You can go to school anyplace, but no school will love you, and teach you to love yourself and know yourself like Hillman. – Whitley Gilbert
When Whitley Gilbert-Wayne stepped off the plane in Tokyo alongside her husband Dwayne in the mid-1990s, she had no idea that a chance encounter at a contemporary art exhibition would transform her from a newlywed supporting her engineer husband’s career into one of the most influential voices in Pan-African art acquisition and investment. The former Hillman College art history major known during her undergraduate years for her impeccable style and occasional elitism had matured into a woman with vision that extended far beyond Virginia’s borders. What began as casual gallery visits in Tokyo’s vibrant Roppongi district evolved into a business idea that would eventually connect HBCU endowments, Black corporate America, and emerging artists across the African diaspora.
“I was standing in front of a piece by a Nigerian artist at this small gallery in Harajuku,” Whitley recalls of the moment that changed everything. “The gallery owner mentioned that wealthy Japanese collectors were increasingly investing in African contemporary art, and I realized if they see the value, why aren’t we, as African Americans, building these collections ourselves?” That revelation led Whitley to spend her remaining months in Japan studying the mechanics of art acquisition, investment, and appraisal. She networked with gallery owners, attended auctions, and built relationships with African artists who were making waves in Asia’s art markets. By the time she and Dwayne returned to the United States, she had a business plan, a network of artist contacts spanning three continents, and an unshakeable conviction that Black institutions and families deserved access to culturally relevant art investment opportunities.
Whitley’s first pitch wasn’t to venture capitalists or traditional investors, it was to her Hillman College alumni network. She reached out to former classmates who had established themselves in various industries: Dr. Kimberly Reese and Ron Johnson, the power couple behind the thriving Reese and Johnson Medical Group, Freddie Brooks in entertainment law, and even her college frenemy, Julian Pace, who had made his fortune in tech. “Whitley understood something fundamental,” says Ron Johnson, one of the fund’s founding investors. “She knew that we trusted each other because of our Hillman connection. She wasn’t asking us to just invest in art, she was asking us to invest in our cultural legacy.”
Dr. Kimberly Reese adds, “Ron and I had just completed our first major expansion of the medical group. We were looking for investment opportunities that aligned with our values. When Whitley presented her vision, it was clear this was about more than financial returns, it was about cultural preservation and long-term wealth building for our community.”
The Diaspora Art Investment Fund launched with $500,000 in seed capital from twenty Hillman alumni investors. Whitley’s model was revolutionary in its simplicity: identify emerging and mid-career artists from across the African diaspora from Salvador to Senegal, from Detroit to Durban acquire their works at fair market value, and create investment portfolios that would appreciate while supporting artists directly. Unlike traditional art investment funds that focused solely on returns, Whitley built in a mission-driven component. Ten percent of all profits would be reinvested in arts education programs at HBCUs and Historically Black Boarding Schools, creating a sustainable cycle of cultural wealth building.
Whitley’s most innovative contribution came when she approached her alma mater with an unconventional proposal: What if Hillman College built an art collection as part of its endowment strategy? “Most HBCUs had art on their walls, but it was rarely viewed as an asset class,” explains Dr. Terrence Mathis, Hillman’s Vice President for Advancement. “Whitley showed us that institutions like Yale and Harvard had art holdings worth hundreds of millions. She asked us why Hillman shouldn’t be acquiring works by contemporary Black artists that would appreciate in value while beautifying our campus and inspiring our students.”
Her consulting model for HBCUs was comprehensive. She would assess their existing collections, identify acquisition opportunities aligned with their budgets, negotiate directly with artists and galleries, handle authentication and appraisal, and develop exhibition strategies for campus galleries. Most importantly, she created educational programming that helped students understand art as both cultural expression and financial asset. Within five years, Whitley had consulted with fifteen HBCUs, helping them establish formal art acquisition programs. Texas College, Fisk University, and Savannah State University became early adopters, each building collections that now include works by Kehinde Wiley, Mickalene Thomas, and Wangechi Mutu—pieces that have appreciated significantly in value.
While institutional clients provided prestige, Whitley never forgot that wealth-building needed to extend to individual families. She developed a tiered service model specifically for HBCU alumni families who wanted to begin collecting art but didn’t know where to start. For clients with modest budgets, she offered educational workshops and access to emerging artists whose works started at $2,000-$5,000. For established collectors, she provided comprehensive acquisition services, including attendance at international art fairs, private viewings, and direct studio visits with prominent artists. “Whitley demystified art collecting for people like me,” says Kendra Williams, a North Carolina Central University alumna and corporate attorney. “I thought you needed to be a millionaire to collect meaningful art. She showed me that you could start small, build strategically, and create something beautiful and valuable for your family.” Her family services division has helped over 300 HBCU alumni families build personal collections, with many clients reporting that their acquisitions have tripled in value while providing immeasurable cultural enrichment to their homes.
Among her most enthusiastic clients are Kim and Ron themselves, who have used Whitley’s guidance to build an impressive collection for the Reese and Johnson Medical Group’s multiple locations. “Our patients commented immediately,” Dr. Reese notes. “Seeing artists who look like them, telling stories from our communities it changed the atmosphere of our practice entirely.” Whitley’s highest-profile work came through her corporate art advisory services. As Black-owned businesses expanded and Black executives ascended to C-suite positions across our own corporate African America, many began questioning why their physical spaces didn’t reflect the excellence and cultural richness of the people leading them. “Black CEOs and business owners would call me and say, ‘I just bought this building’ or ‘We’re opening our third location, and I refuse to have my walls look like every other corporate office,'” Whitley explains. “They wanted spaces that celebrated our heritage, that told our stories, that reminded their teams daily of the beauty and brilliance we come from.” Her corporate practice became a who’s who of Black entrepreneurial success from tech startups founded by young Morris College graduates to established manufacturing companies run by second and third-generation business owners. The Reese and Johnson Medical Group became one of her signature projects, transforming their practice locations into galleries that honored African and African American artistic traditions while creating healing, affirming spaces for their patients. As a corporate art broker and adviser, Whitley oversaw complete collection development for these companies, negotiating favorable terms, managing authentication, and ensuring proper insurance and conservation. Her approach combined aesthetic excellence with cultural competency, ensuring that corporate collections reflected the vision and values of Black leadership. “Working with the Reese and Johnson Medical Group was particularly meaningful,” Whitley says. “Here were two of my Hillman classmates who had built this incredible healthcare empire, and they wanted their spaces to reflect the excellence and beauty of Black culture. We curated pieces that spoke to healing, community, and resilience—themes that aligned perfectly with their mission.”
