By Scott Dyer
BATON ROUGE, La.
For decades three historically Black colleges and universities have called New Orleans home.
– Southern University-New Orleans (SUNO), founded in 1956 as a branch of a system known for producing a majority of the state’s Black lawyers.
– Xavier University of Louisiana, founded in 1915 and long known for sending the most African-American students to medical school of any in the United States.
– And Dillard University, founded in 1869, ranked just five weeks ago as one of the best liberal arts schools in the South by U.S. News and World Report.
Now the schools stand empty — their students, faculty and staff scattered to the four winds as Category 4 Hurricane Katrina blew off rooftops, uprooted trees, damaged lecture halls and classrooms and disrupted lives.
