shall never make you ashamed of me.”

Zora never let any grade slip below a C so grateful was she to be at Howard. Every time an assembly at the chapel closed with the singing of the alma mater, Zora was awash with pride: “My soul stood on tiptoe and stretched up to take in all that it meant,” she would remember.” “So I was careful to do my class work and be worthy to stand there under the shadow of the hovering spirit of Howard. I felt the ladder under my feet.

“There were these three sororities,” explained one of Hurston’s Howard acquaintances, Ophela Settle Egypt. “The AKA’s (who really could dress beautifully), the Deltas (light skinned), and the Zetas (it didn’t matter how you looked as long as you had brains). I had enough brains to get into Zeta. Zora Neale Hurston was there and she was a Zeta.” Still, even among a group of women reputed to be brainy, Zora stood apart.

In the 1923 Howard University yearbook, Zora contributed a couple of tongue-in-cheek pieces: “A Chapter From the Book of Life” and “An Academic Nightmare.” She was listed as a member of the Stylus, Zeta Phi Beta, and the Howard Players- the campus theatrical company. “Zora’s greatest ambition,” the yearbook divulged,

“is to establish herself in Greenwich Village where she may write stories and poems and live as an unrestrained Bohemian.”

After graduating from Howard, Hurston went on to become one of the most prolific writers of the Harlem Renaissance. Hurston’s affinity for Black Education and higher education, first indoctrinated at Howard, remained with her for the rest of her life. Hurston stood in adamant opposition to the Brown v. Board case, arguing: “The whole matter revolves around the self-respect of my people. How much satisfaction can I get from a court order for somebody to associate with me who does not wish me near them?... “Thems my sentiments and I am sticking by them. Growth from within. Ethical and cultural desegregation. It is a contradiction in terms to scream race pride and equality while at the same time spurning Negro teachers and self-association. That old white mare business can go racking down the road for all I care.”

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Editor's Note: This piece was originally published as part of our stateofhbcus blog series and is shared here as part of the SoHBCU archive.

Two nights after peacefully demonstrating for the right to bowl in a segregated Orangeburg, S.C. bowling alley, Robert Lee Davis lay on the blood-filled campus infirmary grasping for life. Years later he recalled:

“The sky lit up. Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! And students were hollering, yelling and running. I went into a slope near the front end of the campus, and I kneeled down. I got up to run, and I took one step that’s all I can remember. I got hit in the back.”

Davis was one of the fortunate survivors that night, now remembered as the Orangeburg Massacre, which took place on February 8, 1968 on the campus of South Carolina State University. Twenty-seven other students shot that night survived. Three students including, Sam Hammond, Delano Middleton, and Henry Smith did not. These students gave their lives for the movement. Undoubtedly, the legacy of students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) is intrinsically linked to the success of the Civil Rights Movement.

On April 15, 1960, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. addressed a crowd of over 200 students on the campus of Shaw University. Speaking at the founding conference of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), King concluded, “The youth must take the freedom struggle into every community in the South without exception.” By 1960, young Black students attending Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) operated as navigators of the rising tide of vast social and political change sweeping the nation. Although the juxtaposition of HBCUs into the Civil Rights narrative is complex, fluid, and understated, such institutions undoubtedly constituted the heart and soul of the Movement.

HBCUs served as institutions of solidarity. Dorm rooms were transformed into meeting locations; quads became rallying centers, chapel basements transformed into training grounds for non-violent protests, and campuses banded together creating an intricate system of social networks. Moreover, these institutions served as breeding grounds for the surfacing generation of Black leaders.

Students attending HBCUs such as King, Morehouse College, c/o 1948; Diane Nash, Fisk University, (entered fall 1959, received an honorary degree 2009); and Stokely Carmichael, Howard University, c/o 1964, emerged as key fixtures within the movement.

Preceded by his father and maternal grandfather, King’s entrance into Morehouse as a fifteen year old teenager, signaled the third generation of Kings to attend the school. Of his Morehouse experience King recalled, “As soon as I entered college, I started working with the organizations that were trying to make racial justice a reality.” High academic expectations and personal relationships also influenced King. There he was introduced to Henry David Thoreau’s essay on “Civil Disobedience.” He also forged lasting relationships with prominent leaders such as professor of philosophy and religion, George Kelsey, and Morehouse President, Benjamin Mays. King’s Morehouse experiences brought him face to face with pressing social issues of the day where he “felt a sense of responsibility,” one which he “could not escape.”

Further north in Washington, D. C. students at Howard University continued to make their voices heard. Out of the tradition of Ray Logan, Charles Hamilton Houston, and Thurgood Marshall, emerged a new group of students interested in creating new methods of combating Jim Crow. It was an environment ripe for innovation, intellectual curiosity and social antagonism. It was here where King, amongst many other students, heard President Mordecai Johnson lecture on civil disobedience and Gandhi. A few years later in 1960, a young Trinidadian named Stokely Carmichael moved into Howard University’s Drew Hall.

At Howard, Stokely joined a diverse student body, which included foreign students from Africa and the Caribbean. As a student, Stokely fell under the tutelage of esteemed scholars such as Toni Morrison and Sterling Brown. His days at Howard were filled with activism and intellectual exchange. Many of his peers spent countless nights at his Euclid street apartment formulating the blueprint for combating inequality. Before graduation in 1964, Stokely joined the Nonviolent Action Group (NAG), the Howard branch of the SNCC, and marched with a host of leaders including the likes of Bayard Rustin.

Stokely, like many of his peers, refused to conform to the social stigmata which required them to be “nice, neat, clean, honest, and polite.” According to Stokely, students felt propelled as they, “grew more confident in our organizing skills, that we students could organize effective pressure inside the nation’s capitol, in international forums, and before the world media, to ensure that the U.S. government met its obligations to black education.”

Stokely recalled:

“There can be no question as to the importance of the Howard experience in my formative life, but by far the most important element of that experience—morally, politically, culturally, and even emotionally—was the movement.”

In similar fashion to Howard students, students across the nation at HBCUs were having much success organizing. Still, not all schools were able to keep pace with more progressive schools such as Howard and Shaw. State-dependent Southern HBCUs, beholden to state funds, and attempting to maintain a respectable image blacklisted would-be student activists. Felton Clarke, President of Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for example, expelled roughly fifty student activists including H. “Rap” Brown. Undeterred, Brown persisted in his efforts, joining Stokely and others in D.C. as members of SNCC.

Holistically, the rising tides of student activism at HBCUs were irreversible. HBCUs from Texas to D.C. with or without support from administration contributed in some extent to the movement. King recalled, “During the sit-in phase, when a few students were suspended or expelled, more than one college saw the total student body involved in a walkout protest.” He concluded, “Seldom, if ever, in American history had a student movement engulfed the whole student body of a college.”

The cultural and political space provided by HBCUs casts students together in a way that could sustain growing momentum for the movement. In this space, they coalesced into a more organized, militant agent of social change. King wrote:

Out of this space emerged SNCC at Shaw University; the February First Movement at North Carolina A&T; and the Nashville Student Movement at Fisk University. King characterized the impact of these moments best:

“In 1960 an electrifying movement of Negro students shattered the placid surface of campuses and communities across the South. The young students of the South, through sit-ins and other demonstrations, gave America a glowing example of disciplined, dignified non-violent action against the system of segregation.”

For additional reading material check out:

• Clayborne Carson, The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr, 2001. Grand Central Publishing.

• Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker & the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision, 2003. University of North Carolina Press.

We will be relaunching our State of HBCUs blog here as “SoHBCU”. Check back soon for updates!