Mood Magazine Fall 2022

note from the editor

HELLO!

Thanks for tuning in! I have created MOOD Magazine as something to learn more when it comes to designing a magazine. I have some experience working with a team and having inputs from other people but to actually create something on my own was challenging. Some days, I did want to give up but I perservered and continued to design. To my readers, I hope you enjoy ready and looking at the pictures I have personally selected for the Fall issue. Thanks again!

Peace and Love,

Tiffany

Madeline

"Love that responds to human needs in an unexpected or unmerited way."

In Films and on TV, a New Openness to Natural Black Hairstyles

The relationship between characters and their Afro-textured hair has become a focus of directors and stylists, who are mindful of Hollywood’s restrictive past.

By Tiffany Martinbrough

On the recent series fina le of “black-ish,” an ar ray of Black hairstyles was on display: corn rows, box braids, sponge-brushed curls, twists and Afro puffs. All were worn by the castjust as they had been during the ABC show’s eight-year run. The series had al ways depicted Black hair with pride, intentionally featuring it as a commonality of Blackness. Take “Hair Day,” the “black-ish” episode dedicated to the complexities of Black hair. Culturally specific top ics like wash day, touch-ups and the myriad hairstyles that Black women wear are highlighted in dance and song, evoking warm memories of the beauty salon. For those familiar with the subject, it’s a joyful repre sentation of the culture. For those unfamiliar, it’s a detailed examina tion of all that is Black hair, from the maintenance to the sagas of detan gling, conditioning and having hair done by Mom. As Jill Scott sings in the episode, “Wear a silk bonnet and grease it at night and don’t let them pull your edges too tight!”

For the creator of “black-ish,” Ken ya Barris, hair was its own char

acter. It’s “such an incredible differentiator between us and mainstream America,” he ex plained in an interview, adding, “That’s why when we take our power back, why we do Bantu knots, why we do dookie braids, why we do braids. We’re celebrat ing our difference.”

Black, or Afro-textured, hair has always been at the forefront of African American identity, but its relationship to mainstream America and Hollywood has been complicated. It’s something the current generation of stylists are acutely aware of as they go about their work on shows and films like “black-ish,” “Insecure,” “The Hard er They Fall” and “King Richard.” Araxi Lindsey, the head hairstyl ist for “black-ish” during its first six seasons and a member of the team that won an Emmy for the contemporary looks featured on “Hair Day,” said she was happy to be part of a series that reflected the relationship between Black women and their tresses. The series showed that men “can love their wives with natural-textured hair, that a young boy can fall in

Our hair is such an important thing because at one point we tried to assimilate. We tried to straighten it, we conked it.” Natural styles, associated with how hair had been worn during enslavement, were deemed unsophisticated.

love with a girl with Afro-textured hair,” she said, adding, “I can’t wait for it to be normalized that we can wear our natural hair, not wigs and weaves, that we can celebrate the hair that naturally comes out of our scalp.”

From onscreen images of African Americans as minstrels to white actors in blackface, Black lives in the early 20th century were rarely projected in a positive light. Black people fought those negative caricatures by construct ing a version of Blackness that appeared more palatable to whites. This new image upended stereo types by celebrating the accom plishments that many Black people reached against tremendous odds. The goal was to achieve a kind of respectability, gaining

acceptance into critical areas of society, both economic and polit ical, to which African Americans had been denied. This was essen tially a survival tactic while at the same time redefining a people. Black hair, which Black people as far back as American slavery had subjected to a variety of unorth odox and desperate straightening techniques, was a key ingredient in this rebranding.

As Ayana D. Byrd and Lori L. Tharps explain in “Hair Story: Un tangling the Roots of Black Hair in America,” in their quest for the American dream “one of the first things Blacks had to do was make white people more comfortable with their very presence.” The au thors write that education “made little difference if a person looked too ‘African.’ Kinky hair, wide noses and full lips translated to ‘ignorant’, ‘uncivilized’ and ‘infan tile.’ So Blacks did what they could to emulate European standards of beauty.”

Or as Barris put it, “Our hair is such an important thing because at one point we tried to assimilate. We tried to straighten it, we conked it.” Natural styles, associated with how hair had been worn during enslavement, were deemed unsophisticated. As the Great Migration took hold, Af rican Americans were becoming more cosmopolitan, and their coif fures reflected that transformation. Afro-textured hair was country, straight hair was chic. Conse quently, for women especially, Afro-textured styles were widely frowned upon, while straighter ones were regarded as more appro priate by Americans, both Black and white.

