Black Colleges in the United States
Historically Black Colleges and Universities
Executive Order 13532
Executive Order in relation with Promoting Excellence, Innovation, and Sustainability at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (February 26, 2010):
“By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, in order to advance the development of the Nation’s full human potential and to advance equal opportunity in higher education, strengthen the capacity of historically black colleges and universities to provide the highest quality education, increase opportunities for these institutions to participate in and benefit from Federal programs, and ensure that our Nation has the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by the year 2020, it is hereby ordered as follows:
Section 1. Policy. Historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have made historic and ongoing contributions to the general welfare and prosperity of our country. Established by visionary leaders, America’s HBCUs, for over 150 years, have produced many of the Nation’s leaders in business, government, academia, and the military and have provided generations of American men and women with hope and educational opportunity. The Nation’s 105 HBCUs are located in 20 States, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands and serve more than 300,000 undergraduate and graduate students. These institutions continue to be important engines of economic growth and community service, and they are proven ladders of intergenerational advancement for men and women of all ethnic, racial, and economic backgrounds, especially African Americans. These institutions also produce a high number of baccalaureate recipients who go on to assume leadership and service roles in their communities and who successfully complete graduate and professional degree programs.
Sec. 2. White House Initiative on HBCUs.
(a) Establishment. There is established the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities (Initiative), to be housed in the Department of Education (Department).
(b) Mission and Functions. The Initiative shall work with executive departments, agencies, and offices, the private sector, educational associations, philanthropic organizations, and other partners to increase the capacity of HBCUs to provide the highest-quality education to a greater number of students, and to take advantage of these institutions’ capabilities in serving the Nation’s needs through five core tasks:
(i) strengthening the capacity of HBCUs to participate in Federal programs;
(ii) fostering enduring private-sector initiatives and public-private partnerships while promoting specific areas and centers of academic research and programmatic excellence throughout all HBCUs;
(iii) improving the availability, dissemination, and quality of information concerning HBCUs to inform public policy and practice;
(iv) sharing administrative and programmatic practices within the HBCU community for the benefit of all; and
(v) exploring new ways of improving the relationship between the Federal Government and HBCUs.
(c) Administration. There shall be an Executive Director of the Initiative. The Department shall provide the staff, resources, and assistance for the Initiative, and shall assist the Initiative in fulfilling its mission and responsibilities under this order.
(d) Federal Agency Plans. (1) Each executive department and agency designated by the Secretary of Education (Secretary) shall prepare an annual plan (agency plan) of its efforts to strengthen the capacity of HBCUs through increased participation in appropriate Federal programs and initiatives. Where appropriate, each agency plan shall address, among other things, the agency’s proposed efforts to:
(i) establish how the department or agency intends to increase the capacity of HBCUs to compete effectively for grants, contracts, or cooperative agreements and to encourage HBCUs to participate in Federal programs;
(ii) identify Federal programs and initiatives in which HBCUs may be either underserved or underused as national resources, and improve HBCUs’ participation therein; and
(iii) encourage public-sector, private-sector, and community involvement in improving the overall capacity of HBCUs.
(2) Each department and agency, in its agency plan, shall provide appropriate measurable objectives and, after the first year, shall annually assess that department’s or agency’s performance on the goals set in the previous year’s agency plan.
(3) The Secretary shall establish a date by which agency plans shall be submitted to the Secretary. The Secretary and the Executive Director shall review the agency plans in consultation with the President’s Board of Advisors on HBCUs, established in section 3 of this order, and shall submit to the President an annual plan to strengthen the overall capacity of HBCUs.
(4) To help fulfill the objectives of these plans, the head of each department and agency identified by the Secretary shall provide, as appropriate, technical assistance and information to the Executive Director for purposes of communicating with HBCUs concerning program activities of the department or agency and the preparation of applications or proposals for grants, contracts, or cooperative agreements.
(5) To help fulfill the goals of this order, each executive department and agency identified by the Secretary shall appoint a senior official to report directly to the department or agency head with respect to that department’s or agency’s activities under this order, and to serve as liaison to the President’s Board of Advisors on HBCUs and to the Initiative.
