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.