Such images became ex pected, and ultimately required,

for Black women onscreen. And those preferences, reflected by Hollywood in its casting, persisted into the 21st century. Lindsey has been styling Black hair on film and television sets for more than 25 years. When she began her career in the 1990s, natural hairstyles were not favored for Black actors, especially women. “If they were going out for a role, they couldn’t wear their hair natural,” she said. “If you wore your hair in locks or braids, you would be looked at as an outcast. So you had a lot of women with tight, Afro-textured hair wanting these silky-straight wigs and weaves.”

She noted that many of the roles offered to actors with nat ural hairstyles were often dere licts or villains. The choices for Black women were simple: wear a straightened look to get the part, be cast as a criminal or, worse, don’t get cast at all. (For Black men, a very short cropped hairdo would suffice.) It would take de cades for Black stars in Hollywood to demand the freedom to wear their hair as they chose, especially when it came to playing a lead or a romantic interest.

As the hairstylist for Issa Rae, the creator and star of the dramedy “Insecure,” Felicia Leath erwood has seen firsthand how important such choices are to viewers. Rae, playing a romantic lead, wore plenty of natural hair styles, her Afro-textured looks constant and unabashed — one of the many reasons the series was groundbreaking.

“People were writing me, ‘I just watch the show for the hair,’” Leatherwood recalled. “I said, ‘Wow, I didn’t even know the hair had that impact on people.’ They were like, ‘Yeah, I was waiting to

see what her hair was going to do.’ Or, ‘I got my work hairstyles off the show’ and ‘I did my daughter’s hair like that.’ I didn’t even realize the impact of her hair until Twitter showed up.” Leatherwood said her job as a hairstylist is to provide a sense of confidence and foster ideas of Black beauty using textured hair. “My intention is to make sure that we recognize the queen or the king in us, we recognize the royalty through the hairstyles,” she said, adding that her work was more about “instilling self-esteem in terms of my community and my ancestry.” This commitment was reflected in the variety of everyday styles she created for Rae, looks that were meant to showcase the versatility of Black women’s hair. On “Insecure,” she said, “I got lucky with being able to just create from my own imagination and without any pushback.” Instead, Rae and the show’s other writers and producers were supportive, with especially positive reactions to the star’s natural looks on set. “This was one of my joys,” Leath erwood said, adding, “Even the men would come and say her hair looks really nice.”

The very act of presenting Black hair can be powerful in it self. “Hair is an expression of who we are and how far we’ve come. It’s our legacy,” said Reinaldo Marcus Green, director of the biopic “King Richard,” about the father of the tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams. Throughout the movie, the young actresses playing the Williams sisters display a variety of cornrow and braided looks, com mon styles for African American girls. The athletes were first intro duced to America as they looked in their everyday lives:

unapologetically wearing beaded braids. A look that would become the sisters’ signature around the world was an African American tradition.

The director recalled a scene in “King Richard,” set before a big match, when their mother, Ora cene Price, is braiding Venus’s hair and reminding her daughters to never lose sight of their pride in being Black and in who they are. “Hair is one form of our expres sion,” Green said, “and it’s won derful that it’s on full display in our film.”

That scene presented a tender moment between a Black mother and daughter: Venus (Saniyya Sidney) sitting patiently as her mother braids. A few minutes later, Venus heads to the court, her white-beaded braids swinging in slow motion.

“I don’t know how many people have texted me about when she came out with those braids,” Green said. “I don’t do a lot of slow motion in the film, but it was very important for me because it was such an iconic moment in history, for them and wearing those beads, what those beads meant to gener ations of girls and boys.” When Ve nus enters the match with her new headdress, Green’s mission was to show that “she has come into her own as a young woman,” adding, “She is now ready to wear this ar mor out, it was like her Superman cape.”

Black hair as a distinguished armor was also key to the recent sequel “Coming 2 America,” which

was nominated for an Oscar for makeup and hairstyling. The movie, written by Barris along with Barry W. Blaustein and David Sheffield, featured a dazzling array of natural and Afro-futuristic hair styles for the wealthy characters in the fictitious African country Zamunda. Their hairstyles reflect ed the beauty of African culture and Afro-textured traditions.

