“Yet with A Steady Beat”: Advocating Historically Black Colleges and Universities as Black Women in the Age of Trump’s America

Abstract

Collectively, we write this essay from our respective positions as a current Historically Black College and University (HBCU) student, an HBCU alumna and graduate researcher, and an HBCU alumna, professor, and administrator. As Black women committed to racial equity and the intersectional study of higher education, we evoke the words of United States Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who, in the consequential 1992 United States v. Fordice ruling, began his concurring opinion by evoking the words of Fisk University alumnus and noted sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois: “We must rally to the defense of our schools. We must repudiate this unbearable assumption of the right to kill institutions unless they conform to one narrow standard.” Although he remains an adamant dissenter of university admissions policies that consider race, Justice Thomas further offered support for the mission and value of Black HBCUs in his concurring opinion: