Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) are among the most important pillars of the Black freedom movement in America. Their alumni roll calls are a virtual who's who of the Black experience and feature some of the most prominent artists, scholars, politicians, and business leaders of the last three centuries. But their most important contributions have come in serving as incubators for social movements and activists that reshaped the contours of American democracy. These institutions, first created in 1837, offered a radically different alternative within higher education and led the way in sparking “truth and transformation” within the academy and throughout our society.

Students and alumni from Black colleges served as the spear tip of major social movements and created the most significant civil rights organizations that made an indelible impact on the nation's consciousness. Moreover, it was the humanities and social sciences at HBCUs that powered the imaginations of Black college students to envision and bring forth a more tolerant and just society. This roundtable will examine this long and fruitful legacy by bringing together scholars teaching at the largest public HBCUs in the nation to discuss both the impact of these powerful spaces and how historic and systemic underfunding has crippled and stymied the growth of these academic fields and these institutions. The latter being well documented by recent reports from the Biden administration highlighting billions of dollars that have been deliberately withheld from HBCUs in the last 40 years alone. The panel will examine the path forward for HBCUs confronting these issues and what the current landscape of campus activism looks like at Black colleges in politically red states.