As Barris explained, the characters in the 1988 original were new to the United States and trying to blend in, but with the sequel being set in Africa, “we weren’t trying to fit in. We weren’t trying to assimilate. We were trying to be different.” Many of the hairstyles were purposely elaborate, illustrating the African heritage of complex coifs. As an ancestral source for Black Amer ican culture and history, African representation is important, and the variety of styles in “Coming 2 America” was intended to honor that legacy. A neighboring coun try’s ruler (Wesley Snipes) wears a style inspired by amasunzu, a traditional, crested hairdo of Tutsi men in Rwanda. And the gold-adorned looks of the royal daughters (Bella Murphy and KiKi Layne) reflect the regality of high society, while their embellished

Afro puffs and bubble ponytails look to the future. Africa and other points in the African dias pora were the inspiration for “The Harder They Fall,” the all-Black western based on real figures. But in that 2021 film, the natural ’dos point to the past, said Lindsey, who served as hair department head.

“I wanted to make sure that we showed Afro-textured hair styles from different cultures and influences from the 1800s — styles from Africa, the Ca ribbean and Europe — and incorporate them,” she said. “I wanted to celebrate locks, braids, jewels and all the things that were familiar to our people to remind them that these styles have been around for centuries. They didn’t just start in the 2000s.”

Lindsey explained that because these characters were nomads, their hair would natu rally look a little more knotty and less uniform. That’s why the men and women in the western wear a range of textures and looks, indic ative of their roles in society.

Lindsey matted the hair of Zazie Beetz, who portrays the gun-toting Stagecoach Mary, while she creat ed locks for Regina King’s toughas-nails Treacherous Trudy Smith. Both hairdos were envisioned as low maintenance, reflecting the women’s transient lifestyles.

No matter the setting, show casing natural Black hair onscreen is important for another reason: It normalizes Afro textures for non-Black audiences. Such looks become a common and recogniz able part of Blackness, including

The very act of presenting Black hair can be powerful in itself. “Hair is an expression of who we are and how far we’ve come.

It’s our legacy,”

how hair is styled and cared for. When these images aren’t readily presented and consumed, confusion and ambivalence can arise. Lindsey recalled several experiences on sets when showrunners wanted a Black woman to wake up in bed with her hair out. “I would speak to certain producers who had no idea of the culture and no idea of being a man or a woman with Afro-textured hair,” she said. She would tell them, “‘Hey, if she’s waking up, typically for an Afrocentric woman, she would wrap › 25 her hair. It doesn’t matter if your husband’s there, unless it’s sexy time, for the most part, you’re going to wrap your hair in a scarf.’ And I would hear, ‘Well, that’s not really attractive.’”

Lindsey added, “They’re speaking from their mind-set of the story, but I’m actually speaking from real life, from honesty.” Head wraps in the morning and at night were de rigueur on “Inse cure,” and Rae’s character was often in a silk scarf, even when she was next to her partner in bed. On “black-ish,” a head scarf figured into a transforma tive moment in the pilot. The younger daughter, Diane (Marsai Martin), was going to bed and so wrapped her hair.

Barris explained, “I have three girls, and coming from a Black mother, Black grandmothers, Black sisters — our routine at night is a different thing. We wrap our hair. It’s part of our upbringing, and we didn’t even think about it on a mostly Black crew.”

But when the show aired, “people lost their minds,” he said. “They were like, ‘Oh my God, what’s that?’ It had not been done, and that’s how little represen tation we had.”

Barris called that scene a turning point for “black-ish.” Little things he took for granted were “tantamount to who we are,” he said, adding, “The world has not seen us and has not been asked to see us.”

Green described it another way. “We’re never going to be too Black for our own movies.” ■

No Matter Fashion’s Mood, These Items Will Stay In Style— Shop Timeless Pieces for Fall

By: Madeline Fass

Fall 2022 was full of well-polished sil houettes, and several of our favorite looks heavily embraced timeless fash ion essence. From Proenza Schoul er’s crisp asymmetric white suit to Sportmax’s sharp-shouldered double-breasted blazers, these are pieces that are meant to stick around, no mat ter the season. Plus, these items come in many forms and even more ways to wear and style them like, say, adding a colored knit layer under coordinated suiting or mixing sleek separates.

What gives these enduringly chic pieces their mod ern touch is thoughtful details. For example, The Row’s contrasting waistband trousers or By Malene Birger’s gold buttoned suit vest. In addition to so phisticated ready-to-wear, you’ll find classic acces sories with that same contemporary twist, from pumps in new angular proportions, wonderful day bags, and sculptural gold earrings that make a statement and feel refined at the same time. All of these offer an elevated approach to wardrobe fun damentals. It’s what we’re calling forever style, and it was front and center as one of our five favorite trends as seen in VOGUE World: New York runway.

