What Will History Remember….

Last night in St. Louis a peaceful protest following the death on Mike Brown turned into riots. I was glued to the TV and social media last night watching all the events unfold. The questions that came to mind, What will history Remember?  Will people remember the death of Mike Brown, peaceful protest, or the looting and rioting of the Ferguson community. I was troubled by the images that were so similar to Watts, LA, and D.C.

Powerful reminder of how volatile race relations are in America.

The image above would have sent a powerful message….Sadly everyone will only remember the following images

 

There are deeper implications related to the St. Louis rioting and looting.  How will the community recover economically. If, I was Walmart, QuickTrip, Hibbets and other businesses…why rebuild or restock my store.  Last night showed me what the community thought of there businesses.

 

Wiley College Debate Team

The 1930 Wiley College Debate Team won the National Championship.   Wiley College defeated USC not Harvard as depicted in the movie “The Great Debaters”.   The actual difficulty for Wiley was that they won the championship of a debate league that did not recognize their right to be champion, because they were an African-American university, and consequently they never properly received recognition or their award as national champions.  HBCUs were not admitted in the debate league until after World War II.

Church Roots Run Deep Among HBCUs

In the years after the Civil War, there were millions of newly-freed Black children and adults who emerged from slavery worn but eager and determined to get something they never had—a chance to learn how to read the Bible, write their names and words on a page, and be educated.

PAUL QUINN COLLEGE

Founded in 1872 in Austin, Texas, by a small group of African Methodist Episcopal preachers at Metropolitan A.M.E. Church, Paul Quinn College began as a high school. But it was A.M.E. Bishop William Paul Quinn who envisioned an expanded campus and broader curriculum for its students that included liberal arts and trades. The college was chartered by the state of Texas in 1881.

VIRGINIA UNION UNIVERSITY

After 1865, teachers and missionaries from the American Baptist Home Mission Society arrived in Richmond, Va., the former Confederate capital, and spent nearly three decades educating newly freed Blacks as teachers and preachers. They used the basement of Ebenezer Baptist Church on Leigh Street as the first home of a school for Black women that was modeled after Wellesley College in the North. From the eventual closure and merger of four of the Mission Society’s seminaries and colleges came Virginia Union University in 1899.

MOREHOUSE COLLEGE

In 1867, two years after the Civil War ended, Augusta Institute opened in the basement of Springfield Baptist Church, considered the oldest independent African-American church in the U.S. The Augusta Institute prepared Black men for the ministry and teaching. Today we know it as Morehouse College.

SHAW UNIVERSITY

Shaw University was founded in 1865 by the American Baptist Home Mission Society of the Baptist Church to provide a theological education to freed Blacks.

OAKWOOD UNIVERSITY

When the Seventh-day Adventist Church decided to educate Black students in the South, they established an industrial school in 1896. The school became Oakwood College in 1943. Later renamed Oakwood University in 2008, the institution is the only Black university-owned and operated by the Church.

XAVIER UNIVERSITY

Wanting to give Black and Native American children in the South the Catholic-oriented education she thought they lacked, Katharine Drexel, a Philadelphia heiress turned Catholic nun and later saint, used her inheritance to open a high school for these students in 1915. Drexel and the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament added Xavier University of New Orleans, a four-year college, in 1925. It remains the nation’s only Black Catholic university.

Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science

Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science (CDU) is a premier mission-driven university dedicated to transforming the lives of underserved communities through health professions education, biomedical research and compassionate patient care. Since incorporating in 1966 out of the ashes of the Watts Riots, we’ve been serving South Los Angeles and beyond by working to eliminate health disparities and providing unique, quality education and training opportunities. CDU has produced thousands of diverse health care leaders ready to provide care in today’s workforce with excellence and compassion.

Morgan State University Lacrosse Team

The Morgan State University Lacrosse Bears was the only lacrosse team established to play NCAA-level lacrosse at a historically black institution. The team, from Baltimore, Maryland, defeated schools like Harvard and Notre Dame and upset a #1 ranked team in 1975. The team’s exploits are recounted in the book Ten Bears, and the story is in production for a major motion picture.

From 1970 to 1975, the Bears were ranked in the top 25, four out of five years. They made the championship tournament twice, and in 1975 were involved in one of the great upsets in intercollegiate sports history, when Morgan defeated Washington and Lee University, a lacrosse team which would eventually reach the NCAA Division I semi-finals as the number seven seed. Washington & Lee had not lost a regular season or home game the prior two seasons.

