Pride and paradox

"The nation wouldn't be the same without the large number of African-American leaders HBCUs produce," says William Bryant, head of the president's commission on the future of HBCUs in Washington.

Last year, President Bush proposed a 5 percent increase in federal funding for HBCUs. At the same time, his administration submitted a legal brief opposing affirmative action, a decision criticized by HBCU faculty as detrimental to the African-American community.

Black college officials did not expect their schools would benefit from a rollback in affirmative action had the Supreme Court ruled against it last week. After all, enrollment at HBCUs didn't rise in the 1990s after the University of California curtailed affirmative action there, Spelman admissions director Theodora Riley says. Students simply shifted from Berkeley or Los Angeles to other campuses in the system.

Even if applications had increased, many HBCUs lack the resources to enroll more students, according to Professor McGruder. "You need to hire more faculty, build more buildings - it taxes the infrastructure, and that could lead to more financial instability."

To survive, McGruder says black colleges must learn to collaborate more, whether that means joint purchasing or even becoming a college within a larger state university.

Atlanta's HBCUs can serve as a model for such collaboration, McGruder says. Three of the schools - Atlanta, Spelman, and Morehouse first formed the Atlanta University Center in 1929. The AUC currently has six member schools that share a research library, career services, and even an orchestra.

In the meantime, the gap between what elite HBCUs and poorer ones can afford to do widens. Some HBCUs have even turned to white students as a way to stabilize enrollment. Ten schools are now more than 20 percent white. Morehouse also envisions increasing the number of non-African-Americans (particularly Latinos) on campus, from the current 6 percent of the student body, Massey says.

Macalester College economics researcher Humphrey Doermann predicts most HBCUs will survive and prosper, even in a society that may become more integrated.

As with women's colleges that survived the admission of women to predominantly male schools, black colleges will still be an appealing option for many African American students, says Dr. Doermann, coauthor of "Spend and Prosper: Black Private Colleges and Their Students." "There will always be a niche for good colleges that have a mission," he says. [Editor's note: The original version of this story incorrectly stated the title of Dr. Doermann's book.]

W.E.B. Du Bois

Author, historian, sociologist, NAACP cofounder

Fisk University (1888)

Zora Neal Hurston

Author, feminist

Howard University (1923 to 1924)

Hildrus A. Poindexter

Physician, scientist

Lincoln University (1924)

Langston Hughes

Poet, playwright

Lincoln University (1929)

Toni Morrison

Nobel Laureate, Pulitzer Prize-winning author

Howard University (1953)

Thurgood

Marshall

First African-American US Supreme Court Justice

Lincoln University (1930)

Howard Law School (1933)

Martin Luther King Jr.

Author, pastor, civil rights leader, Nobel Peace Prize winner

Morehouse College (1948)

Medgar Evers

NAACP field secretary, freedom rider killed in 1963

Alcorn College (1952)

Don Clendenon

NY Mets outfielder and 1969 World Series MVP

Morehouse College (1956)

L. Douglas WIlder

First African-American governor (of Virginia)

Virginia Union University (1951)

Howard Law School (1959)

Debbie Allen

Dancer, director, actress

Howard University (1971)

Samuel L. Jackson

Actor, Academy Award nominee

Morehouse College (1972)

Shelton "Spike" Lee

Filmmaker

Morehouse College (1979)

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