Photo credits: Caya Carter

HBCU STUDENTS

SHOW US THEIR BEST CAMPUS STYLE

HBCU students are known to dress to impress. It’s almost as if every day is a fashion show as students wear everything from luxury labels to thrifted clothing, while still still looking effortlessly fashion-forward. During the Tumblrera from 2010 - 2016, you could find many pages dedicated to HBCU fashion, at every price point, where students would submit photos of themselves rocking sublime design. Even on television shows, they were dressed to impress. If you take a look back at the hit television show A Different World, the cast is always dressed to the nines. Whitley Gilbert was always bourgeois chic while Denise Huxtable always stood out for her impressive individual style. vFrom buying the latest wares to creating their own designs, HBCU students are always on trend. Below, check out some of the fashionable fits from current students at HBCUs.

- Victor Qunnuell Vaughns, Jr.

Photo credits: Aaron McNeil

Photo credits: Jared Page

Photo credits: Jared Page

Why Students ‘4 Years Being

Students Are Choosing H.B.C.U.s: Being Seen as Family’

SeKai Parker looked on last spring as her prep school class mates tearfully embraced and belted out in unison every word of a Kelly Clarkson song. It was the senior farewell at Holton-Arms in Bethesda, Md., and many of the teens were making college plans that would have them trading one elite, mostly white setting for another. Ms. Parker intended to accept an offer from Yale, which she had fallen in love with on a recent visit. But as she scanned her school auditorium, a familiar sinking feeling washed over her. “I was sitting there by myself, I didn’t know a single word and I had no one to hold onto,” she recalled.

After school that day, she rushed out to meet her mother and made a life-changing declaration: I’m going to Spelman. Once the primary means for Black Americans to get a col lege education, historically Black colleges and universities, or H.B.C.U.s, now account for just 9 percent of such students. But top-tier H.B.C.U.s — long bastions of Black excellence — as well as others are increasingly becoming the first choice for some of the nation’s most sought-after talent, according to interviews with dozens of students, guidance counselors, admissions advisers and college officials across the country. They belong to a generation whose adolescence was shaped not only by the election of the first Black president but also by political and social strife that threatened the lives and lib erties of Black Americans. For many families, the embrace of historically Black colleges has been influenced by concerns about racial hostility, students’ feelings of isolation in pre dominantly white schools and shifting views on what consti tutes the pinnacle of higher education.

“College is the time when you’re trying to figure out who you are,” Ms. Parker said in an interview. “It’s impossible to figure that out in a space › 22

Many in a generation that grew up with a Black president and Black Lives Matter are embracing Black colleges and universities.

Photo credits: Jhatiana McMurrin

where you not only feel like you have to assimilate to fit into that space, when they didn’t invite you there or they tolerate you there, but you have to prove that your existence has val ue.”

In the past few years, the na tion’s H.B.C.U.s have experienced a boom. From 2018 to 2021, for exam ple, applications for a cross section of Black schools increased nearly 30 percent, according to the Com mon App, a platform for students to submit one application to multiple colleges, outpacing the increases of many other schools. Submissions using the Common Black College Application, solely for H.B.C.U.s., are projected to reach 40,000 this year, quadruple the total in 2016. And enrollment has soared at some of the schools, even as it declined nationally. There is also a growing recognition among policymakers and predominantly white schools of the value of H.B.C.U.s, and the fact that they have long operated at a disadvantage. Federal lawmakers have increased fuding for the 101 schools, providing nearly $2 billion since 2017, as well as $2.7 billion this year in pandemic emergency relief. Alumni and philanthropists have donated over a billion dollars in recent years, funding scholar ships and programs in science, tech nology and other fields. In April, Harvard, acknowledging that it had directly benefited from slavery in its early years, announced a faculty and student exchange program with H.B.C.U.s; Princeton soon after un veiled plans for research partner ships with some of the schools. The groundswell of support has been unparalleled, said Lodriguez Murray, a senior vice president for the United Negro College Fund, the largest private scholarship pro vider for minority students and the

leading advocacy organization for H.B.C.U.s.

“We say this is a renaissance for H.B.C.U.s, but the level of clout and capital the institutions have now is unprecedented,” Mr. Murray said, adding, “Frankly, it is about time.”

