Jade Bell is relieved that she’ll be able to graduate in person this year.
“Just having that experience. And that chance to walk across the stage,” said Bell, a senior at North Carolina A&T State University. “I’m ready for it.”
This year’s spring and summer commencements aren’t going to be exactly what seniors like Bell had envisioned when they started college. At most campuses, the pandemic has reduced the size of the crowd and the activities. Big gatherings with friends and family members can’t yet happen safely.
But after a traumatic, draining year for Bell and other students at the nation’s historically Black colleges and universities, having a celebration — and a taste of normalcy — at graduation is even more important than usual.
Covid-19 has disproportionately harmed Black communities. And one year ago, in the midst of the first Covid-related shutdown, George Floyd was murdered. Just before that came the killings of Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor.
Since then, Black students have had to grapple with constant, hard-to-process societal conversations about police brutality and racial injustice. This spring, during the trial of Derek Chauvin, the white police officer who was convicted of murdering Floyd, they had to relive the graphic details of his death over and over.
During such a harrowing year, HBCUs have provided a haven. The colleges offer students a sense of familiarity, racial relief, and faculty members who resemble them.
HBCUs are places where Black lives have always mattered.
“Just knowing that from the leaders in your department to the lunch ladies in the cafeteria, everybody’s got your back,” Bell said. “That’s so important. It’s so special.”
In the past few years, more Black students have chosen to attend HBCUs instead of predominantly white institutions. While enrollment at historically Black colleges declined in the decade from 2006 to 2015, the tide has appeared to turn since then, with dozens of institutions announcing record-breaking first-year classes. In the fall of 2020, as the pandemic led to enrollment declines across much of higher ed, many HBCUs posted enrollment increases.
According to a recent analysis, enrollment of African American first-time college students climbed at historically Black colleges in states where hate-crime reports increased. Researchers speculated in a working paper that the correlation could reflect Black students’ desire to attend colleges with fewer racist incidents.
“There is no second guessing your sense of belonging, and I think that changes the learning environment completely,” said Walter M. Kimbrough, president of Dillard University. “It’s not like you’re looking over your shoulder or feeling like you have to justify your existence.”
The Weight of Being Black
While HBCU students across the country breathed a sigh of relief as Chauvin’s guilty verdict came down last month, some still feel that progress against racism in the U.S. is at a standstill. Several students said they’d struggled this year with feeling driven to organize, protest racism, and engage with current events, while also needing to take a break.
“It’s kind of hard to sum up just one emotion,” said Kyrah Henderson, a rising senior at N.C. A&T. “The first one was frustration, then came fear, and sadness, and then it turns into anger. I do want to stay informed on what’s going on, but I also don’t want to just walk around angry.”
Bell felt similarly. “Social media was overwhelming, with protests and seeing protesters being tear-gassed and rubber bullets,” she said. “Trying to step back from it all, as much as I wanted to be involved. Like it is also overwhelming to be Black sometimes.”
Bell is also raising a 7-year-old son. She’s struggled with the task of helping him understand what’s happened this past year.
“I’m really having to explain to him the negative things that go on in this world,” Bell said. “I’m trying to shelter him a little bit, because I do not want to feel like I’m permanently scarring my child,” while still having “these hard but necessary conversations.”
Covid-19 and economic devastation have added to the pressure. Last year the United Negro College Fund surveyed students at its member institutions — all private historically Black colleges. More than one-third of students said they had experienced declines in their mental health during the first few months of the pandemic. And Black students are often less likely to seek therapy or other treatment, due in part to a stigma around mental illness and a lack of campus counseling staff members who understand their experiences.
One student responding to the UNCF survey put it this way: “Either way it’s the stress of trying not to get sick, not getting killed by police, or finding a way to pay for school that has me on edge.”
Jada Sayles, a rising senior at Dillard who has organized Black Lives Matter protests, has been involved with community organizing since she was 14. This year she has felt burned out at times.
But Sayles has relied on a key support network: her HBCU campus. “I find comfort and peace in going to my campus and knowing that I’m safe here,” she said.
When Malcolm Mobley was attending high school in California, he traveled up and down the East Coast visiting HBCU campuses. After that, he knew a historically Black college was where he wanted to be. “It was just the culture,” said Mobley, a student at Morgan State University. “Everybody welcomes you with open arms.”
That community is something that many HBCU students have leaned on over the past year, whether to organize and be politically active, or to have a shoulder to cry on. “It was just so helpful to be able to identify with other people grieving with you,” Henderson said.
Sayles said attending an HBCU like Dillard has defined Blackness to her. “When I went to Dillard, it was a 360, because they just taught us about the greatness of being Black,” she said. “They made me feel more affirmed and confident in what I say.”
She added: “HBCUs nurture our gifts and talents and empower us. So when we do go into outside spaces, we know how to go into a room and be comfortable with our Blackness.”
Some prospective students choose to attend an HBCU for financial reasons. Others land there because they want a change of scenery after being one of only a few Black students in their high school.
“Going to an HBCU, you’re surrounded by people that just get it,” Henderson said. “Growing up, I’ve always been in white spaces. I’ve always been the one black girl in the class. I wanted just four years that I could dedicate to just being surrounded by African American people, and not being the only one.”
HBCUs have been historically underfunded because of inadequate state support and a less-wealthy alumni base. But many HBCUs have gotten record-breaking donations this year, which may help them further their mission of serving many low-income, first-generation students and raising their graduation rates.
When it comes to supporting Black students in a difficult societal moment, other colleges can learn from HBCUs.
Institutional support means more than a memo from the president or a statement from the university, Kimbrough said. “We’ve got to be engaged in addressing these issues all the time, not just when a big flashpoint happens,” he said of college leaders. “How are we addressing stuff on a regular basis? That’s the kind of work that I want to be involved in.”
That means colleges should be encouraging Black students to use their voices and fight for change, Kimbrough said: “We need more people to show students that it is okay to speak up and disrupt a little bit.”
Lauren Mitchell, who just graduated from North Carolina A&T University, is a 2021 Campus Correspondent for The Chronicle.
