The HBCU Sisterhood: Testimonies of Triumph and Transformation, co-edited by Dr. Roslyn Clark Artis, president of Benedict College, and Dr. Allia L. Carter, brings together first-person accounts from more than a dozen women who collectively represent decades of leadership at HBCUs across the country. The book was released in print this month, with digital editions expected June 21.
The volume grew out of a simple, sobering fact: of all the presidents who have ever led the nation’s historically Black colleges and universities, only about 103 have been women, a number that, while historic, represents a fraction of the total. And few of their stories have been told in sustained, scholarly form.
“No story about HBCUs can be complete without considering the unique contributions and leadership of its women presidents,” Artis said during a virtual presidential conversation hosted by Virginia Union University's Center for the Study of HBCUs, where the project originated under the vision of the university’s president, Dr. Hakeem J. Lucas. “We wanted to amplify the voices of some of the foremost women leaders in higher education, not just at HBCUs, but across the entire landscape.”
The book’s parameters were deliberate: contributors had to be women of color who served as president at a single HBCU for a minimum of five years, a threshold designed to capture presidencies with enough depth and duration to yield substantive reflection. Among those featured are Dr. Dianne Boardley Suber, who served more than 14 years at St. Augustine's University — one of only a handful of women to reach that tenure milestone in HBCU history — along with Dr. Cynthia Warrick, who led three HBCUs over the course of her career, and Dr. Cynthia Jackson-Hammond, the former president of Central State University in Ohio who went on to lead a national higher education accreditation organization.
The accounts are candid. Warrick, who first entered higher education as a pharmacist and community board member in San Antonio before pursuing graduate degrees and the presidency, described arriving at South Carolina State University to find the institution's leadership structure had nearly collapsed. The outgoing president had left. There was no provost. The board vice chair, the vice president for finance, and the chairman had all been indicted. The state had suspended funding over governance failures. Accreditation was on probation.
“I had to bring on a whole new team in order to run the university,” Warrick said. At one public board meeting, when a board member attempted to present his own competing budget before cameras and reporters, Warrick said she stopped him directly. “I told him, if you want a job at South Carolina State, let me know, but this is not your job.”