Perhaps Whitley’s most enduring legacy is the Pan-African Art Appraisal joint program she helped establish between Hillman College and the University of Namibia’s Department of Visual and Performing Arts. “Whitley recognized that the art world had a credibility problem when it came to valuing African and diaspora art,” notes Dr. Amara Okafor, program director at UNAM. “Too often, African art was undervalued or misunderstood by appraisers who lacked cultural context. She wanted to train a new generation of appraisers who understood both the technical aspects of valuation and the cultural significance of the works.” The program allows students to split their studies between Hillman’s art history department and UNAM’s Visual and Performing Arts department. Students gain hands-on experience with contemporary African art production, learn from artists addressing social issues through their work, and participate in exhibitions at the National Art Gallery of Namibia. Graduates of the program have gone on to work at major auction houses, establish their own galleries, and serve as in-house appraisers for museums and corporate collections. The program has become a model for other international partnerships, proving that HBCUs can lead in global arts education. The Reese and Johnson Medical Group has become a major supporter of the program, endowing two full scholarships annually for students pursuing careers in art appraisal and healthcare art therapy, a perfect synthesis of the couple’s medical expertise and their passion for the arts.
Today, Whitley maintains offices in New York and Johannesburg, traveling regularly between the continents she’s connected through art. The Diaspora Art Investment Fund manages over $50 million in assets, her consulting firm has worked with thirty HBCUs, and the Hillman-UNAM program graduates twenty-five students annually. But perhaps most telling is her personal collection, which she and Dwayne have assembled over the years. It includes works from artists they discovered in Tokyo decades ago, pieces by Hillman alumni artists, and acquisitions from UNAM student exhibitions. The collection represents not just financial investment, but relationships, memories, and a commitment to the vision that first struck her in that Tokyo gallery.
“I tell young people that building cultural wealth isn’t just about money,” Whitley reflects. “It’s about creating infrastructure, establishing standards, and ensuring that our stories, our beauty, and our creativity are valued literally and figuratively. That’s what I learned at Hillman, and that’s what I’m trying to build for the next generation.” From a student who once measured success by designer labels and social status, Whitley Gilbert-Wayne has become an entrepreneur who measures impact by artists supported, institutions strengthened, and communities empowered. It’s a transformation worthy of the art she champions and one that continues to inspire her fellow Hillman alumni, from the Reese and Johnson Medical Group to boardrooms and galleries across the diaspora.
“One truism in life my friend: when that Jones come down, it’ll be a muthafucka.” – Savon Garrison
When Love Jones graced theaters in 1997, it wasn’t just a cinematic moment—it was a cultural declaration. Larenz Tate’s Darius Lovehall and Nia Long’s Nina Mosley weren’t just two beautiful Black lovers entangled in poetry and passion. They were symbols of an emerging class of young, urban, Black intellectuals trying to navigate romance, identity, and career ambition in a world that often didn’t see or value their depth. But underneath the flirtation and the jazz, Love Jones offered something more subtle and profound: a meditation on the precarious economics of the Black creative class. While we swooned at the soul-stirring soundtrack and resonated with the push-and-pull of a love uncertain, the film quietly threaded a financial storyline that resonates just as strongly today as it did nearly three decades ago. It revealed, through the lives of Darius and Nina, the hustle, instability, and emotional toll that come with choosing art over comfort—and how economic uncertainty can test even the most poetic of romances.
When we meet Darius Lovehall, he is perched between intellectual brilliance and economic instability. A gifted poet with aspirations of being published, Darius represents so many Black creatives who pursue their artistic passions not for wealth, but for expression, healing, and cultural preservation. Yet even as he recites evocative lines at Chicago’s Sanctuary club, we’re left to wonder: how does Darius pay the rent? There’s no corporate job in the background, no nine-to-five to anchor him. And while he moves through the city with confidence, there’s an economic precarity underneath it all that the film never fully confronts—but never needs to. Sisters, especially those who’ve loved or been the partner of a dreamer, know that love can’t always cover the bills. The apartment Darius lives in, modest but tastefully adorned, is not just a set—it’s an emblem of that in-between place so many artists occupy: not broke, but not stable. He’s a man whose wealth comes from words, not Wall Street. But in America, that often means existing at the margins. And this isn’t just a poetic dilemma—it’s a financial one. Black artistry isn’t free, and neither is the freedom to pursue it.
Then there’s Nina Mosley: elegant, driven, and navigating her own economic tightrope. A gifted photographer recovering from a failed engagement, Nina is the embodiment of Black women who refuse to settle—for a man or a paycheck. She’s offered an opportunity to move to New York to pursue her photography, a decision that becomes the emotional fulcrum of the film. But look deeper, and her dilemma is also deeply financial. Nina’s decision isn’t just about love or distance—it’s about upward mobility. Chicago has heart, but New York has exposure. As a Black female artist, Nina knows the kind of visibility and access that New York promises could redefine her career. She doesn’t just want passion—she wants a legacy. And that requires investment, not just of emotion, but of capital. She takes on the risk and costs associated with a move: new housing, job uncertainty, disconnection from a budding relationship. It’s the kind of professional leap many Black women make, often unsupported, as they chase their dreams in a world where they must be twice as good with half the resources. Nina’s economic choices reflect the balancing act so many Black women know intimately: the tension between love and livelihood, between being someone’s muse and being your own masterpiece.
Set in a romanticized Chicago, Love Jones serves as a time capsule for the ’90s Black bohemian scene—a pocket of resistance against mainstream narratives. The characters swirl in an ecosystem of spoken word nights, jazz bars, bookstores, and photography exhibitions. But unlike the myth of starving artists popularized in white narratives like Rent, Love Jones shows us something else: Black artists don’t just chase dreams—they make do, make culture, and make community. Still, the underlying economic reality lingers. No trust funds. No safety nets. No access to generational wealth. The characters in Love Jones live paycheck-to-paycheck in a way that is stylishly concealed but always implied. Wood, the bartender and Darius’ best friend, is grounded in the service economy. Savon, Darius’ married friend, works a steady job and seems a bit too comfortable, hinting at the financial sacrifices he’s made for stability. Isaiah Washington’s character even struggles with the banality of married life—perhaps a subtle nod to the emotional cost of financial security. In this world, choosing art is both rebellion and risk. And for Black creatives, the margin of error is razor-thin.
Throughout the film, we watch Darius and Nina test the elasticity of love when wrapped around two unstable careers. One of the most telling scenes comes when Darius discovers that Nina has moved back from New York but didn’t tell him. It’s an emotional bombshell—but underneath it lies a deeper truth: Nina’s move didn’t go as planned. Her New York dreams were met with reality—something many Black women face when leaving their support networks in search of bigger opportunities. Did the job fall through? Was the city too cold, too lonely, too expensive? We’re not told explicitly. But the implication is clear: even with talent, the path forward isn’t guaranteed. It’s a powerful moment that speaks volumes. Career ambitions don’t always land as we hope. And for Black creatives, especially women, the emotional cost of failure feels doubled—shame not just from missing the mark, but from daring to dream in the first place.
Love Jones is filled with silences—and many of those silences speak to the unsaid fears about money. The fear of not being enough. Of being passed over. Of choosing the wrong path and having nothing to show for it. It’s a fear many Black professionals know all too well. Nina’s return to Chicago is not just about love—it’s about recalibration. About coming home to herself and finding her worth beyond a zip code. Darius’ decision to finish his novel and send her a letter is his own form of economic declaration: that his art will not remain locked in smoky poetry lounges, but be shared with the world—and possibly monetized. We see in their journey the cost of deferred dreams, but also the power of believing in yourself enough to keep going.