(e) Interagency Working Group. There is established the Interagency Working Group, which shall be convened by the Executive Director and that shall consist of representatives from agencies designated by the Secretary, to help advance and coordinate the work of Federal agencies pursuant to this order, where appropriate.
Sec. 3. President’s Board of Advisors on HBCUs.
(a) Establishment. There is established in the Department the President’s Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities (the Board). The Board shall consist of not more than 25 members appointed by the President. The President shall designate one member of the Board to serve as Chair, who shall coordinate with the Executive Director to convene meetings and help direct the work of the Board. The Board shall include representatives of a variety of sectors, including philanthropy, education, business, finance, entrepreneurship, innovation, and private foundations, as well as sitting HBCU presidents.
(b) Mission and Functions. Through the Initiative, the Board shall advise the President and the Secretary on all matters pertaining to strengthening the educational capacity of HBCUs. In particular, the Board shall advise the President and the Secretary in the following areas:
(i) improving the identity, visibility, and distinctive capabilities and overall competitiveness of HBCUs;
(ii) engaging the philanthropic, business, government, military, homeland-security, and education communities in a national dialogue regarding new HBCU programs and initiatives;
(iii) improving the ability of HBCUs to remain fiscally secure institutions that can assist the Nation in reaching its goal of having the highest proportion of college graduates by 2020;
(iv) elevating the public awareness of HBCUs; and
(v) encouraging public-private investments in HBCUs.
(c) Administration. The Executive Director of the Initiative shall also serve as the Executive Director of the Board. The Department shall provide funding and administrative support for the Board to the extent permitted by law and within existing appropriations. Members of the Board shall serve without compensation, but shall be reimbursed for travel expenses, including per diem in lieu of subsistence, as authorized by law. Insofar as the Federal Advisory Committee Act, as amended (5 U.S.C. App.), may apply to the Board, any functions of the President under that Act, except for those of reporting to the Congress, shall be performed by the Secretary, in accordance with guidelines issued by the Administrator of General Services.
(d) Report. As part of the annual report of the Initiative, the Board shall report to the President and the Secretary on their progress in carrying out its duties under this section.
Sec. 4. General Provisions. (a) For the purposes of this order, “historically black colleges and universities” shall mean those institutions listed in 34 C.F.R. 602.8.
(…)
(g) Executive Order 13256 of February 12, 2002, is hereby revoked.”
Historically Black Colleges and Universities in relation to Crime and Race
Historically Black Colleges and Universities is included in the Encyclopedia of Race and Crime (1), beginning with: Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) were founded to educate formerly enslaved people of African descent. Cheyney State University in Cheyney, Pennsylvania, was established in 1837 as the first historically Black institution of higher education. There are now 105 HBCUs scattered throughout the United States, the majority of which are located in the South. Many of these were built after the Morrill Act of 1890, which provided for state-supported land-grant HBCUs. The importance of these institutions to Black people is paramount, past and present. This section provides a short history of HBCUs and describes the challenges they have faced, the successes they have achieved, and future goals. It identifies reasons why a knowledge of HBCUs is important in understanding race relations in the United States and how Blacks have been self-determined in their efforts to educate themselves despite opposition.
Resources
Notes and References
- Entry about Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the Encyclopedia of Race and Crime
Comments
5 responses to “Black Colleges”
Outside of slave status -enforcement of such bans was extremely difficult – blacks were always allowed to educate each other. You are bitching that whites didn’t spend social resources educating blacks.
You’re still not explaining why blacks couldn’t educate each other.
Let me put it another way. If blacks were capable of modernity then blacks in Africa should have had, roughly, the same level of civilizational development as Europe by the time that Europe and Africa had major interaction.