By 1981 Title IX funding priorities required university athletic funds be equally distributed among women’s programs and the school dropped lacrosse in 1981

HBCU Lacrosse All-Star Classic held on November 17, 2013 at Howard University’s Greene Stadium in Washington. The college game will feature a North-South showdown, with players from the Howard and Morgan State men’s club teams forming the core of the North squad, and players from Hampton and Morehouse anchoring the South team.

Winter Olympic Special

Vonetta Flowers, Shani Davis, Yannick Bonheur and Vanessa James are not household name but they are history makers.

Vonetta Flowers was a star sprinter and long jumper at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and originally aspired to make the U.S. Summer Olympic Team. Flowers turned to bobsledding, and found success as a brakewoman almost immediately. At the 2002 Winter Olympics, she, along with driver Jill Bakken, won the gold medal in the two-woman event, becoming the first black person to win a gold medal in the Winter Olympics.

Shani Davis became the first Black athlete (from any nation) to win a gold medal in an individual sport at the 2006 Olympic Winter Games, winning the speedskating 1000 meter event. He also won a silver medal in the 1500 meter event. At the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada, he duplicated the feat, becoming the first man to successfully defend the 1000 meter gold medal, and repeating as 1500 meter silver medalist.

Vanessa James and Yannick Bonheur of France were the first black couple to compete in Olympic pairs skating at the 2010 Vancouver Olympic.

Vivian Malone Jones

Vivian Juanita Malone Jones (July 15, 1942 – October 13, 2005) was an African-American woman, one of the first two African Americans (James Hood) to enroll at the University of Alabama in 1963 and the university’s first African American graduate. She was made famous when Alabama Governor George Wallace blocked them from enrolling at the all-white university.

The Stand in the Schoolhouse Door took place at Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama on June 11, 1963. George Wallace, the Governor of Alabama, in a symbolic attempt to keep his inaugural promise of “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” and stop the desegregation of schools, stood at the door of the auditorium to try to block the entry of two black students, Vivian Malone Jones and James Hood. The incident brought George Wallace into the national spotlight.

Malone’s time spent at the University of Alabama was relatively free of conflict and threats to her safety, with the exception of a spree of bombings that occurred in November 1963 by rioting whites possibly angry with the integration policy. Two years later, in 1965, she received a Bachelor of Arts in business management and became the first African-American to graduate from the University of Alabama.

John Hargis, First Black Graduate of University of Texas Austin

John W. Hargis, the first black to receive an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. After deciding to become an engineer, he attempted to enroll at the University of Texas in 1954, but was told to take additional courses at Prairie View A&M University. In 1955 he was admitted to the University of Texas, where he graduated in 1959. While at the university he established a chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha, the national black fraternity.

John Hargis Hall is one of the oldest buildings on campus. Built in 1891, the building was not owned by the university until 1925. It was originally named the Little Campus Building and served as a men’s dormitory and later as the university’s human resources office. In 1987, the building was named John W. Hargis Hall to honor the first African-American student to receive an undergraduate degree from UT Austin. The Freshman Admissions Center is located in John Hargis Hall. It serves as the starting place for prospective students and parents who visit campus. Information sessions and student panels are held in the meeting rooms.

Alain Leroy Locke, First Black Rhodes Scholar

Alain Leroy Locke (September 13, 1885 – June 9, 1954) was an American writer, philosopher, educator, and patron of the arts. In a popular publication, The Black 100, Alain Locke ranks as the 36th most influential African American ever, past or present.

In 1907, Locke graduated from Harvard University with degrees in English and philosophy. He was the first African-American Rhodes Scholar. He formed part of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. Locke was denied admission to several Oxford colleges because of his race before finally being admitted to Hertford College, where he studied literature, philosophy, Greek, and Latin, from 1907–1910. In 1910, he attended the University of Berlin, where he studied philosophy.

Locke received an assistant professorship in English at Howard University, in Washington, D.C. While at Howard University, he became a member of Phi Beta Sigma fraternity. Locke returned to Harvard in 1916 to work on his doctoral dissertation, The Problem of Classification in the Theory of Value. In his thesis, he discusses the causes of opinions and social biases, and that these are not objectively true or false, and therefore not universal. Locke received his PhD in philosophy in 1918. Locke returned to Howard University as the chair of the department of philosophy, a position he held until his retirement in 1953.

Cheyney University of Pennsylvania

Founded as the African Institute in February 1837 and renamed the Institute of Colored Youth (ICY) in April 1837, Cheyney University is the oldest African American institution of higher learning, though degrees were not granted from Cheyney until 1914, when it adopted the curriculum of a normal school (teacher training). The founding of Cheyney University was made possible by Richard Humphreys, a Quaker philanthropist who bequeathed $10,000, one tenth of his estate, to design and establish a school to educate people of African descent.