For those of us who grew up on HBCU campuses or in communities where Black excellence wasn’t just a hashtag but a daily mandate, Love Jones offers more than just nostalgia. It offers a blueprint. It reminds us that love without foundation can fall. That art without strategy can become a burden. That chasing your dream is beautiful—but it’s also expensive. In a world where Black student debt is disproportionately high, where Black women lead in entrepreneurship but lag in venture capital access, where Black artists often die celebrated but live unsupported, the financial storyline in Love Jones is our own. It’s about how we navigate institutions that don’t value our brilliance. It’s about the choices we make between rent and risk. It’s about dating someone who sees your dream, even when it hasn’t materialized yet. It’s about being seen—not just as muses or lovers—but as full economic beings.
Darius and Nina don’t get a fairytale ending tied in a neat financial bow. There’s no scene with a book deal and a gallery opening. Instead, there’s a train station, a few humble words, and a shared gaze of possibility. It’s subtle. It’s mature. It’s Black. And that’s the point. Love Jones is an artistic triumph precisely because it reflects our truths—romantic and economic. It shows the pressure to succeed, the fear of failing publicly, and the heartbreak of watching love wither under financial stress. But it also shows us the possibility of growth. Of second chances. Of Black love and art finding a way, not in spite of struggle, but through it.
The price of the poem, the cost of the picture—these aren’t just metaphors. They’re the real-world calculations that artists make every day. Darius choosing to finish his novel instead of taking a real job. Nina investing in equipment, film, darkroom time. These are economic decisions wrapped in creative packaging. And the film honors that complexity without offering easy answers. It says: yes, love is beautiful. Yes, art is sacred. And yes, you still have to figure out how to eat.
What Love Jones understood—and what makes it essential viewing for anyone building wealth while pursuing passion—is that financial security and artistic integrity don’t have to be enemies. They can be partners in the same dance. Darius doesn’t have to give up poetry to be stable. Nina doesn’t have to abandon her camera to be loved. But they do have to be honest about what it takes. The late nights. The rejection letters. The choice between a new lens and rent. The awkward conversations about who’s paying for dinner. The weight of wanting to contribute equally when your income is inconsistent.
For those of us who’ve ever loved a dreamer—or been one—Love Jones is more than a mood. It’s a manual. It teaches us that supporting Black artists means understanding that creativity is labor. That galleries don’t pay for themselves. That publishing a book requires time that could be spent earning a paycheck. That the emotional toll of creating while broke is a weight that compounds daily. The film doesn’t preach financial literacy, but it models financial honesty. When Nina leaves for New York, she’s making a calculated risk. When she returns, she’s recalculating. That’s not failure—that’s financial planning.
There are lessons here that business schools don’t teach but that every Black creative needs to learn. Invest in your dream, but build infrastructure around it. Darius and Nina both chase artistic paths without clear support structures, and we see the strain. Art should be liberating, not enslaving, which means creating financial buffers, diversifying income streams, and building community that can catch you when grants fall through or galleries close. Relocation is an investment decision, not just a romantic one. Nina’s move to New York teaches us that not all career moves yield returns. Research the market. Network before you leap. Understand the cost of living. Don’t let FOMO or opportunity worship blind you to the spreadsheet.
Love requires economic transparency, especially when both partners are building from scratch. Financial insecurity can strain even the strongest connection. Be open about the realities of your hustle with your partner. Share your wins and your losses. Budget together. Dream together, but also plan together. And perhaps most importantly: recognize that the creative economy is real economy. Artists must see their work as economic production. Copyrights matter. Branding matters. Social media monetization isn’t selling out—it’s survival. The idea that real artists shouldn’t think about money is a myth designed to keep us broke.
What makes Love Jones radical is its refusal to pathologize Black struggle or romanticize Black poverty. The characters aren’t noble because they’re poor—they’re compelling because they’re trying. They’re not tragic because they’re artists—they’re complex because they’re human. The film shows us that you can have taste without wealth, community without capital, and love without financial security. But it also shows us the cost of those choices. The stress lines around Nina’s eyes when she talks about New York. The slight defensiveness in Darius’ voice when asked about his book. These are the small tells of people managing economic anxiety while trying to maintain dignity.
In the decades since Love Jones premiered, the economics of Black artistry have shifted but the fundamentals remain. Social media has democratized access but saturated markets. Streaming has created new revenue streams but devalued individual work. The gig economy has given flexibility but eliminated stability. The dream of being Darius or Nina—published, exhibited, celebrated—is more accessible and more elusive than ever. Which makes the film’s quiet insistence on both love and financial consciousness even more relevant.
This is a film that understands what it means to be brilliant and broke, talented and tired, creative and cash-strapped. It sees us—really sees us—in all our contradictions. We want the freedom to create and the security to rest. We want partners who understand our calling and can also contribute to the household. We want to honor our gifts and pay our bills. We want to be artists and also eat. Love Jones doesn’t pretend these tensions are easy to resolve. It just shows us that they’re worth navigating.
So when you watch Love Jones again—and you should—watch it with different eyes. Notice the economic subtext beneath every romantic gesture. The way Darius holds onto his integrity even when it might cost him comfort. The way Nina calculates her moves even as she follows her heart. The way their community sustains them even when institutions ignore them. This is a financial love letter to the struggle and triumph of Black artistry, dressed in poetry and jazz. It’s still one of the most honest portrayals of the emotional and economic labor it takes to love—and be—an artist. And in a world that constantly demands we choose between making art and making money, Love Jones reminds us that the real work is figuring out how to do both.
Disclaimer: This article was assisted by ClaudeAI.
As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do. – Andrew Carnegie
In the late 19th century, two men stood at the pinnacle of American industry and despised each other. John D. Rockefeller, the oil baron who had quietly and methodically assembled Standard Oil into a monopoly, and Andrew Carnegie, the steel magnate who built his empire on the sweat and ingenuity of immigrant labor, were the defining rivals of the Gilded Age. They competed for wealth, for prestige, for the title of richest man in America — and then, crucially, they competed for something else entirely: legacy.
What that competition produced is almost too vast to comprehend.
Andrew Carnegie funded 2,509 libraries between 1883 and 1929, with 1,681 built in the United States alone. Over 26 primary organizations — including Carnegie Mellon University, Carnegie Hall, the Carnegie Institution for Science, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace — were established directly by him. Over 2,500 institutions and buildings worldwide bear his name. Pittsburgh, where his steel empire was born, holds the highest concentration, but the Carnegie name stretches across every state and dozens of countries. The Carnegie Corporation of New York, still active today, continues to fund education and democracy initiatives well into the 21st century.
The Rockefeller legacy is no less staggering. Dozens of major institutions bear his family’s name: Rockefeller University, The Rockefeller Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Rockefeller Center in the heart of Manhattan. His name is on halls at Cornell and Vassar, on a chapel at the University of Chicago, on an archive center that preserves the history of American philanthropy itself. And then there is the commercial legacy — when the Supreme Court broke up Standard Oil in 1911 into 34 companies, those companies eventually consolidated into what we now call ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Marathon Petroleum, and ConocoPhillips. That group of Standard Oil descendants today carries a combined market capitalization of approximately $1.3 trillion. The wealth Rockefeller created never stopped compounding. It simply changed form.
