Unlike some of his friends, Terance Simmons has always known about historically black colleges and universities, but on Monday, he truly got to know them.
The 17-year-old watched black fraternity members, dressed in matching gold ties, step and stomp in unison. He was pursued by alumni of Clark Atlanta University and Florida A&M University. He asked an admissions officer at Howard University, via Skype, whether he had a shot at an academic scholarship.
Like about 250 other students, the Washburn High School senior attended AchieveMpls’ first Historically Black Colleges and Universities Fair, held on the day commemorating one of the schools’ most famous graduates: the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., who began attending Morehouse College in Atlanta when he was just 15 years old.
At other events around the metro on Monday, speakers emphasized that a big part of King’s dream hinges on education.
“When it’s all said and done, when you have education, you are going somewhere,” the Rev. Christopher Hinton told a packed auditorium at Central High School in St. Paul. From there, hundreds of students and community members marched a half-mile down Marshall Avenue in what has become an annual tradition.
The organizations behind the college fair plan that it, too, will become a tradition.
Several church and educational groups bring area high school students on tours of predominately black colleges “so there are avenues for actually going to the colleges,” said Arnise Roberson, director of AchieveMpls’ career and college initiative. “But that isn’t always a feasible option.”
The fair gave students the chance to become familiar with the concept of historically black colleges and universities, known as HBCUs, whose principal mission is educating black Americans. Such colleges are concentrated in the South and Southeast, so fewer high school students from here apply, several organizers said.
In the Minneapolis School District, just 19 seniors graduating in 2009 reported that they would be attending an HBCU. Four of them said they were going to Alabama State University.
Just a small slice of the nation’s college students are enrolled in HBCUs. Yet they award about a fifth of all bachelor’s degrees earned by African-Americans, according to the federal government.
Stacy Pratt graduated from the University of Minnesota and earned her master’s degree at St. Mary’s University but wants her daughter, Antanaya Ferguson, to attend a historically black college.
So Ferguson, a junior at St. Anthony Village Senior High School, has done the tour, loved several campuses and plans to apply.
“Sure, she’ll be well-educated at the University of Minnesota, but that culture piece would be missing,” Pratt said, her hand on her daughter’s head. “It’s not the same. The cultural things happen on campus on an ongoing basis, rather than once or twice a year.”
At this college fair, the representatives behind the tables—packed with brochures and goodies—were alumni, rather than admissions staff, sharing the experience, in addition to the facts. Questions ranged from “How many students?” to “Do students get really into football games?”
James Pierce, a Tuskegee University grad and IT manager at Cargill, started his conversations with a question: When do you graduate?
Then he told the students to grab all the applications they could, read through them and note the criteria they should be working toward in their final years of high school. “It’s good to get exposed to this early,” he said.
Two juniors approached his table, fingering the university’s red and gold pom-poms and Live-Strong-style bracelets. Pierce asked whether their college searches were focused on HBCUs.
“What is that an abbreviation for?” asked a voice from behind them. It was Rajean Jones, a cousin. He’s just an eighth-grader at Anderson Community School in Minneapolis, but he knows what he wants—to be a lawyer.
“It’s not going to be easy,” he said, counting off the years of school ahead of him. “But I’ve been getting advice from people here about what it will take.”