Europeans had developed a complex written language six thousand years ago. No African language group had developed a system of writing by the inception of European colonization of Africa. Why not? What prevented it? Are you saying that five thousand years ago whites were “denying” blacks education? Whites educated each other five thousand years ago. Why weren’t blacks educating each other? Was it “racism” and “oppression” that whites didnt migrate five thousand years ago from the Caucasus mountain region into Africa to teach Africans writing.
When you claim that whites have “denied” blacks education what you’re really saying is that white OWE blacks an education. Well, why can’t blacks educate themselves? Who’s stopping them? Why didn’t blacks in Africa develop modernity by the sixteenth century? You can’t blame Eurocentric oppression for that.
First off, limited government doesn’t create modernity, it IS modernity. Limited government is a primary causal factor in the massive increase in material well being in the west over the past few centuries. Yes, as much as some people bitch about the european welfare state it still has limits.
Secondly, at no point in American history have blacks been oppressed by the US government to the extent that blacks in Africa have oppressed each other – maybe not even under slavery.
Leftists, like you, bitch about blacks in the south being refused service in the 1950s at restaurants. Today, in the Congo, black men ram guns into the rectums of five year old black girls and shoot a hole between their anus and vagina to teach their parents a lesson. You tell me which is worse.
Blacks, AS GROUPS, have never created or maintained modernity. The null hypothesis is that no groups can create modernity, but whites have so that meets the requirements for the alternative hypothesis. If you think that blacks, AS GROUPS, can create modernity then it is incumbent on you to provide evidence for the alternative hypothesis.
Black people surely did not live under limited government in this country from the early 1600’s until at the earliest 1964 in the United States. The United States has never been a nation of limited government where Black people are concerned.
Asher says: It is impossible to suss out exactly what factor plays what role in what effect. It is important to note, though, that since around WW2 a curious phenomenon has occurred. In a wide variety of tests ranging from firefighter’s exams to the ASVAB to the SATs the black average on almost any test is very close to one standard deviation below the white mean, give or take a fifth of a sigma. This means that if the white average is 100 and the white sigma is 15 then the black average is between 82 and 88.
It’s been remarkably constant over a long period of time and in a wide array of tests. Why? Just saying “oppression” is mere handwaving. You need to explain how the precise causality works.
I say: Why is the burden on me? You are the one that asserted that limited government produces civilizational modernity and general prosperity. If true, the opposite is logically true – that 350 years of oppressive government and conditions that for much of the time denied access to any education to a culture or peoples works to the opposite effect. If limited government is a positive influence on a culture, what effect can be expected from two centuries of a government so oppressive that it reduces a person to chattel?
During World War I, Dr. Oswald H. Robertson of the US army preserved blood in a citrate-glucose solution and stored it in cooled containers for later transfusion. This was the first use of “banked” blood. By the mid-1930s the Russians had set up a national network of facilities for the collection, typing, and storage of blood. Bernard Fantus, influenced by the Russian program, established the first hospital blood bank in the United States at Chicago’s Cook County Hospital in 1937. It was Fantus who coined the term “blood bank.”
The possibility of using blood plasma for transfusion purposes was known at least since 1918, when English physician Gordon R. Ward suggested it in a medical journal. In the mid-1930s, John Elliott advanced the idea, emphasizing plasma’s advantages in shelf life and donor-recipient compatibility, and in 1939 he and two colleagues reported having used stored plasma in 191 transfusions. Charles Drew was not responsible for any breakthrough scientific or medical discovery; his main career achievement lay in supervising or co-supervising major programs for the collection and shipment of blood and plasma.
Refrigerated shipping? Nope
Refrigerated ships and railcars had been moving perishables across oceans and continents even before Jones was born (http://www33.brinkster.com/…. Trucks with mechanically refrigerated cargo spaces appeared on the roads at least as early as the late 1920s (http://www33.brinkster.com/…. Further development of truck refrigeration was more a process of gradual evolution than radical change.
Carbon filament? Sort of
Latimer patented an improved method of producing carbon filament in 1881. In 1809 Humphry Davy ran a current through a strip of charcoal (meaning carbonized wood) – the term filament is not really a technical term, since it really just means something small. The overall contribution to current lightbulb technology by Latimer is a very small percentage.