Lisa Fuller, the owner of Col lege Primed, a college advising firm, noticed the new surge of interest in the schools around 2015, as protests erupted in the streets and on college campuses, when many more parents requested that she add H.B.C.U.s to their children’s lists of college appli cations.

“Families started to look and be introspective about ‘Where are we sending our kids?’ and started to search for safe havens,” she said. “Students asked, ‘Do I go some where where it’s sink or swim, or do I go somewhere where everybody’s swimming with me?’”

When it came time for her son to apply to colleges, Dr. Makunda Ab dul-Mbacke thought it was settled: She had gone to Yale as an under graduate and medical student, and earned a master’s in public health from Harvard. Her son, Khadim Mbacke, was on the radar of Ivy League and other highly selective schools. “When we talked about what schools we were interested in, he said he wanted to look at More house and Howard, and I was like, ‘What?’” she recalled.

She had imagined him in New Ha ven, eating in the same dining halls and studying in the same classrooms she had. But she realized how differ ent his experience as a Black male today would be from hers as a young woman in the 1970s, when hardwon gains of the Civil Rights move ment were taking hold. Mr. Mbacke was 16 when neo-Nazis rallied in Charlottesville in August 2017, marching with torches on the Uni

versity of Virginia, a school he was considering. Violence broke out the next day, leaving one woman dead. At his rural Virginia high school, he noticed overwhelmingly white enrollment in advanced placement courses. “One of the main things was that to be Black and smart, for some reason they tried to make it like those two things couldn’t coex ist,” he said.

Then in 2019, a tour guide at the University of Pittsburgh point ed out a blue light emergency alarm system for students to summon se curity. The beacon was supposed to symbolize safety. For Mr. Mbacke, though, it conjured thoughts of a different outcome should his tow ering presence on campus ever be seen as a threat. “He’s 6-foot-3,” his mother said. “That’s the description of every Black man they put on the news.” But after seeing Morehouse College in Atlanta, he was beaming, she recalled. “His coming-of-age has been Mike Brown and Trayvon Martin and all the litany of young Black men that looked like him that have been killed too soon and taken away from their mothers and their families,” Dr. Abdul-Mbacke said. “There’s no golden key, no golden ticket when you’re Black in Ameri ca,” she added. “You’re going to have to work hard, and if you can have a fair chance then you go for it. And he found that space.” The Missouri Effect America’s first Black college, called the African Institute, was opened in Philadelphia in 1837 by a Quaker philanthropist. Later re named Cheyney University, it had a mission to train teachers and pre pare workers for trades. After the Civil War, dozens of such schools for the formerly enslaved and their children began to populate the southern states, sustained by federal land grants, › 24

Photo credits: Jhatiana McMurrin

freedmen’s societies, churches and benefactors. Over their history, H.B.C.U.s have educated most of the nation’s Black judges, half of its Black doctors and 40 percent of the Black members of Congress, as well as the current vice president, Kamala Harris. Though the schools — from research institutions to twoyear programs — make up only 3 percent of the country’s colleges and universities, they produce 13 per cent of all African American gradu ates, according to the United Negro College Fund.

That led to eroding enrollment at H.B.C.U.s — 279,000 students as of 2020, the most recent data avail able — and a perception, even in the Black community, that they were a second-rate option. “We had to our great detriment, and perhaps even our peril, accepted the narrative, ‘white is right,’” said Roslyn Artis, president of Benedict College in Co lumbia, S.C.

But in recent years, she said, the schools have been widely recog nized for what they have always done: “punch above their weight.”

H.B.C.U.s in Pop Culture

From “A Different World” to “Drumline” and “Girls Trip,” depic tions of H.B.C.U.s have proved to be a powerful recruiting tool. That attitude shift began in part because of the “Missouri Effect,” a term coined in 2016 by Walter Kim brough, president of Dillard Univer sity, a private liberal arts H.B.C.U. in Louisiana. In 2015, students at the University of › 32 Missouri led monthslong demon strations over a series of racist inci dents on campus, ultimately forcing the university system’s president and the chancellor of the Columbia campus to resign. Across the coun try, Dr. Kimbrough said, Black stu dents began › 30

Photo credits: Jhatiana McMurrin

SCHOOL'S IN SESSION

demanding better conditions and treatment at predominantly white institutions, and others began to re ject them altogether.

