How Black Colleges Empower Black Students

To their disadvantage, few Americans--and few in higher education--know much about the successes of historically Black colleges and universities. How is it that historically Black colleges graduate so many low-income and academically poorly prepared students? How do they manage to do so well with students "as they are", even when adopting open admissions policies?In this volume, contributors from a wide spectrum of Black colleges offer insights and examples of the policies and practice--such as retention strategies, co-curricular activities and approaches to mentoring--which underpin their disproportionate success with populations that too often fail in other institutions.This book also challenges the myth that these colleges are segregated institutions and that teachers of color are essential to minority student success. HBCUs employ large numbers of non-Black faculty who demonstrate the ability to facilitate the success of African American students.This book offers valuable lessons for faculty, faculty developers, student affairs personnel and administrators in the wider higher education community–lessons that are all the more urgent as they face a growing racially diverse student population.While, for HBCUs themselves, this book reaffirms the importance of their mission today, it also raises issues they must address to maintain the edge they have achieved.Contributors: Pamela G. Arrington; Delbert Baker; Susan Baker; Stanley F. Battle; T. J. Bryan; Terrolyn P. Carter; Ronnie L. Collins; Samuel DuBois Cook; Elaine Johnson Copeland; Marcela A. Copes; Quiester Craig; Lawrence A. Davis, Jr.; Frances C. Gordon; Frank W. Hale, Jr.; B. Denise Hawkins; Karen A. Holbrook; James E. Hunter; Frank L. Matthews; Henry Ponder; Anne S. Pruitt-Logan; Talbert O. Shaw; Orlando L. Taylor ; W. Eric Thomas; M. Rick Turner; Mervyn A. Warren; Charles V. Willie; James G. Wingate.

Historically Black colleges and universities play a vital role in the education of African Americans in the United States. For nearly 150 years, these institutions have trained the leadership of the Black community, graduating the nation s African American teachers, doctors, lawyers, and scientists. Despite the wealth of new research on Black colleges, there are topics that remain untouched and accomplishments that go unnoticed by the scholarly community. The chapters in this edited volume focus on topics that deserve further attention and that will push students, scholars, policymakers, and Black college administrators to reexamine their perspectives on and perceptions of Black colleges.

2020 Museum of African American History Stone Book Award 2020 Lillian Smith Book Award Finalist, 2020 Pauli Murray Book Prize For generations, historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have been essential institutions for the African American community. Their nurturing environments not only provided educational advancement but also catalyzed the Black freedom struggle, forever altering the political destiny of the United States. In this book, Jelani M. Favors offers a history of HBCUs from the 1837 founding of Cheyney State University to the present, told through the lens of how they fostered student activism. Favors chronicles the development and significance of HBCUs through stories from institutions such as Cheyney State University, Tougaloo College, Bennett College, Alabama State University, Jackson State University, Southern University, and North Carolina A&T. He demonstrates how HBCUs became a refuge during the oppression of the Jim Crow era and illustrates the central role their campus communities played during the civil rights and Black Power movements. Throughout this definitive history of how HBCUs became a vital seedbed for politicians, community leaders, reformers, and activists, Favors emphasizes what he calls an unwritten "second curriculum" at HBCUs, one that offered students a grounding in idealism, racial consciousness, and cultural nationalism.

Presenting new empirical evidence and employing fresh theoretical perspectives, this book sheds new light on the challenges that Black Students face from the time they apply to college through their lives on campus.The contributors make the case that the new generation of Black students differ in attitudes and backgrounds from earlier generations, and demonstrate the importance of understanding the diversity of Black identity.Successive chapters address the nature and importance of Black spirituality for reducing isolation and race-related stress, and as a source of meaning making; students’ college selection and decision process and the expectations it fosters; first-generation Black women’s motivations for attending college; the social-psychological determinants of academic achievement, and how resiliency can be developed and nurtured; institutional climate and the role of cultural centers; as well as identity development; and mentoring. The book includes a new research study of African American male undergraduates who identify as gay or bisexual; discusses the impact of student-to-student interactions in intellectual development and leadership building; describes the successful strategies used by historically Black institutions with at-risk men; considers the role of parents in Black male students’ lives, and the applicability of the “millennial” label to the new cohort of African American students.The book offers new insights and concrete recommendations for policies and practices to provide the social and academic support for African American students to persist and fully benefit from their collegiate experience. It will be of value to student affairs personnel and faculty; constitutes a textbook for courses on student populations and their development; and provides a springboard for future research.

This book draws from the successes of award-winning schools, teachers, students, and parents to help leaders understand how they can positively change the educational experience of Black students. When Black Students Excel offers real-life examples of outstanding elementary, middle, and high schools where teachers and school leaders have rejected policies and practices built upon deficit perceptions about the capacity of Black students. Chapters highlight leadership implications and offer specific suggestions for educators who are seeking to transform their schools in ways that advance the success of Black students. This practical guide includes questions to ask students and their parents, self-assessment tools, and an array of leadership and teaching practices that are effective to empower Black students, elevate school attendance and academic engagement, and improve other important outcomes. Unpacking important themes that influence the success of Black students, this book is a useful tool for educators who are seeking to understand how they can change programs, procedures, and practices in ways that engage and empower Black students.

This book examines colleges and universities across the diaspora with majority African, African-American, and other Black designated student enrolments. It engages the diversity of Black colleges and universities and explains their critical role in promoting academic excellence in higher education.