Have you looked at photos of Latimer … pretty damn white … easily less than fifty percent black.
PC patents? Yep, this one’s legit.
Hmmm, just saw a photo of the guy … I’m about that dark after a good week of sun. Easily less than fifty percent black.
Lingo programming language? Eh, okay but not that big a deal
The structure of Lingo is pretty much based on PASCAL and HyperTalk. It’s very verbose so that the less tech savvy can use it. Sure it’s something but all the framework for this type of language was already all in place. Commendable, not groundbreaking. Any intellectual capital associated with products that use Lingo is still overwhelmingly from whites.
This guy might even be fifty percent black.
The electret microphone? Oooookkaay, sorta
Yeah, sure, as a practical application this had an impact. All of the theoretical framework for this type of device already existed, this duo just happened onto teflon foil. Commendable, not groundbreaking.
Hmm, if this guy is more than one-eighth black I’ll eat my short. Hell, I’ll eat your shorts.
Laserphaco Probe. Yeah, sure
All of the theoretical ground involving lasers was all originated by white people. Also, the knowledge that lasers could change the chemical and physical properties of things was widely known at her time. But it’s a legit entry.
Pictures show someone with significant European facial features. Maybe fifty percent black, at most.
Okay, so we have two seriously legit entries, and several more who were very minor characters in any product anyone uses today. Not a stellar record. My guess is that the average African admixture of the individuals listed is one-third, whereas the average black in the US is eighty-three percent African. The list you produced doesn’t refute my claim, at all. Yeah, there are a smattering of products I use that has some small percentage of intellectual framework produced by black individuals, so what? I’d readily acknowledge that.
You’re missing the point, though, which is that the entire social environment in which these individuals operated was produced by European civilization. Modernity, it was created by whites. There is no evidence that black people, IN GROUPS, are capable of creating modernity
Almost all intellectual development that goes into everything used by black people in the US came from white individuals. Almost no intellectual development that goes into anything used by white people in the US came from black individuals.[/quote]
Do you use a light bulb? The carbon filament element that makes commercial light bulbs work was invented by Lewis Latimer, an African-American.
Do you use a personal computer? Three of the first nine patents utilized to make IBM’s first PC were held by Dr. Mark Dean, an African-American.
Do you use that PC for anything involving interactive simulations with graphics, animation, sound, and video? It is very likely that simulation was written in Lingo, a computer language invented by John Henry Thompson, an African-American.
Have you ever used a telephone? The electret microphone, found in about 90% of telephones in the USA was originally co-invented in 1962 for Bell Labs by Dr. James E. West, an African-American.
Have you ever eaten frozen foods, or eaten food on an airplane? If so, you can thank Frederick McKinley Jones, an African-American, for inventing the portable air-cooling unit. His company, Thermo King Corporation, was one of the largest in the USA by the late 1940’s.
Have you ever had cataract surgery or known someone who has? The Laserphaco Probe, a medical device used for removing cataract lenses painlessly and quickly, was invented by Dr. Patricia Bath, an African-American.
Ever had a blood transfusion? The science that allows blood to be stored for later use was developed by Dr. Charles Drew, whose research into blood storage led to the creation of blood banks. Working for the Red Cross, his theories allowed countless of lives to be saved in the field during World War II.
I’m sorry … you were saying?
[quote]No, the US achieved what it has through limited government, property rights, the rule of law, thrift, hard work…[/quote]
These rights and so many more inalienable rights were de jur and de facto denied African-Americans in this country for 350 years, give or take a few. And try telling a black slave about the virtues of the white man’s “limited government.” Try telling or a person condemned under Jim Crow to subsistence living without protection for his life or liberty under the boot of the white man’s law about your notion of “limited government.”
But you argue this has had no effect whatsoever on the gap between black and white achievement. Yet these rights your argue are essential to the US achievements. Which achievements, as it happens, include the de jur and de facto denial of these rights to African-Americans for some 350 years. Your argument falls under the weight of its own words.