But here is what makes the Rockefeller legacy particularly resonant for this publication and this community: Morehouse College bears the name of Rockefeller’s former pastor, John Morehouse. Spelman College — the oldest historically Black college for women in the United States — bears the maiden name of Rockefeller’s wife, Laura Spelman. John D. Rockefeller was among Spelman’s earliest and most significant funders, contributing to the institution that would go on to educate generations of Black women who shaped American life. The man whose name is synonymous with monopoly capitalism was also, in a meaningful way, a patron of Black higher education at a moment when almost no one else was willing to be.
And the Rockefeller Foundation’s Form 990, publicly available through ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer, tells the ongoing story in hard numbers: total assets of $6.23 billion, net assets of $5.39 billion, and $440 million in charitable disbursements in 2023 alone — while the endowment principal remained largely intact. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, similarly available for public examination, reports total assets of $602 million and net assets of $559 million as of its most recent filing, up from $238 million in net assets just a decade ago. These institutions are still growing. They are still filing 990s. They are still deploying capital into the world more than a century after the men who created them drew their last breath.
A prior HBCU Money analysis of African American philanthropic institutions laid bare exactly why this distinction between revenue and investment income is the difference between activity and power. The King Center in Atlanta — one of the strongest African American legacy nonprofits in the country — earned $788,000 in investment income in 2022. The Ford Foundation generated $1.2 billion in investment income that same year. The Rockefeller Foundation generated $120 million. The Ford Foundation ran a $520 million deficit that year while the King Center ran a $1.28 million surplus — and Ford is the stronger institution by an almost incomprehensible margin. Ford can choose to run half a billion dollars in the red because its endowment is so vast that the deficit barely registers against the principal. The King Center’s surplus is a sign of precarity, not strength: it means the institution spent the year clinging to solvency rather than deploying capital into the world.
And then there is the Steward Family Foundation, anchored by David Steward — the wealthiest African American man in the country. In 2023 it reported $12.5 million in revenue. It held $22,000 in assets. It generated $29,000 in investment income. The wealthiest Black man in America has structured his primary philanthropic vehicle to distribute money annually and accumulate nothing — a pass-through, not a perpetual institution. His foundation will not be filing a 990 in a hundred years. It is not designed to. That is not a critique of David Steward’s generosity. It is a description of the architecture of Black philanthropy at its current upper limit: generous in the moment, invisible across generations.
That is what it looks like when a rivalry is pointed at something beyond ego.
Now enter Clifford Joseph Harris Jr. and Curtis James Jackson III, better known to the world as T.I. and 50 Cent.
The beef between these two hip-hop heavyweights has been simmering for years, recently reignited and escalating into a public spectacle that has captured the attention of the culture. T.I.’s son, King Harris, has leaped into the fray on his father’s behalf. Social media has lit up. Shots have been fired — verbal ones, though given the histories of both men, the word carries particular weight. The culture watches, chooses sides, and amplifies the conflict.
And what does it produce? Absolutely nothing of value to the African American community.
That is not an overstatement. It is the most precise accounting available.
This beef will not lead to a competition over who can build the largest endowment at an HBCU. It will not culminate in 50 Cent funding a new research center at Howard University while T.I. answers by endowing a chair at Morehouse — the school that, let us not forget, already carries the indirect legacy of a man who built an oil monopoly. It will not inspire either man to deposit millions into African American-owned banks, institutions that are chronically undercapitalized and desperately in need of the kind of support that Black wealth could provide if it were directed with intention. It will not produce a dollar for African American early childhood education programs. It will not fund K-12 institutions in the underserved communities both men came from. It will not build a single research facility dedicated to attacking the health disparities — hypertension, diabetes, maternal mortality, cancer survival rates — that continue to devastate Black America at disproportionate rates.
It will do nothing. It will generate content. It will generate clout. It will generate revenue for platforms that profit from conflict. It will generate nothing else.
The Medgar and Myrlie Evers Institute — honoring the NAACP field secretary who was assassinated in his own driveway in 1963 and the woman who spent thirty years pursuing his killer to justice — reported just $107,000 in total revenue in 2023 and earned nothing in investment income. Nothing. The institution charged with preserving the legacy of one of the most consequential civil rights martyrs in American history is running on the institutional equivalent of fumes. The Martin and Coretta King Center in Atlanta, the steward of Dr. King’s legacy and one of the most visited civil rights landmarks in the country, earned $788,000 in investment income in 2022 against an endowment that remains a fraction of what the institution’s mission demands. The Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center in New York — preserving the legacy of a man who came from the same streets, the same circumstances, the same defiance of a system designed to destroy him that both T.I. and 50 Cent have built careers channeling — generated $1,500 in investment income on $1.4 million in total revenue. Fifteen hundred dollars. Two men who have each earned more than that in the time it takes to read this sentence have not made these institutions whole.
This is the specific, named, documented cost of Black celebrity beef. Not an abstraction. Not a metaphor. Three institutions. Three legacies. Three sets of numbers that should make every wealthy Black American in this country uncomfortable.
This is not an indictment of either man as human beings. Both T.I. and 50 Cent have done genuine good in their communities at various points in their careers. Both are extraordinarily successful businessmen who built empires from circumstances that did not favor them. The fact that they arrived at wealth and influence from the bottom of American society makes their success stories genuinely remarkable. That is precisely why the waste of it is so tragic.
Consider the arithmetic of Carnegie’s library program alone. Two thousand five hundred libraries. Built over 46 years. In communities across the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, South Africa, and beyond. Free public libraries, at a time when access to books was a privilege of the wealthy. Carnegie gave away approximately $350 million during his lifetime — roughly $6 billion in today’s dollars — and the institutions he funded are still operating, still serving the public, still bearing his name. The competition between Carnegie and Rockefeller over who could give more, who could build more, who could leave the more lasting mark did not diminish either man’s wealth in any meaningful sense. It simply ensured that their names — and more importantly, the institutions those names represent — would outlast them by centuries.
There is a version of the T.I. and 50 Cent rivalry that could be genuinely historic. Imagine if these two men, instead of trading barbs online, announced a ten-year competition — tracked publicly, adjudicated by the community — over who could deploy their wealth most effectively for Black institutional development. Imagine 50 Cent challenging T.I. to match him dollar for dollar in deposits to Black-owned banks. Imagine T.I. responding by pledging to fund early childhood education centers in Atlanta and daring 50 to do the same in New York. Imagine the cultural energy that currently flows into this beef redirected into a genuine rivalry over who could build more, endow more, fund more, create more for a community that gave both of them everything they needed to become who they are.
The HBCU endowment gap is the starkest measure of the opportunity being squandered — and the universities that Rockefeller and Carnegie personally founded make the disparity almost impossible to look at directly.
