It’s become a sad, predictable routine. Whenever a news story about public historically Black colleges or universities (HBCUs) appears online, reader feedback forums explode with jeers stating that such institutions have “outdated missions,” practice “racial exclusion” and ought to be shut down.
The voices have become louder ever since the chairman of the Georgia Senate’s higher education committee proposed merging two public HBCUs, Albany State and Savannah State universities, with two nearby predominantly White colleges. In his words, the action would help tear down “the old vestiges of segregation.” Although ASU and SSU would keep their names, there is no promise to preserve their current missions.
Despite attempts to shroud such positions in the language of “integration,” they are at odds with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s stance on HBCUs and the role they should play in post-Jim Crow America.
King, an alumnus of the historically Black Morehouse College, consistently stressed that eradicating segregation in higher education was not about getting rid of HBCUs. As he once explained, HBCUs were “segregated” but they were not “segregating institutions.”
It is important to understand the meanings of the terms King used. A segregating institution is an instrument used by one race to uphold its political, economic and/or social dominance through methods that work to the detriment of other races. Quite differently, a segregated institution is a body that is adversely affected by those policies.
In Southern state education systems, the segregating institutions were the constitutional conventions, legislatures and governing boards that established and enforced “separate-but-equal” schools. The normal, industrial and/or agricultural colleges for colored students were clearly the segregated institutions because they were the ones disadvantaged by those discriminatory actions.
