Higher Education for African Americans

The U.S. Supreme Court's 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson established a "separate but equal" doctrine in public education. In validating racially dual public elementary and secondary school systems, Plessy also encouraged black colleges to focus on teacher training to provide a pool of instructors for segregated schools. At the same time, the expansion of black secondary schools reduced the need for black colleges to provide college preparatory instruction.

By 1953, more-than 32,000 students were enrolled in such well known private black institutions as Fisk University, Hampton Institute, Howard University, Meharry Medical College, Morehouse College, Spelman College, and Tuskegee Institute, as well as a host of smaller black colleges located in southern and border states. In the same year, over 43,000 students were enrolled in public black colleges. HBCUs enrolled 3,200 students in graduate programs. These private and public institutions mutually served the important mission of providing education for teachers, ministers, lawyers, and doctors for the black population in a racially segregated society.

U.S. Department of education: https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/hq9511.html

The Oldest Historically Black College Still in Operation

Cheyney University of Pennsylvania

First known as the African Institute, the school was soon renamed the Institute for Colored Youth. In its early years, it provided training in trades and agriculture, which were the predominant skills needed in the general economy.

In 1902, the Institute was relocated to George Cheyney’s farm, a 275-acre property just 25 miles west of Philadelphia. The name “Cheyney” became associated with the school in 1913, though the school’s official name changed several times during the 20th century.

Photo and information curtesy of Cheyney University webpage.

https://cheyney.edu/who-we-are/the-first-hbcu/

African American Educator Paving the Way for Future Generations

Undated photograph of Hallie Quinn Brown taken by Fred. S. Biddle

Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress LC-DIG-ppmsca-50302.

There are people who give great speeches, and they there are those who perform them. Hallie Quinn Brown was one of the few who perform speeches. In her era, she was recognized as one of the greatest elocutionists across two continents, Europe and America. Though she rarely appears in history books, Brown’s legacy can be found in today’s speech-language pathologists and spoken word artists. She lectured widely on the cause of temperance, women’s suffrage, and civil rights. Hallie Quinn Brown is honored as an ancestor for demonstrating the power of language and Black women’s voices

Brown was among the first to become interested in establishing Black women’s clubs. These community-based organizations promoted the idea that it was the duty of middle-class Black

women to help the underprivileged. Many, like the Colored Women’s League, Brown and Anna Julia Cooper, helped establish in 1893, adopted politics of respectability. This is a philosophy endorsed by Black elites that the way to uplift the race was to correct the “bad” behavior of the Black poor. This philosophy emerged as a response to the intensified racism, rising inequality, and declining economic mobility of the Jim Crow era. It was first used among Black club women to distance themselves from negative stereotypes associated with the Black community.

Information from the National Park Service, nps.gov