HBCUs are nabbing awards, making history, and reaching record high enrollment. At ESSENCE, we always want to salute our historically Black colleges and universities for continuing to hold it down for the culture and Black academic achievement.
Black colleges and universities, like Morgan State (below) are seeing more students enrolled than ever before.
As a Houston ABC affiliate reports “[t]oday, there are 101 accredited HBCUs spanning 19 states and territories, educating about 300,000 of America’s 21 million college students. When HBCUs thrive, America thrives. According to the United Negro College Fund, currently, 25% of Black graduates with STEM degrees come from HBCUs.”
Carter has won twice for Best Costume Design. Yeah #OscarsSoWhite, but sometimes they get it right.
Miles, a Bowie State University student, absolutely stole the show during the game’s halftime performance, as she signed (and bopped) to Rihanna’s hits.
Morehouse students have been outspoken against plans for a massive public safety training site in Atlanta called “Cop City.”
A February forum on campus protesting Cop City highlighted their activist spirit.
Morehouse students are joined by Spellman students and faculty to protest Cop City, denounce police militarism, and call out Andre Dickins @andreforatlanta at school forum #StopCopCity. pic.twitter.com/ML5r1TpMKO
— Kamau Franklin (@kamaufranklin) February 3, 2023
According to a 2022 study by Stanford doctoral student Lavar Edmonds, Black students in North Carolina elementary schools “score[d] higher on end-of-grade math exams when assigned to an HBCU-trained teacher. Both Black and White HBCU trained teachers are more effective with Black students than their same-race, non-HBCU peers are.”
Academic performance wasn’t the only advantage Edmonds found. “Suggestive evidence indicates students with HBCU-trained teachers benefit from lower suspension rates, particularly Black boys. Effects are unexplained by differences in observable teacher characteristics; I argue they are at least partly the result of differential teacher education practices between colleges.”
According to a November 2022 study, for students who went to high school outside of the South, attending an HBCU “was protective against depressive symptoms 7 years later, and the association was strongest for those with higher baseline depressive symptoms.”
Their win at the tail end of Black History Month was the first conference championship for the country’s only all-Black college swim team in over three decades, where they beat the other teams by a margin of 169 points.
Tennessee State University’s marching band, Aristocrat of Bands, took home a Grammy in February 2023, beating out the legend Willie Nelson for Best Gospel Roots Album.
Nashville’s Fisk University is the first HBCU to have a women’s intercollegiate gymnastics team, paving the way for other Black schools throughout the country and inspiring baby Simone Bileses everywhere.