Rockefeller founded the University of Chicago. As of June 30, 2025, its endowment stood at $10.9 billion, having returned 10.2% on investments in a single fiscal year. Carnegie founded Carnegie Mellon University. Its endowment reached $3.48 billion as of that same date, with a 10.9% net investment return for the year. Together, those two universities — founded by two men who were rivals — hold endowments exceeding $14 billion.
The combined endowments of all 100 HBCUs do not reach $6 billion. Two universities, founded by two rivals more than a century ago, hold nearly three times the endowment wealth of every HBCU in America combined.
Read that again. Two schools. Three times the endowment of one hundred.
That is not a funding gap. That is a structural chasm, built over generations, that determines whose scholars get paid, whose research gets funded, whose students graduate without debt, and whose institutions survive economic downturns without crisis. The University of Chicago and Carnegie Mellon will never face an existential budget crisis. They will never have to choose between keeping the lights on and retaining faculty. Their endowments generate enough annual return to fund operations, scholarships, and research without ever touching the principal. Meanwhile, HBCUs operate on margins that would make most community colleges uncomfortable, sustained by the dedication of their communities and the faith that the work matters — because the money has never matched the mission.
That is not a condemnation of HBCUs. It is a condemnation of the conditions under which they have been forced to operate, and an indictment of the Black wealth that has not yet organized itself to close that gap. The model for what organized private wealth can do exists and is documented in publicly filed 990s and university endowment reports. The only missing ingredient is the will to compete for something that matters.
The research funding gap is, if anything, even more consequential than the endowment gap — because research is where the future is written.
According to the National Science Foundation’s Higher Education Research and Development survey, the top 20 predominantly white institutions combined spend $36.5 billion annually on research and development. The top 20 HBCUs combined spend $712 million. That is not a gap. That is a ratio of more than 51 to 1. And to make the disparity even more concrete: 52 individual PWIs each spend more on R&D by themselves than all 20 of the top HBCU research institutions combined. Fifty-two schools. Each one, alone, outspending the entire upper tier of Black higher education research.
This is where the consequences of underfunding stop being abstract. Research funding determines who gets to ask the questions that shape medicine, technology, public policy, and economic development. It determines whose communities get studied, whose health outcomes get investigated, whose diseases get treated, whose neighborhoods get the infrastructure investments that flow from university-anchored economic development. When HBCUs are systematically excluded from this resource base, the African American community is not simply being denied prestige. It is being denied the scientific and institutional capacity to solve its own problems on its own terms.
The $35.8 billion annual research gap between the top 20 PWIs and the top 20 HBCUs is the price the African American community pays, every single year, for the failure to build research endowments at Black institutions. It is a recurring tax on Black intellectual capacity, levied not by law but by the absence of the kind of sustained private philanthropic investment that Rockefeller directed toward the University of Chicago and Carnegie directed toward Carnegie Mellon. Those institutions now have the endowments to fund research independence for generations. HBCUs are still waiting for someone to care enough to start.
The health dimension of this research gap is where the stakes become most personal. Black Americans die younger, suffer more chronically, and receive worse care at nearly every point of contact with the American medical system. Maternal mortality, hypertension, diabetes, cancer survival rates — the disparities are not mysteries. They are the predictable output of a research infrastructure that has never been adequately funded to study, understand, and treat Black patients on their own terms, in their own communities, with their own trust. The research capacity to change that exists at HBCUs and affiliated medical schools — institutions with the community relationships and patient access that predominantly white research universities have spent decades failing to build. But research capacity without research funding is just potential. Private endowments directed at HBCU medical research would save lives in ways that are measurable, documentable, and permanent. That is not a metaphor. It is a clinical fact.
African American-owned banks need the same intentional capital. Black-owned financial institutions are among the most important and most neglected infrastructure in the African American community. They survive on thin margins in the communities that need them most, while billions of dollars of Black wealth sit in institutions that have never demonstrated meaningful commitment to Black economic development. A public competition between two of the most influential men in Black popular culture over who could move more capital into Black banks would do more for Black economic infrastructure than a decade of policy advocacy.
None of this will happen because of the current beef between T.I. and 50 Cent. The cultural energy, the attention, the platform — all of it is being spent on a conflict that produces nothing, files no 990, builds no endowment, funds no scholar, saves no life.
Carnegie built 2,509 libraries. Rockefeller’s philanthropic descendants are still disbursing hundreds of millions of dollars annually, more than a century after his death, at institutions that carry his family’s name — including two HBCUs that bear the names of his pastor and his wife. The companies that descended from his oil trust are worth $1.3 trillion today. The two universities those rivals founded — the University of Chicago and Carnegie Mellon — together hold $14 billion in endowments and anchor research enterprises that collectively dwarf the entire HBCU research sector. Fifty-two individual predominantly white institutions each spend more on research annually than every top HBCU combined. The legacy of that Gilded Age rivalry is written in stone and endowment and laboratory and policy across the American landscape, in ways that will persist for another century at minimum.
What will the legacy of this beef be? Nothing. A few viral moments. A news cycle. A cultural footnote.
The competition that actually matters — the one that could put Black institutions on financial footing that no future political administration could threaten, that could fund the scholars and researchers and early childhood programs and community banks that the African American community has been building toward for generations — that competition has not yet begun.
It could begin tomorrow. The Medgar and Myrlie Evers Institute needs an endowment. The Martin and Coretta King Center needs an endowment. The Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center needs an endowment. Dozens of HBCUs need endowments. Scores of African American nonprofits are running on annual donations and faith while the institutions that honor the people who bled and died for the freedom that made Black celebrity possible in the first place operate on budgets that would embarrass a mid-size law firm. A rivalry over who could change that — who could move first, who could give more, who could build something that files a 990 a hundred years from now — would be worth watching. It would be worth celebrating. It would be worth the cultural energy that is currently being fed into nothing.
It is waiting for two men, or any two men, to decide that legacy is more interesting than drama.
The 990 filings are ready to be written. The institutions are ready to be named. Morehouse and Spelman proved more than a century ago that an industrialist’s rivalry could, when channeled correctly, leave Black institutions standing long after the industrialist was gone.
The only question now is who in this generation is willing to compete for something that will still matter when they are gone.
Disclaimer: This article was assisted by ClaudeAI.
I have discovered few learning disabled students in my three decades of teaching. I have, however, discovered many, many victims of teaching inabilities. – Marva Collins
When the Eight Schools Association, comprising Phillips Exeter, Phillips Andover, Choate Rosemary Hall, and other elite boarding schools, sends delegations to the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair or MATHCOUNTS Championships, they arrive with institutional power behind them. Generations of alumni networks, endowments in the hundreds of millions, dedicated competition coaches, and a culture that expects excellence. These schools don’t just prepare students for competitions; they’ve built entire ecosystems that produce winners systematically.
The African American community needs the same—not to gain access to their institutions, but to build our own parallel ecosystem of excellence. This isn’t about integration into existing structures; it’s about developing Black-controlled educational institutions that create seamless pipelines from kindergarten through college, from HBCU undergraduate research to Black-owned businesses and laboratories. It’s about institutional sovereignty and generational wealth-building through education.
