Category Archives: Editorial

An HBCU consortium to the United Kingdom?

Posted on April 24, 2012 by | Leave a comment

“Education is the biggest business in America. It has the largest number of owners, the most extensive and costly plant, and utilizes the most valuable raw material. It has the greatest number of operators. It employs our greatest investment in money and time, with the exception of national defense. Its product has the greatest influence on both America and the world.”

– Charles R. Sligh Jr.

choc

This idea all started with a conversation with a friend of mine who moved to Houston from London who was absolutely enthralled by the idea of the HBCU and her belief that it could work in London.  Initially, upon thinking on this idea I thought it would be best for HBCUs to recruit Afro-Britains from their secondary school into our undergraduate HBCUs here. After realizing the short sightedness on my part I’ve since changed my tune. This is in part because the vast majority of 18 year olds (and people in general) are not ready to go far from home let alone out of the country. We see this in the United States where the majority of a college or university’s student body comes from within state. Secondly and more importantly, there is also the added benefit of HBCUs expanding their international presence within the Diaspora along with an institutional foothold into how economic and political policies are contrived in Europe about Africa.

The demographics of the United Kingdom in terms of Afro-Britains are not as large as the Afro-American population but they are large enough to potentially support two U.K. HBCUs. Currently, the United Kingdom’s total population is around 62.2 million according to the World Bank of which 1.5 million are of African descent. Overall, 17 percent of the United Kingdom’s population is under the age of 15. Given the birth rate pattern of immigrants and socioeconomics of poorer classes its not hard to estimate that the under 15 figure percentage is even higher in the Afro-Britain community. This means that there are well over 250,000 Afro-Britain who at some point will become college age. This indicates an immense opportunity for HBCUs.

Jacqueline Brooks, the mother of Afro-British twin geniuses Jonathan and Marion Brooks-Bartlett, said in the Voice, a leading Afro-British newspaper, that many black parents often don’t understand he concept of higher education and are afraid of incurring a debt for their children. This statement alone screams opportunity and calls to part of the mission of HBCUs. It is often easier to deal with fears such as these when you believe the people talking to you have a shared interest with you which could be promoted through our shared African heritage. Her children are now 22, and set to complete PhDs in mathematical biology and chemistry respectfully and would be a wonderful set of researchers and professors to launch the new HBCUs. If we are talking of building a bridge between the groups in the African Diaspora then education is something we can all truly rally around. HBCUs can become one of the conduits of social, economic, and political exchange within the African Diaspora.

The set-up. There would be two universities created and owned by U.S. HBCUs through a trust. In order to make sure of non-duplication you’d potentially have the two schools located in the 2 largest U.K. cities or one located in an urban area and the other located in a rural area. Whichever would be more strategically beneficial. You would divide the research and professional schools, primarily with one having a law school and other a medical school, but both would have business schools with different areas of expertise and focus. The natural rivalry will allow for competition in academic and sporting events to feed off each other and build community pride. The board of trustees would be a mixture of Afro-Britain’s community and an advisory board of HBCU personnel from the U.S.

The benefit for U.S. HBCUs would be providing new research, studying, recruiting opportunities, and ultimately influence abroad. It would also allow for the natural expansion of the HBCU Credit Union to expand into Europe with two U.K. HBCUs to service. I’ve seen quite a few HBCUs expanding abroad in places that quite honestly have nothing to do with the strengthening of the African Diaspora. This is an opportunity to make a tangible statement about our commitment to who we are and who we serve. We are Americans by force but we are Africans by grace and HBCUians by love.

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The University of Power & Wealth

Posted on April 23, 2012 by | 7 comments

“Our success educationally, industrially and politically is based upon the protection of a nation founded by ourselves.” – Marcus Garvey

Many in the African American community believe that colleges and universities are simply there to educate a student so that they can go on to get a job. However, colleges and universities more than any part of our society are institutions of power and wealth creation more so than any other institution.  I’d touched on some of the economics of universities previously in the article “Can African American Muscle save African America?” This is mainly because they, more than any other institutions,  can touch all three parts of the SEP (social, economic, political) development model. Through their teaching they can influence the social aspects of a community by providing strong cultural identity. Through research they can create economic opportunities, and their research can also influence policy in local, state, and national governments.

