National Historically Black Colleges and Universities HBCU Week

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When I went away to college after the summer when MTV was first launched, I had never heard of the term, "Historically Black Colleges and Universities." But during the following summer while taking organic chemistry, I lived in a dorm with two visiting HBCU students who were doing internships at a local pharmaceutical company. The gentleman who I grew closest to had come from Hampton University

Hampton Institute) in Virginia.

As a Yankee born the same year as passage of US Civil Rights Act, I had not truly appreciated that African Americans, particularly in the South, had traditionally not been welcome at colleges and universities. As a result, the African American community, sometimes supported by non-black supporters, had to establish their own universities as it was recognized that education was one path to equality. In fact, while nearly all HBCUs are south of the Mason-Dixon Line, the original HBCUs were in Pennsylvania (what is now Cheyney University

Quaker, Episcopalian, and other abolitionist supporters.

I'm still embarrassed by my ignorance back then, in part because my Northeastern high school history classes usually began with the Industrial Revolution and the challenges faced by my post-Civil War, Eastern European immigrant ancestors.

So, I was happy to learn that since 1980, this second week of September has been designated by the White House as National HBCU Week

In 1980, President Jimmy Carter signed Executive Order 12232, which established a Federal program "... to overcome the effects of discriminatory treatment and to strengthen and expand the capacity of historically black colleges and universities to provide quality education." Each President since that time has subsequently issued an Executive Order on HBCUs, with President George W. Bush signing Executive Order 13256, Feb. 12, 2002. (Bush's 2008 proclamation can be found here in PDF

Michelle J Nealy in Diverse Issues in Higher Education:
While HBCUs represent only 3 percent of all colleges and universities, they enroll close to one-third of all Black students. Forty percent of HBCU students pursue four-year degrees in science, technology, engineering and math, and about half of all Black students in teaching fields attended HBCUs. Three-quarters of all African-American Ph.D.s did their undergraduate studies at an HBCU, and, according to a study conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics, the total economic impact of the nation's HBCUs in 2001 was $10.2 billion.

Another interesting note I learned from Rochelle Rush

Spelman College and Bennett College produce over half of the nation's African American female doctorates in all science fields."

But to go back further, HBCUs played an essential role in the health care of African Americans. The now-defunct Leonard Medical School and School of Pharmacy at Shaw University trained over 400 black physicians between 1881 and 1918, some of whom went on as founders of other universities and all whom addressed the critical role of health care in underserved populations across the Jim Crow South.

Here's a pretty impressive list

At any gathering of black people, either in person or on the web, the issue of whether it's better to attend a Historically Black College or University (HBCU) or a mainstream university is pretty much guaranteed to come up at some point.

Being of Eastern European heritage as I noted above, I feel that it would be presumptuous of me to take a side in this issue, although whiteness hasn't prevented some others from doing so (see On My Mind

Chicago Defender,
Do we still need Historically Black Colleges and Universities? It's a question that even some Blacks are asking. Interestingly, those same people never ask whether Catholics still need Notre Dame or whether women still need Wellesley College?

For more information on National HBCU Week, please go to the US Department of Education webpage

Additional information:

From scienceblogs.com:
Molecular Pharmacology is a publication of the American Society for. Molecular Pharmacology Online is published with the assistance.
The Canadian Journal of Clinical Pharmacology has peer review articles on topics in all aspects of clinical pharmacology.
Karger is a medical publisher, scientific publisher and biomedical publisher of print and online.
A variety of topics involved with pharmacology, including neuropharmacology, renal pharmacology, human metabolism, intracellular.
Pharmacology, University College London, Research and Teaching in Medical Sciences, Biomedicine.
Pharmacology is the study of drugs and how they interact with our body. Pharmacology is both an experimental and clinical science that deals with all.
In general terms, pharmacology is the science of drug action on biological systems. Behavioral pharmacology studies the effects of drugs on behavior.
Electronic drug reference and drug therapy management site. Requires.

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