The infrastructure already exists in fragments: four remaining historic Black boarding schools fighting for survival, HBCU laboratory schools serving thousands of students on HBCU campuses, scattered private Black schools across the nation, and 101 HBCUs waiting to receive the next generation of Black scholars. What’s missing is the connective tissue—the strategic vision to link these institutions into a powerhouse network that rivals anything the Eight Schools Association offers, while recognizing that most Black families need day school options, not just boarding programs.
African American students’ underrepresentation in elite STEM competitions—Science Olympiad, USA Biology Olympiad, American Computer Science League, Conrad Challenge isn’t a talent problem. It’s an institutional problem. When majority-Black schools face closure rates nearly double that of other schools nationwide, according to Stanford research, competition programming becomes an afterthought, if it exists at all. Meanwhile, prestigious institutions treat competition success as institutional mandate. They hire Ph.D.-level coaches, fund unlimited travel to regional and national contests, maintain state-of-the-art laboratories and makerspaces, and celebrate academic victories with the same fervor as athletic championships. Most importantly, they’ve built alumni networks spanning decades that provide mentorship, internships, and career pathways for graduates.
The Eight Schools Association demonstrates what institutional coordination achieves. These schools share best practices, collaborate on programming, and maintain standards of excellence that elevate all members. Their graduates don’t just attend elite colleges; they create companies, endow professorships, and return resources to strengthen the institutions that launched them. African Americans need this same institutional architecture but built for us, by us, serving our community’s interests and priorities.
While boarding schools capture attention with their prestige and immersive environments, the reality is that most Black families want and need high-quality day schools. Boarding schools serve grades 9-12 and require families to send children away, a proposition that doesn’t align with many Black family structures, cultural values, or financial realities. The future of Black educational excellence must therefore be built on a foundation of elite private day schools serving Pre-K through 12, supplemented by strategic boarding school options for families who choose that path.
Only four historic African American boarding schools remain from the over 100 that once existed: The Piney Woods School in Mississippi, Laurinburg Institute in North Carolina, Pine Forge Academy in Pennsylvania, and Redemption Christian Academy in upstate New York. These institutions represent more than educational options—they embody Black self-determination in education. The decline from over 100 to just four is a catastrophic loss of Black educational infrastructure that demands urgent reversal. But the primary focus must be on establishing a network of at least fifty elite Black private day schools across the country within the next decade, complemented by fifteen boarding schools for families seeking that option. Together, these institutions would create a comprehensive ecosystem serving Pre-K through grade 12, explicitly designed to rival the Eight Schools Association and other elite networks in resources, reputation, and results.
The day school model solves multiple practical challenges. Families maintain daily contact with their children while accessing elite education. Schools can serve Pre-K through 12, creating 14-year pipelines instead of just four years. Geographic coverage can be broader, with schools in major metropolitan areas where Black families are concentrated. And costs per student are lower than boarding, making sustainability more achievable.
Each elite Black private day school in the network would be designed as a competition powerhouse from the ground up. This means recruiting PhD-level faculty and competition coaches—the same caliber of talent that elite institutions employ. Science programs need teachers with doctoral degrees who’ve conducted research and understand how to prepare students for Olympiad-level competition. Mathematics departments require faculty who’ve published in their fields and can coach students to MATHCOUNTS and AMC excellence. Computer science programs need instructors with both academic credentials and industry experience who can lead programming teams to national prominence.
The Eight Schools Association succeeds because they pay top dollar for elite talent. Black private schools must do the same, offering competitive salaries that attract the best minds to teach our students. This isn’t optional it’s the price of competing at the highest levels. A well-meaning teacher with a bachelor’s degree cannot compete against PhD coaches at elite institutions. We must match their investment in human capital.
Beyond faculty, these schools require world-class infrastructure. State-of-the-art science laboratories where students can conduct genuine research. Extensive libraries with digital and physical resources rivaling small colleges. Advanced makerspaces with 3D printers, laser cutters, and robotics equipment. Computer labs with the latest technology. Athletic facilities that support both physical education and competitive sports. These facilities cannot be afterthoughts they must be built from the beginning to match or exceed what elite independent schools offer.
These schools must be strategically distributed across the country, not hostage to HBCU locations. Major metropolitan areas with significant Black populations need multiple options. Atlanta should have at least three elite Black private day schools. The DMV area (D.C., Maryland, Virginia) needs at least four. Houston, Dallas, Chicago, Detroit, New Orleans, Memphis, Charlotte—each requires multiple institutions to serve their communities adequately. But the network must also extend to underserved regions. New Mexico, Maine, the Pacific Northwest, Montana—areas with smaller but growing Black populations deserve options beyond traditional centers. These schools serve dual purposes: providing excellent education to local Black families and attracting families willing to relocate for access to elite Black institutions.
Boarding schools, given their residential nature and focus on high school, can be even more geographically flexible. A boarding school in rural Vermont or coastal Oregon can draw students nationally, serving families across the country who choose that educational model for grades 9-12.
Each school—whether day or boarding—should partner with one or more HBCUs through strategic regional arrangements. For instance, Atlanta’s day schools could partner with Spelman, Morehouse, Clark Atlanta, and Morris Brown. A boarding school in Texas could be triangulated between Prairie View A&M, Texas Southern, Grambling, and Southern University, with all four institutions sharing governance and pipeline responsibilities.
This distributed partnership model offers several advantages. HBCU faculty from multiple institutions would serve on academic boards, bringing diverse expertise while ensuring curriculum rigor and alignment with college expectations. Students would have guaranteed pathways to any partner HBCU, expanding their options beyond a single institution. College students from partner HBCUs could supplement as residential advisors and tutors, gaining education experience while strengthening connections between institutions.
However, to truly compete with the Eight Schools Association, these boarding schools must recruit PhD-level faculty and coaches—the same caliber of talent that elite institutions employ. Science competition teams need coaches with doctoral degrees in their fields, not just enthusiasm. Mathematics programs require faculty who’ve published research and understand competition mathematics at the highest levels. Computer science teams need instructors with industry and academic credentials. The Eight Schools Association succeeds because they pay top dollar for elite talent; Black boarding schools must do the same, offering competitive salaries that attract the best minds to teach and coach our students.
These K-12 institutions cannot be dependent on HBCU facilities or resources. To truly compete with elite independent schools, they must build and maintain their own infrastructure and secure their own endowments. Each elite day school should target minimum endowments of $50-100 million. Each boarding school should aim for $100-200 million. These endowments ensure financial sustainability, enable need-blind admissions, support competitive faculty salaries, and provide unlimited resources for student opportunities. HBCU partnerships provide crucial academic connections and pipeline benefits, but the K-12 institutions themselves must stand as independently powerful schools capable of competing with the best in America.
For this ecosystem to succeed, competition excellence cannot be an extracurricular afterthought—it must be embedded in institutional DNA from day one. Every school in the network should mandate that students participate in at least one major STEM competition annually. This normalization is critical. When competition participation becomes expected rather than exceptional, students prepare differently, families support differently, and results follow.