The social development of students to serve their community can be seen in a university like Brandeis, a Jewish institution, which has a MBA program in Jewish studies. This program identifies potential Jewish leadership and hones their skills to run Jewish institutions in the community handling the social, economic, and political aspects of these institutions. Per their website it states “This innovative program prepares future Jewish community executives with the full complement of MBA/non-profit skills and specialized knowledge of Judaic studies and contemporary Jewish life.” They also offer a program called the MPP-MA in Jewish Professional Leadership which states “By preparing professional leaders with a full array of policy analysis and development skills, as well as specialized knowledge of Judaic studies and contemporary Jewish life, it trains students to design and implement innovative solutions to the Jewish community’s most critical problems, and to analyze and reform existing practices.” As you can see the university is catering to the core demographic that it was founded to serve. It is ensuring that their institutions that serve their community are well equipped with leadership that understand the historical & cultural (social), economic, and political aspects that the Jewish community face and will allow it to prosper and protect itself.

Next, let’s look at the economics that colleges and universities can produce for a community. What do Google, Time Warner, FedEx, Microsoft, Facebook, and Dell have in common? They were all founded on college campuses. Google founded at Stanford, Time Warner & FedEx at Yale, Microsoft and Facebook at Harvard, and Dell at the University of Texas. The six companies whose wealth value as measured by their market capitalization (except Facebook who has a private valuation are measured by a stock’s share price times number of company shares outstanding) is worth an estimated $530 billion. To put it in perspective these six companies wealth alone is 63% of African America’s buying power which is valued at an estimated at $850 billion.

Economically-speaking, colleges & universities primary driver of funding is research. Research in many instances is turned into businesses. These businesses tend to hire and have its initial investors come from the very university and nearby communities they are launched from. The wealth these businesses generate comes back to the university and community in the form of larger endowments, more research dollars, and more scholarships. These scholarships allow its students to graduate with less debt, which allows for early accumulations of wealth instead of paying down student loan debt. These businesses by hiring primarily from the institutions they sprung from help the employment of the demographic they serve. In the case of University of Michigan their research that will be transformed into business ventures will attempt to transform Michigan’s economy to one less dependent on the auto industry and its appears more into bio-tech businesses which should drastically improve Michigan’s unemployment rate (presently at 12.9% vs. National of 9.2%) in the years to come. The state of Utah’s UStar program (using taxpayer dollars) through its two state universities Utah and Utah State is focusing on the spillover industry from Silicon Valley. UStar’s mission stated on their website is stated as “UStar created a number of research teams at the University of Utah and Utah State University. Spearheading these teams are world-class innovators hungry to collaborate with industry to develop and commercialize new technologies.” BP in 2007 gave $500 million to the University of California-Berkeley to “develop new sources of energy and reduce the impact of energy consumption on the environment.” This $500 million is more than ALL HBCUS research budgets combined ($440 million) according to the National Science Foundation tracking of college and university research budgets.

Individually speaking we can see how this wealth has culminated into the hands of people at the universities who were fortunate to be a part of these founding companies. Facebook’s 1st investor Eduardo Saverin was a fellow student of Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard. His $15,000 investment, had he actually held onto it, today would be worth $7 billion. Google’s initial investors were professors from Stanford where Page & Brin founded the search engine. Same goes for Microsoft where Bill Gates initial investor and partner was classmate Paul Allen whose current net worth is $13.5 billion primarily in part to his Microsoft holdings. Dell Computers founded by Michael Dell in his University of Texas dorm room also has his primary investors from UT.

We have also seen the philanthropic power of this wealth to impact communities at work as well. Mark Zuckerberg recently donated $100 million donation to Newark, NJ school system. T. Boone Pickens four years in 2006 ago set a record with a $165 million donation to Oklahoma State University which, as has been reported, “surpasses the $100 million Las Vegas casino owner Ralph Engelstad gave the University of North Dakota in 1998.” The two donations by Pickens and Engelstad together are equal to over 25% of all HBCU endowments combined and over 50% of HBCU research budgets. T. Boone Pickens donation alone could put 412 African American students a year through undergraduate DEBT FREE or 110 African American doctors through medical school DEBT FREE at HBCU medical schools Charles Drew Medical School in California or Meharry Medical School in Tennessee. Graduating debt free could allow these doctors to be more likely to choose working in hospitals in African American communities as opposed to chasing a high paying job they need to pay down the massive student loan debt they occur. How would that be for improved medical care to our community?

