HBCU Event 1

AFRICANA STUDIES COLLOQUIUM

Join us for a panel discussion featuring several Cornell faculty who, as undergraduate or graduate students, attended HBCUs reflecting on questions related to the role of such institutions in their intellectual and personal development. This event will launch a series of dialogues on HBCUs in the Africana Center that will be continued in spring 2022.

Most HBCUs were founded in the wake of the Civil War and located primarily in the U.S. South with the mission of educating Blacks to whom predominately white colleges and universities were largely inaccessible. While to date they have been facing challenges in sustaining financial resources, they have continued to educate a racially diverse range of students and produced black college graduates who go on to earn Doctoral degrees in all the academic fields. They have educated noted black leaders and activists in the US and global Africa, including those linked to the civil rights movement, such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., John Lewis, Julian Bond, Marian Wright Edelman, Kwame Ture (formerly Stokely Carmichael), the first back supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first Presidents of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah and Nigeria, Nnamdi Azikiwe, acclaimed poet Langston Hughes, and Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison. More recently, they have also educated a number of leaders including actor Chadwick Boseman and activists at the vanguard of contemporary political movements advocating for social justice, from Stacey Abrams to Shaun King. Moreover, they also educated political leaders such as Rev. Raphael Warnock, who made history in being elected to the Senate in Georgia, and Kamala Harris, the nation’s first black woman vice president.

Panelists
Anne V. Adams
Carole Boyce Davies
Riché Richardson