HBCUs have always punched above their weight while carrying a disproportionate share of the burdens of racism in the US
In the first week the Black aspiring journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault integrated the all-white University of Georgia in 1961, there was a riot on campus. The white girls living in the dorm above her took turns stomping on the floor to torment the new arrival. Hunter-Gault played Black music to drown out the noise and the hatred. “I was listening to Nina Simone’s albums and just very at peace,” she recalls in the buzzy new documentary Summer of Soul, as the singer coos “a new world awaits you”.
Back then, this was the prize that awaited ambitious Black people who won legal battles for access to public universities. Flash forward 60 years, a similar prize was offered to the decorated journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones at her alma mater, the University of North Carolina (UNC), when she was rejected for tenure after a white donor voiced concerns. Hannah-Jones, who rose to fame after conceiving of the New York Times’ 1619 project, then earned tenure after students and alumni took to the streets and her legal team took to the courts.
