Dominica Dunbar Dessalines is right: “HBCU Scandals Don’t Die, They Multiply.”

But there is much more to this corrosive pattern endemic to critical sectors across America. 

Crime against 

Self-realization, 

Human potential and Empowerment! 

 

I

’ve seen it close up in long years of decline, debasement, and disavowal of mission enshrined in the early Historically Black Colleges.

They began in the latter 1800s, when majority institutions of higher learning were closed to Negroes.

Black colleges originally were established by churches with additional support from the American Missionary Association and the government’s Freedmen’s Bureau to train teachers, preachers, and other community members. These schools also provided an essential nurturing environment with freedom to explore collective identities and cultures. With the second Morrill Act (1890) requiring states to “provide land grants for institutions for black students if admission was not allowed elsewhere,” more than 90 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) were  established by 1900; and in the 1900s, their programs expanded to include an emphasis on scholarship.

Among America’s outstanding HBCU graduates (including myself though not outstanding) were writer W.E.B. Du Bois, journalist Ida B. Wells, educator Booker T. Washington, and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

Deliberate Ruin of more than HBCUs!

I

 ’ve seen it in foreign countries against which U.S. leadership partnered with corporations and sundry nonprofits, NGOs and the like wage endless wars, provocation and destabilization—

stoking local division and corruption

displacing millions, creating refugees, asylum seekers, statelessness and homelessness

slaughtering and maiming millions of people (including U.S. soldiers and families)

destroying and thwarting essentials (e.g., clean water, agriculture for food, livelihood) and potential for development

regressing domestic societies, cultures and institutions under a fraudulent “humanitarian” mask coined “right to protect” (R2P).

I

’ve seen it in the federally funded segregationist “charter” academies whose embodiment

reverses and contradicts all intent of the U.S. civil and human rights movements in which Americans died—for the equal and earned right to enter, to participate with confidence and competence and to thrive and rise with equal standing, equal chance, in any society or sector in the United States or anywhere in the world.

The original Black colleges, Negro colleges — not as of segregationist academies, and their students and faculty were not exclusively Negro — were essential building blocks, the ground work that instilled individual courage and competence and character in the young.

Capital Wastes all! 

I

n the post-1960s era we are experiencing ruin, regress, corruption, insidious assault on essential rights and strength of self determination.

We are seeing rabid capitalism, rabid carelessness and rabid consumption.

 

Capital wastes.

We are seeing essential potential and empowerment of the masses pounded into dust.

We are seeing ethical principle and human sensibility silenced as no more than silly sentimentality.

On the altar of an avaricious few, we are experiencing the sacrifice of many millions of people.

 

Sources

News peg

Black Agenda Report “HBCU Scandals Don’t Die, They Multiply” Dominica Dunbar Dessalines

November 8, 2018

https://blackagendareport.com/hbcu-scandals-dont-die-they-multiply

Smithsonian “Five Things To Know: HBCU Edition” Five Things To See: Power of Place, National Museum of African American History and Culture Washington, DC 20560

https://nmaahc.si.edu/blog/five-things-know-hbcu-edition

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