Data showing how many students are applying only to H.B.C.U.s or have turned down majority-white schools in favor of historically Black schools is not available. Just as the most selective H.B.C.U.s are draw ing more applicants, so are some of the nation’s other schools. The dean of undergraduate admissions at Yale, for instance, said the school had a record level of Black freshman enrollment the year Ms. Parker de clined. The dean, Jeremiah Quin lan, said he knew of one other Black student admitted last year who had opted for an H.B.C.U., noting that there may have been more: Not all students share their plans when they decline an offer. Jonathan Hol loway, the president of Rutgers and a historian, said the Missouri effect which he experienced as the first Black dean at Yale College — cou pled with what he called the “social ly permeated pain” of police killings and racial hostility, forced majori ty-white schools to realize that mere diversity through admissions was not enough.

College leaders were falling short in supporting Black students, he said. “That allowed H.B.C.U.s to revolutionize the way they could tell their story.” Dr. Kimbrough said the schools reasserted themselves as the “original safe spaces” for Black stu dents, cultivating both their intel lects and their spirits. In 2016, the year after the Missouri protests, and with Donald J. Trump campaigning for the White House, some schools saw record increases in freshman enrollment, from 22 percent at Dil lard to 49 percent at Shaw Universi ty in North Carolina.

“In the Black community, we’re re

ally seeing a change in addressing mental health. I think parents are more sensitive now to what it means for their kids to traverse these worlds, of what it means to be Black in all these different spaces,” said Michelle A. Purdy, an associate pro fessor of education at Washington University in St. Louis and author of “Transforming the Elite: Black Students and the Desegregation of Private School.”

Spencer Jones, 21, a rising Dillard senior with his sights set on law school, recalled the support he had received. During the protests after George Floyd’s murder in 2020, he said, a professor emailed students over the summer to check on their well-being, and last year class dis cussions centered on the pandem ic’s disproportionate toll on Afri can Americans. “It gave us a deeper sense of what it means to be Black, going to an H.B.C.U. at this time, that we really couldn’t have gotten anywhere else,” he said.

Mr. Mbacke, the Morehouse student, often passes two campus landmarks: a statue of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the tomb of that civil rights leader’s mentor, Dr. Benjamin Mays, Morehouse’s sixth president.

“Every day we actually walk the same steps as them,” said Mr. Mbacke, a physics major who just finished his third year at the school, which had record enrollment last year and like its neighbor, Spelman, is a top-ranked H.B.C.U. “You’re di rectly investing in a Black-centric atmosphere. You’re doing your part, no matter how small it may seem. You’re changing the world, no mat ter whether you can see it or not.”

The renewed appeal of H.B.C.U.s is particularly notable among mid dle- and upper-class Black parents who attended elite, predominantly

white schools, said Sammy Redd, a college counselor and Yale graduate. He spent years steering students to those schools with the same mes sage he heard growing up, he said: “The Ivies were the mountaintop.”

But then some Generation X parents, who had pushed through doors that were shut to their own parents, began redefining what “the best” meant — and reckoning with the implications of their past choices. Referring to the historically Black colleges, Dr. Redd said, “There was this sense that these institutions who nurtured our people didn’t get anything back.” He added, “Those parents were asking themselves, ‘Do we have an obligation and responsi bility to support them?’”

For Gabrielle Armstrong, a com petitive student in Durham, N.C., the answer was yes. Ms. Armstrong, v18, whose grandparents were H.B.C.U. graduates and whose par ents went to Yale, had long dreamed of attending Duke University in her hometown. But ultimately she opted not to apply, and decided on Eliza beth City State University, a small North Carolina H.B.C.U. She’ll start in the fall. “A fear of mine was go ing to an H.B.C.U. and not having a lot of resources,” she said. “But I realized that if I want other Blacks to have a first-class education at an H.B.C.U., part of that is me going to one, graduating and giving back.”

“I figured I have the rest of my life to be treated like a minority, to fight to be seen as human,” she add ed. “I might as well spend four years being seen as family.” $2 Billion vs. $200 Billion. Unlike their mostly white counterparts, H.B.C.U.s still carry the burdens of the country’s original sin. They overwhelming ly serve students from low-income households and those who have borne the ›

brunt of an inequitable K-12 sys tem. The schools have long been un derfunded — and typically charge lower tuition — compared with predominantly white colleges, and most don’t have a pipeline of rich donors.

In fiscal year 2020, the 10 largest H.B.C.U. endowments totaled $2 billion, compared with $200 bil lion for the top 10 predominantly white institutions, as reported by the schools.