Consider what this looks like in practice at an elite Black day school serving Pre-K through 12. Elementary students (grades 3-5) participate in regional Science Olympiad divisions, Math Kangaroo, and Lego robotics competitions. Middle schoolers (grades 6-8) compete in MATHCOUNTS, Science Bowl, National History Day, and American Computer Science League. High schoolers (grades 9-12) engage in USA Biology Olympiad, Chemistry Olympiad, Physics Olympiad, Congressional Debate, Model UN, and Intel Science Fair. Every student finds competitions aligned with their interests and abilities. The school’s culture celebrates competition success publicly and prominently—trophies in display cases, assemblies honoring winners, media coverage of achievements. Academic competition excellence becomes as central to institutional identity as athletics at traditional schools.
The network should also establish its own internal competitions. An annual Black Excellence Science Olympiad. A Black School Network MATHCOUNTS Championship. Computer science competitions exclusively for students in the pipeline. These internal competitions provide practice grounds while building institutional identity and healthy rivalry that elevates performance across all schools.
HBCU laboratory schools—at institutions like Alabama State University (which pioneered the model in 1920), Southern University, Florida A&M, Howard University, and North Carolina A&T—serve crucial roles in this ecosystem. Virginia’s recent incorporation of laboratory schools at Virginia Union University and Virginia State University shows continued commitment to the model. These schools can serve as proof-of-concept institutions, demonstrating what’s possible when Black schools receive adequate resources and maintain rigorous competition programming. Their success provides templates for independent day schools to replicate. A laboratory school that sends students to national Science Olympiad championships proves the model works; independent schools can study their methods and adapt them.
Laboratory schools should also function as regional hubs, establishing partnerships with at least five majority-Black schools in their areas. They share competition resources, coaching expertise, and best practices, elevating the entire region’s performance while identifying top talent. Southern University Lab School partners with New Orleans-area Black schools. FAMU’s developmental research school does the same in Florida. Howard Middle School anchors D.C.-area networks. This hub-and-spoke model accelerates ecosystem development beyond the schools the network directly controls. Within five years, hundreds of majority-Black schools have competition programming that didn’t exist before, creating a rising tide that lifts all boats.
None of this happens without resources, and HBCU alumni must lead the investment. Every HBCU has thousands of successful graduates—doctors, engineers, lawyers, business owners—who could fund this institutional development. The goal isn’t charity but investment in infrastructure that strengthens the entire Black community. Alumni funding priorities should include capitalizing day school construction in major metropolitan areas nationwide, establishing minimum $50-100 million endowments for each day school to ensure sustainability, endowing boarding school scholarships so talented students can attend regardless of family income, funding PhD-level faculty recruitment with competitive salary packages, constructing world-class facilities—laboratories, libraries, makerspaces, athletic complexes—that rival elite independent schools, and creating venture capital funds that support businesses founded by network graduates.
The Eight Schools Association’s power derives largely from alumni commitment. Exeter’s endowment exceeds $1.5 billion. Andover’s tops $1.3 billion. These resources enable need-blind admission, world-class faculty recruitment, and unlimited opportunities for students. Black schools need similar commitments scaled appropriately. What if Spelman and Morehouse alumni collectively committed $200 million to establish three elite Black day schools in Atlanta? What if Howard University graduates funded two D.C.-area day schools with combined endowments of $150 million? These numbers are achievable when alumni understand they’re not donating to charity but investing in institutional power that will serve generations.
Regional alumni coalitions should form specifically to capitalize schools in their areas. The Texas HBCU Alumni Coalition funds schools in Houston and Dallas. The Midwest HBCU Coalition establishes schools in Chicago and Detroit. The Southeast Coalition covers Atlanta, Charlotte, and Memphis. This regional approach creates ownership and ensures schools reflect their communities’ needs.
While building new elite institutions is essential, the network must also elevate existing Black private schools and support majority-Black public schools in developing competition cultures. Not every Black school can or should become a boarding institution, but every Black school can raise its educational rigor and competition participation. The network should establish a tiered certification system. Tier One schools meet the highest standards—PhD faculty, comprehensive competition programming, world-class facilities, and proven track records of sending students to top competitions and HBCUs as elite scholars. Tier Two schools are developing toward these standards with network support. Tier Three schools are beginning the journey, receiving mentorship and resources from established institutions.
This certification creates aspirational goals while providing roadmaps for schools at different development stages. A small Black private school in Birmingham might begin as Tier Three, receiving coaching expertise and competition funding from the network. Within five years, they achieve Tier Two status. Within a decade, they’re Tier One, competing nationally and serving as a regional hub themselves. The network succeeds not only by building new schools but by elevating all Black schools toward excellence. Every student in a majority-Black school—whether public, private, or laboratory school—should have access to competition programming, rigorous academics, and pathways to HBCUs and beyond.
The ultimate goal transcends competition trophies and college admissions. This ecosystem should produce a generation of Black scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs who build institutions, create wealth, and invest back into the network that developed them. A student who attends an elite Black day school from Pre-K through 12, earns a degree from an HBCU, and then receives seed funding from the network’s venture capital arm to launch a tech company—that’s the full pipeline. Ten years later, that founder endows scholarships at their alma maters and hires exclusively from the network. This is how generational wealth builds and how communities transform economically.
The competition focus matters because STEM competitions lead to STEM careers, which offer the highest salaries and most secure employment in the American economy. But the jobs aren’t enough. The network must produce business owners, not just employees. Laboratory directors, not just lab technicians. University presidents, not just professors. The institutional ecosystem must aim for complete economic sovereignty. Black-owned research laboratories should hire preferentially from network schools. Black engineering firms should recruit from HBCU programs fed by network pipelines. Black investment funds should capitalize businesses founded by network graduates. This closed-loop system ensures wealth circulates within the Black community, building generational prosperity.
The vision is clear, but visions don’t implement themselves. This ecosystem requires institutional leadership with the authority, resources, and commitment to coordinate across decades. The answer must be a new entity—a Black Educational Excellence Consortium governed by a coalition of HBCU presidents, major HBCU alumni association leaders, Black philanthropists, and representatives from the four remaining boarding schools. This consortium would function similarly to how the Eight Schools Association coordinates among its members, but with broader scope covering day schools, boarding schools, and laboratory schools.
The consortium’s core responsibilities would include establishing and enforcing network standards and the tiered certification system, coordinating capital campaigns and alumni fundraising across regions, recruiting and vetting PhD-level faculty and leadership for new schools, managing the network-wide competition circuit and celebrating achievements, administering the venture capital fund for graduate entrepreneurs, ensuring HBCU partnership agreements are formalized and beneficial to all parties, and providing technical assistance to schools at all development tiers.
This consortium cannot be housed within a single HBCU—it must be an independent 501(c)(3) with its own board, staff, and budget. However, HBCUs should hold majority governance positions, ensuring the pipeline serves their institutional interests. Initial capitalization of the consortium itself would require $25-50 million to establish offices, hire expert staff, and begin coordinating the network’s development. Regional chapters of the consortium would operate in major areas—the Southeast Chapter, Texas Chapter, Midwest Chapter, West Coast Chapter—each responsible for school development in their territories. These chapters would be staffed by education experts, fundraisers, and facilities planners who understand both K-12 education and HBCU pipelines. The consortium model solves the coordination problem. Without it, well-meaning but disconnected efforts will struggle. With it, alumni know where to direct resources, new schools follow proven models, and the ecosystem develops strategically rather than haphazardly.
