Stand and Prosper
Private Black Colleges and Their Students
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by Henry N. Drewry and Humphrey Doermann
Princeton University Press
Due/Published
December 2003, 28 pages,
paper
ISBN
0691116326
New in paper (F03) Stand and Prosper offers an authoritative history of black colleges and universities in America. It tells the story of educational institutions that offered, and continue to offer, African Americans a unique opportunity to transcend the legacy of slavery while also bearing its burden. Henry Drewry and Humphrey Doermann present an up-to-date and comprehensive assessment of their past, present, and possible future. Black colleges fully got off the ground only after the Civil War--more than two centuries after higher education formally began in British North America. Despite horrendous obstacles, they survived and even proliferated until well past the mid-twentieth century. As the authors show, however, the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education brought them to a crucial juncture. While validating the rights of blacks to pursue opportunities outside racial and class lines, it drew the future of these institutions into doubt. By the mid-1970s black colleges competed with other colleges for black students--a welcome expansion of choices for African-American youth but a huge recruitment challenge for black colleges. The book gradually narrows its focus from a general history to a look at the development of forty-five private black colleges in recent decades. It describes their varied responses to the changes of the last half-century and documents their influence in the development of the black middle class. The authors underscore the vital importance of government in supporting these institutions, from the Freedman's Bureau during Reconstruction to federal aid in our own time. Stand and Prosper offers a portrait of the distinctive place black colleges and universities have occupied in American history as crucibles of black culture, and of the formidable obstacles they must surmount if they are to continue fulfilling this important role. "Both an excellent history of private historically black colleges and universities as well as an important assessment of the critical needs and policy areas that impact directly on their futures. Parts of the history are so compelling that one could piece together sections and make an effective case for reparations to the black community for centuries of abuse and deprivation." --William H. Gray III, President and CEO, United Negro College Fund Contents List of Figures
List of Tables
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1. Panorama
Chapter 2. Major Historical Factors Influencing Black Higher Education
Chapter 3. The Beginnings of Black Higher Education
Chapter 4. Public Schools, High Schools, Normal Schools, and Colleges
Chapter 5. Curriculum
Chapter 6. Higher Education in a New Century
Chapter 7. Two Decades of Desegregation
Chapter 8. Talladega College: A Case History (1867 to 1975)
Chapter 9. Leadership and Luck
Chapter 10. The Graduates
Chapter 11. The Students
Chapter 12. Faculty: Challenge and Response
Chapter 13. The Small Colleges
Chapter 14. Student Aid
Chapter 15. External Sources of Support
Chapter 16. Leadership and Financial Independence
Chapter 17. Stand and Prosper
Notes
References
Index |