Many smaller H.B.C.U.s have struggled or buckled in recent years under finan cial strains, enrollment pressures or, in extreme cases, losing accredita tion that ensured federal funding and credibility. Even Howard, the presti gious Washington school long known as “the Black Harvard” — offering disciplines from litera ture to medicine, con sistently ranking among the best H.B.C.U.s— has faced challenges. Last fall, Howard students held sit-ins and slept in tents to pro test housing shortages and poor liv ing conditions in the dorms, a con cern shared at many H.B.C.U.s with aging buildings. After a standoff of over a month, students reached an agreement with the school and end ed the protest.

At the same time, Howard has seen the renewed favor for H.B.C.U.s. Undergraduate enrollment climbed 26 percent between 2019 and 2021, students following in the path of alumni who include the Nobel lau reate Toni Morrison, Vice President Harris and the award-winning ac tor Chadwick Boseman. Professors, alumni and admirers of the school call it “The Mecca,” harnessing the

power of its history, its community and the talent within it.

The writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, an alumnus who extolled The Mec ca in his book “Between the World and Me,” and Nikole Hannah-Jones, the Pulitzer-winning Times jour nalist who conceived of “The 1619 Project,” inspired pride on campus when they chose to join the faculty last year over other teaching oppor tunities: He left N.Y.U.; she turned down the University of North Car olina-Chapel Hill, where an internal

donations included more than $100 million from the Netflix founder Reed Hastings; more than $500 million from MacKenzie Scott, including $40 million to Howard; and $10 million from the Karsh Family Foundation to endow a Howard program in STEM — science, technology, engineering and math — fields where Black students have been historically underrepresented.

is not available.

battle broke out over a refusal to of fer her tenure. “For too long, Black Americans have been taught that success is defined by gaining entry to and succeeding in historical ly white institutions,” she wrote in a statement. “I have done that, and now I am honored and grateful to join the long legacy of Black Amer icans who have defined success by working to build up their own.”

Their appointments also brought nearly $20 million from the Knight, MacArthur and Ford Foundations and an anonymous donor. It was one of several high-profile gifts to H.B.C.U.s in recent years from philanthropists and organizations seeking to remedy educational and racial inequities. The

Five years ago, the school’s provost, Anthony Wutoh, invited 100 top-per forming high school students to campus to pitch them the program. Like others, it offered full scholar ships, a network and resources that could catapult them to the country’s top grad uate and profession al programs. (Over much of the past two decades, Howard has sent at least as many Black students to sci ence and engineering Ph.D. programs as Stanford, M.I.T., Har vard and Yale com bined, according to the National Science Foundation.) But it offered something more: It was created specifically for bright Black students like them who had felt isolated in mostly white science settings.

“You could just see this sense of relief,” the provost recalled. “There was this sense of, ‘I could just be my self, and just focus on doing as well as I could academically,’ and not wonder, ‘Do I belong here?’ or not have to wonder, ‘Do people feel like I earned my way here?’” The Karsh STEM Scholars program is adding new luster to Howard’s profile in the sciences; its faculty once includ ed Charles Drew, a surgeon whose research laid the foundation for the first blood

Data showing how many students are applying only to H.B.C.U.s or have turned down majority-white schools in favor of historically Black schools

Why HBCU Graduates Make Such Great Teachers

By: Marybeth Gasman

According to a new study released by DonorsChoose, Black male teachers spend more time with students outside the classroom than teachers of any other racial demographic. In addition, the study found that Historically Black College and University (HBCU) graduates account for some of the most dedicated teachers. They spend over 5 hours per week on tutoring outside the classroom and 6 hours per week on mentoring, compared to 4 hours a week each, on the part of Black teachers who did not graduate from HBCUs. Moreover, Black HBCU graduates reported an average of 18 students hanging out in their classrooms outside of regular class hours, compared to 11 students for Black teachers who did not graduate from HBCUs. HBCUs produce 50% of Black teachers. From the perspec tive of DonorsChoose CEO Alix Guerrier, more schools should be looking to HBCUs when they are recruiting teachers, especially if they want to better serve all of their students. Guerrier’s organization conducted the study with the goal of elevating the voices of Black male educators and to foster more work related to recruiting, retain ing, and supporting these teachers. As he shared, Black male teachers are working hard and are “feeling

this pressure to shoulder additional responsibilities.” They need support. Guerrier knows how this pressure plays out first hand. Although he started college “100% focused on becoming a physicist,” his experience volunteering at an after-school program introduced him to his love for ed ucation and his life was forever changed. Guerrier realized how much he enjoyed working with kids, as well as his passion for kids and their fami lies “feeling seen for what they contribute to the classroom environment.”

