HBCUs are imperative to Black progress. Financial support from liberal allies is needed.

Presidents of Historically Black Colleges and Universities have always known that our institutional success depends far less on our allies’ exercises in anti-racist rhetoric, and much more on their exercises in anti-racist resource sharing. Benjamin Elijah Mays, a man I count among my heroes and a former president of one of America’s most prestigious HBCUs, Morehouse College, understood this distinction quite well.

At the college’s Centennial Commencement Convocation, he issued this warning: “Discrimination in the future will not be administered by poor whites and the people who believe in segregation, but by the liberals who believe in a desegregated society … who will wine and dine with us in the swankiest hotels, work with us and still discriminate against us when it comes to money and power.”

Juneteenth allows us to reflect on white supremacy today

And today, as we celebrate the 158th anniversary of Juneteenth, a day which invites honest reflection about not just how far Black people have come since emancipation, but how much further along we should be, Mays’ words weigh heavy on my mind. For indeed, while the house of white supremacy may have had its foundation laid and its framing put up by openly racist hands, it does in fact seem that it is the liberals who, today, are not so much helping to tear down that house (as they might imagine), but who are often instead busily hanging the drywall and putting on the finishing touches.

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I have come to accept the permanence, to some degree or another, of that house here in America. At the very same time, I know that our efforts to oppose its permanent influence over Black people’s ability to self-determine must always endure. And history shows us that when it comes to breaking that stranglehold over our genuine autonomy, we are never in a greater position to do so than when our Black institutions are well capitalized. But given the significant role that philanthropy has always played in our institutional capacity to serve and uplift the community, the cold indifference that has broadly characterized the donor class’ attitudes towards our Black institutions over the past 20 years suggests that the future described by Mays has indeed arrived.

White, liberal allies' support for Black progress is lacking financially

A report released last month noted how, from 2002 to 2019, foundational support for HBCUs fell 30% from $65 million to $45 million. During 2015-2019, the nation’s eight Ivy League schools received a combined $5.5 billion in philanthropic dollars while, in that same period of time, the entirety of the nation’s 100 HBCUs received only $303 million. And to look at the average Ivy League school and the foundational funding it receives is to see an amount 178 times greater than that received by the average HBCU. Harvard University, for instance, boasts an endowment of $53 billion; the value of all HBCU endowments taken together is just 10% of that. And so, as the endowments of non-HBCUs continue to accumulate with charitable giving reaching its highest levels historically, HBCUs keep rattling their tin to an indifferent philanthropic sector.

What this tells me is that there is a definite disconnect between our liberal and progressive allies’ stated support for the cause of Black uplift and where they commit their resources to help us achieve that. Because, when it comes to Black people maximizing their potential, there is only one group of institutions which were established for that express purpose, and which have a definite, proven track record of fulfilling that mission: Black institutions.

Our HBCUs, which—while only constituting a mere 3% of our nation’s colleges—punch well above their weight in their development of America’s Black professional class. They disproportionately produce the number of America’s Black engineers (40%), Black doctors and dentists (70%), Black judges (80%), and Black public-school teachers (50%). And it is that last statistic in particular that—when I think of the current state of Black Louisville and what’s needed to guarantee an elevating effect on the community—points to the absolutely critical role of those institutions.

HBCUs prepare Black professionals to model success for younger generations

Consider the following: When low-income Black students have at least one Black teacher in the 3rd, 4th or 5th grade, they are nearly 39% less likely to drop out of school. Here in Jefferson County, we are a majority-minority school system that has long suffered from persistent gaps in graduation rates between its white and Black students. Given how the district’s Black student population (37%) is nearly three and a half times the total number of its Black teachers (11%), how can we possibly wonder why our Black youth are significantly less likely to see a commencement ceremony than their white peers?

Worse yet, how can we not possibly realize that we already have the exact means to treat and fix that problem. We know that the solution lies in our HBCUs. The data tell us that it is those institutions that are overwhelmingly preparing Black teachers to be in those public-school classrooms where they can model success for Black children and steer them away from self-doubt and lack of direction and keep them instead on a path of positive outcomes.

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And this leads me to the issue of some much-needed honesty from our liberal and progressive allies, particularly those within the donor community whose selection of charitable causes is informed by the data. Because if these donors’ philanthropic giving is honestly guided by the data, then when it comes to how they can help uplift and support the Black community, then it is into HBCUs where they must necessarily invest their money. It is past time to end the legacy of neglect. In the fight for racial justice, continuing to overlook or ignore how singularly vital these institutions are in conditioning success for Black people is to keep a thumb on the scale for white supremacy.

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It is regrettable that Mays’s prediction about the soft discrimination by liberals has indeed become our greatest obstacle today. However, I have seen firsthand the possibility of radical change when liberals and progressives embrace an institutional vision of authentic Black empowerment; one in which the control, culture and concerns of the institution are necessarily and straightforwardly Black. Simmons College of Kentucky—the nation’s last-designated HBCU where I have proudly served as president for 20 years—is one such example.

Over the last decade we have become a major economic driver for Louisville, generating a nearly $51 million financial effect in the city and beyond. As a provider of the kind of unique educational experience that Black high school graduates are seeking, we are helping counter our city’s population decrease by attracting students from 28 different states as well as bringing in scholars and academics whose skillsets will help expand the Black professional class here in Louisville. And our operating budget—which having increased nearly 8,000% to $16,000,000 since 2005 now ranks as the largest of any Black institution in the state of Kentucky—continues to grow. Because of that, we will be able to keep making the kinds of capital investments in the community that redound to the benefit of not just Black Louisville, but Louisville as a whole.

Courageous donors have supported HBCUs in the past

I list these accomplishments because there is a direct link between Simmons’ ability to provide this increasing level of service to the community and the great civic-mindedness of local donors like the late David A. Jones Sr. and organizations like the Gheens and James Graham Brown Foundation. They believed in us at a time when it was unpopular to do so; when the local philanthropic network was casting aspersions on our relevancy, predicting failure and even preparing a feasibility study to discourage donors from giving their money to an unapologetically Black institution.

Before the ink had dried on that study, we had proven them wrong. And it was because those aforementioned individuals had listened with courageous ears to the case for HBCUs. And without perhaps ever hearing the words of Benjamin Mays, they understood the imperative in his dictum that “The abolition of economic, political, and philanthropic discrimination is the first order of the day, not for the good of Negroes alone, but for the nation as a whole.”

Today that exhortation to radical altruism is being answered by individuals like David Jones Jr. and his wife, Mary Gwen Wheeler. With the establishment of a scholarship program like Evolve502, they are taking on the mantle of genuinely transformational philanthropic leadership here in Louisville. It is urgent and critical work. And so this Juneteenth, I am calling on more mavericks from the philanthropic community to follow their lead and be the friend that Black people right now so desperately need.

Kevin W. Cosby, Ph.D., President, Simmons College of Kentucky and Pastor, St. Stephen Church.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: HBCUs don't need lip service. This Juneteenth, we need support