Come Home to Train Your Own

When Nikole Hannah-Jones announced that she would be joining the Howard faculty in the Summer of 2021, she explained that her decision was guided by a simple ethos: “Come home to train your own.”

On the same day, writer Ta-Nehisi Coates also announced that he would be joining Howard’s faculty. Unlike Coates, who attended Howard in the early 2000s, Hannah-Jones had no direct ties to the University. Her only connection to Howard was a long-held regret that she had never studied at the Mecca. But for Hannah-Jones and many other African Americans, home can be a reflection of where your people are, not necessarily where you’ve been before.

For generations, many talented African Americans overlooked HBCUs in favor of primarily white institutions whose resources and prestige, they believed, could offer validation, acceptance, and legitimacy for their work. The flawed notion that HBCUs were second-rate created the assumption that Black faculty members worked there only because no other institution would have them; they had no other choice.

But for Black academics and teachers, researchers and writers, entrepreneurs and lawyers, athletes and artists – it is time to come home to the more than 100 HBCUs located across the country.

As our country continues to face a racial reckoning, there is no place better for Black leaders to work and teach than in HBCUs. While social justice is consuming our national attention right now, HBCUs have been laying the groundwork for generations. From the big universities to the small schools and colleges, our alumni are leading the social justice movement at all levels – in the statehouses and courthouses, on the streets and in the C-suite, in the hospitals and pharmacies, on our television screens and in our magazines. HBCU alumni are doing the big thinking as well as the blocking and tackling necessary to initiate change and make it last.

HBCUs are too important to fail. As our country works to become more equal and just, HBCUs are the key drivers of diversity, inclusion and representation. HBCUs account for a small fraction of all institutions of higher education, yet they account for a disproportionate number of Black professionals in some of the most critical industries. For example, in the entire country, 70%of Black doctors receive undergraduate degrees from HBCUs.

Many HBCUs have long operated in precarious financial situations. In total, 17 HBCUs have been forced to close their doors, including five since 1989. They are often underfunded and receive fewer financial contributions from alumni, a reflection that Black Americans tend to earn lower incomes and have less wealth than white Americans. High-profile faculty not only help attract students, who bring tuition revenue to HBCUs, but they also bring in outside funding from donors and corporate sponsors who want to support their research.

The impact of their decline would be devastating. Leaders and luminaries have an opportunity to strengthen these critical institutions while also furthering the legacy of their own work.

With the decisions of Hannah-Jones and Coates to come to Howard, as well as Deion Sanders to coach football at Jackson State University and Reggie Theus to coach basketball at Bethune Cookman, we are seeing the first motions of a movement. What our country needs right now is a second Great Migration, one where Black intellectuals and professionals come home to our HBCUs.

The road to greater equality, diversity and representation in the country as a whole must begin with greater investment in our predominately Black institutions, places where people of color are empowered to rise as high as their abilities will take them. At Howard, our illustrious faculty members could work anywhere – but they choose to come to or stay at our institution because they understand that HBCUs provide a critical service to the Black community and the nation as a whole.

Coming home is never a sign of failure or regression. The fact that Black academics and other talented individuals can choose to work at HBCUs over other colleges and universities is a symbol of our national progress and a testament to our ongoing priorities to bring social justice to fruition.