As Guerrier recalls, “When I was a teacher, I definitely felt certain responsibilities because of my race — most of them self-imposed and some of them systemically imposed. It was important to look out for my Black students in particular.” He added, “I also felt the desire to codeswitch or represent myself in a way that would maintain the image of an academically successful Black person.” Guerrier was aware that he was surrounded by exceptional colleagues. However, as he shared, “the edu cational system is structured to underestimate Black children, as well as Black teachers.” ■

Professor Clarence Goss Jr., Elizabeth City State University Alumni and current professor

Photo credits: Elizabeth City State University

transfusions, and Ernest Just, a re nowned cell biologist. And it is helping provide a competitive edge over schools including Cornell, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, and U.N.C.-Chapel Hill, according to a Times survey and interviews.

Jazmine Grant, a Karsh schol ar who graduated this spring, said choosing Howard came down to one distinguishing factor: “an envi ronment that was targeted toward Black excellence.” Now bound for an M.D.-Ph.D program at The University of Tex as in Houston, she was president of Howard’s chapter of the National Council of Negro Wom en, started by Mary Mc Leod Bethune — a civ il rights activist whose footsteps she hopes to follow. “Howard devel oped my confidence,” Ms. Grant said. “I’m go ing to be prepared in ac ademia, and in my Black womanhood — knowing any space that I enter into, I can make a change, I can bring forth new ideas, I can bring what I learned to where I’m about to go.”

‘A Challenge to the System’. The 911 call came in January, describing bombs placed in Spelman’s hallways — one of dozens of such threats against H.B.C.U.s over two months. “I had picked this school, this uni versity because of this reason,” the caller said. “There are too many Black students in it.” Ms. Parker was halfway through her freshman year when that threat was phoned in, captured in a recording later made public. “It was really hard to hear, but it’s the reality,” she said. It was also a jarring reminder of why H.B.C.U.s came to exist in the first

place. “Here my everyday existence is a challenge to the system,” Ms. Parker added. In the present-day movement toward the schools are echoes of the hardships Black people in America have faced going back centuries, said Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, an award-winning author and an alumna of Talladega College, a small H.B.C.U. in Alabama. Her novel, “The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois,” is a coming-of-age story that follows a young woman to a his torically Black college andunearths generations of her family history.

Ms. Jeffers, whose mother and two sisters are Spelman graduates, and whose father taught at Howard and Morehouse, drew a connection to the forebears of today’s students: en slaved people brought to the coun try, clinging together in the bottom of ships. They managed to survive the unthinkable and stay connected to one another.

“The entire African American sto ry is about seeking to maintain community,” Ms. Jeffers said. “So it should not come as a surprise that the descendants of these people from so many centuries ago are still seek

ing community.” Ms. Parker, though she is still haunted by the bomb threat, sees reminders throughout campus that she belongs. In Fish Fry Fridays, where food that kids she grew up with would have scorned as “unhealthy and gross,” she said, here represents “fellowship among Black people.” In the wellness center pool, where the chemicals are adjusted to be gentle on Black hair. In classes led by Black male teachers, after not encountering a single one in all her schooling before. In the siblinghood of “Morehouse broth ers” and “Spelman sisters.” “Everything I thought I loved about loving Black ness has complete ly turned around,” she said. “Learning about my people, from my people, with my people, is such a powerful ex perience.” Being at Spelman has been both empowering and humbling. The school, which last year received more applications than ever before, is a standout in the sciences. Ms. Parker, 19 and on the pre-med track, was accepted into a prestigious summer research pro gram at the University of Pennsyl vania. But she lost out on a coveted spot in a program at Vanderbilt to a classmate — a reminder that she’s no longer the only smart Black student in the room. She recalled how her white high school classmates had reacted when she chose Spelman. Students had a “we don’t go there” attitude about H.B.C.U.s, she said. And they couldn’t fathom how she had gotten into Yale, let alone how she

“In the Black community, we’re really seeing a change in addressing mental health. I think parents are more sensitive now to what it means for their kids to traverse these worlds, of what it means to be Black in all these different spaces,”

could turn it down. But she could tell soon after arriving on campus that she had made the right decision. She and her new friends were driving and singing along to the R&B group Jodeci. Unlike that day back in the prep school auditorium, this time she knew every word. ■

Photo credits: Jhatiana McMurrin

Photo credits: Jhatiana McMurrin