With leadership structure established, building this ecosystem requires coordinated action across a decade. Year one should focus on stabilizing and expanding the four remaining Black boarding schools with immediate capital infusions, launching five elite Black day schools in major metropolitan areas with full capitalization and endowments, and establishing formal partnerships between all K-12 institutions and nearby HBCUs. Year two should expand competition programming at all HBCU laboratory schools with PhD-level coaching staffs, launch ten additional elite day schools in strategic regions nationwide, and create the first network-wide competition circuit exclusively for member institutions.
By year three, the network should establish tiered certification for all participating Black schools, regardless of founding date, launch the first network venture capital fund for graduate entrepreneurs, and open five new boarding schools in geographically diverse locations. Year four should scale to thirty total elite day schools and ten boarding schools, establish PhD faculty recruitment pipelines specifically for network schools, and create comprehensive summer programs where students from all network schools can access intensive competition preparation. Finally, year five should see the graduation of the first full cohorts who experienced elementary through high school entirely within network institutions, the achievement of national competition championships by multiple network schools, and network endowments exceeding $2 billion collectively across all institutions.
Within a decade, this network produces tens of thousands of Black students annually receiving world-class education, wins national competition championships regularly, feeds HBCUs with exceptionally prepared students, and becomes self-sustaining through graduate giving and economic activity. The Eight Schools Association took over a century to build their institutional power. With strategic focus and adequate resources, the Black K-12-to-HBCU pipeline can achieve comparable influence in a fraction of that time.
The civil rights movement fought for integration, and those battles were necessary. But sixty years later, the results are mixed. Majority-Black schools face disproportionate closure. Black students in predominantly white institutions navigate isolation and microaggressions. The promise that integration would provide equal access has proven incomplete. The path forward isn’t abandoning integration but building powerful alternatives—Black-controlled institutions that offer excellence on our terms. When the Eight Schools Association sets standards, they do so for their community’s benefit. When they build pipelines to Ivy League schools, they’re securing their children’s futures. African Americans deserve the same institutional sovereignty.
This ecosystem—day schools, boarding schools, laboratory schools, HBCUs, research labs, businesses—creates options. A Black student should be able to receive world-class education from Pre-K through doctoral degree entirely within Black institutions, if they choose. That choice currently doesn’t exist at scale. Building it is the work. The competition focus is merely the entry point—a measurable goal that drives institutional development. But the vision extends far beyond Science Olympiad trophies. It’s about creating an ecosystem where Black excellence is systematically produced, celebrated, and leveraged to build generational wealth and institutional power.
Our children deserve day schools and boarding schools as prestigious as Exeter and Andover—schools that are ours. They deserve laboratory schools as innovative as the most progressive independent schools—schools that feed into our universities. They deserve competition networks as robust as any in America—networks that celebrate Black achievement unapologetically. The infrastructure exists in fragments. The model is proven. What’s required now is collective commitment—alumni investment, HBCU leadership, and community support to build an ecosystem of Black educational excellence that rivals any in the world. Not for integration into existing power structures, but to establish our own. Not just for high school, but from the earliest years through college and career. Not just for the few who can access boarding schools, but for the many who need excellent day schools in their communities. The time for this work is now. The resources exist. The need is urgent. Let’s build.
Disclaimer: This article was assisted by ClaudeAI.
Note: These data are based on colleges, universities, affiliated foundations, and related nonprofit organizations that volunteered to participate in NACUBO’s endowment study series.
A year after Howard University became the first HBCU to break the $1 billion endowment value mark, four other HBCUs have reached the $100 million mark. It is a complicated celebration when the NACUBO report shows 89 PWIs who have at least $2 billion in endowment value. A few notable HBCUs who reported last year like Morehouse College, North Carolina A&T and Meharry Medical College who have been regular NACUBO participants, are all absent from this year’s list. An HBCU favorite, the University of Virgin Islands returned after an absence in 2024. The reality on the ground with the looming crisis in admissions is for most HBCUs, $500 million is the endowment floor and only two HBCUs (Howard and Spelman) are above that mark. With not as many students graduating K-12, that means HBCUs who are heavily reliant on tuition revenue will see acute strains in the coming decade. It is not a matter of if, but when. Strong endowments are often the only thing that can see institutions through times of stress. That currently includes political stress that all colleges and universities are facing as it relates to state and federal funding. The lack of urgency among HBCU alumni continues to be concerning. Many HBCU alumni think their institution is in better financial shape than it is with no real landscape of higher education economics and the factors that create vulnerability. Using HBCU Alumni Associations and Chapters as more aggressive investment vehicles that can benefit an HBCU’s foundation and endowment are paramount to long-term stability. But this means seeing them as more than social clubs. HBCUs like all African American institutions are in perilous times and continued reliance on lottery philanthropy that may or may not come from non-alumni driven philanthropy (see Mackenzie Scott, Michael Bloomberg, etc.) is as dangerous as hoping to pay your bills every month with scratch off lottery tickets.
“This year’s report shows how important well-managed endowments are to colleges and universities,” said Kara D. Freeman, NACUBO President and CEO. “Endowments help fuel innovation and serve as a stable foundation for institutions. Because of challenges in the economy, some institutions relied more heavily on their endowments—but that additional spending benefited students, faculty, staff, research, operations, and more. Endowments make college possible and more affordable, and contribute to better lives for all.”
NACUBO HIGHLIGHTS:
Top 10 HBCU Endowment Total – $2.4 billion*
Top 10 PWI Endowment Total – $340.0 billion
Number of PWIs Above $2 billion – 89
Number of PWIs Above $1 billion – 169
Number of HBCUs Above $1 billion – 1
Number of HBCUs Above $100 million – 4*
678 colleges, universities, and education-related foundations completed NACUBO’s FY25 survey and those institutions hold $953.7 billion of endowment assets with an average endowment of $1.4 billion and median endowment of $259.9 million.
HBCUs comprised 1.4 percent of NACUBO’s reporting institutions and 0.3 percent of the reporting endowment assets.
PWI endowments (32) with endowments over $5 billion hold 57.4 percent of the $953.7 billion in endowment assets.
**The change in market value does NOT represent the rate of return for the institution’s investments. Rather, the change in the market value of an endowment from FY24 to FY25 reflects the net impact of: 1) withdrawals to fund institutional operations and capital expenses; 2) the payment of endowment management and investment fees; 3) additions from donor gifts and other contributions; and 4) investment gains or losses.
SOURCE: NACUBO
Take a look at how an endowment works. Not only scholarships to reduce the student debt burden but research, recruiting talented faculty & students, faculty salaries, and a host of other things can be paid for through a strong endowment. It ultimately is the lifeblood of a college or university to ensure its success generation after generation.
HBCU Money 