The power to influence political policy is evident at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. Their current areas of focus are Arab media & politics, conflict resolution, drug policy, energy, health economics, homeland security, international economics, religion & culture, science & technology policy, space policy, tax & expenditure policy, the Americas Project (Latin America policy), the Transnational China Project (Chinese culture & policy), urban studies (African American policy), and the U.S.-Mexico Project (border policy). They have also recently sponsored an organization for the Iraq Study Group. Even our beloved Barack Obama’s cabinet is infected with Ivy Leaguers as noted in the article “Barack Obama taps into the Ivy League revolution with his cabinet” which notes that 22 of the 36 cabinet members are from Ivy League universities. Universities that still hold less than a 10% African American population. While Obama has a diverse cabinet the probability of this happening if he himself were not African American is highly unlikely (see previous 43 cabinets). It goes on to say “Even in Obama’s Washington, money and surnames matter.” The reality is people in power tap into those whom they know and who are qualified (or not) more than they tap those who they don’t know and are qualified. The old adage “Its who you know not what you know” speaks to a large part of the social networking importance of colleges and universities.

The question is then how do we improve our HBCUs to become the vehicles that can serve our SEP interest? First realize that these institutions are more than just a place to get a degree. As you can see their depth is possibly the greatest vehicle of development our community has at its disposal and that their existence is for the very thing we seek and that is to help uplift our community today and for generations. Secondly realize every mind and body has a value. This IS capitalism people. EVERYTHING has a value. For American college and universities each warm body generates an average of $33,000 in tuition revenue per year. HBCUs only get $6 billion of the $54 billion in African America’s annual tuition revenue pie meaning $48 billion is leaving our community to predominantly European American colleges & universities in tuition revenue alone. This forces our 95 HBCUs to operate on an average of $63 million per HBCU to have very little in the way of improving facilities, recruiting talented faculty, and expanding their research budgets, which could influence the SEP of our communities. To put that $63 million in perspective Ohio State University’s ATHLETIC department operates on $107 million per year (primarily funded by African American muscle). The fact that only a roughly 10-12% of African American students who can attend college choose to go to HBCUs limits these institutions from improving themselves as they are always strapped for operation revenue meanwhile being asked to compete from the perspective of: Howard v. Harvard, Charles Drew Medical v. UCLA Medical, or even Prairie View A&M vs. Texas A&M in the areas of SEP development and leaves us at the mercy of someone else’s institution solving our problems who has no real interest in doing so.

We must redirect our charity giving. A blog on African American giving I read recently said of our $11 billion we give annually to charities, $7 billion goes into churches. By making a concerted effort to redirect $2 billion of this would vastly improve the state of our HBCUs and should not dampen our religious institutions. Because while I’m all for saving our souls it is high time we invest in improving the fate of the bodies which house our souls and the institutions that were created to serve them and our communities. Too many of us faithfully pay our tithes and give little thought to our secular institutions like HBCUs. Their fate I dare say will be our own and without our own institutional power to combat institutional power of other communities we will be forever at the mercy of others awaiting them to bless us with their leftovers. It is time to once again do for self as all others do and as we use to do. Operate like a nation or become a destroyed people.

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The Miscelebration of African-American “First” 2012

Posted on April 2, 2012 by | Leave a comment

By William A. Foster, IV

The mere imparting of information is not education. – Dr. Carter G. Woodson

Are we American or not? Are we African or not? Over 100 years after W.E.B. DuBois first brought the theory of “double consciousness” to our minds, it is an answer that in our celebration of achievements we clearly still struggle with. We continue to celebrate our firsts into historically white institutions and give little credence to our accomplishments within our historically black institutions, subconsciously continuing to view our own institutions as second class. I continue to firmly believe a people are a reflection of its institutions. These institutions include the family, businesses, schools, and etc…

Every year we watch as Major League Baseball celebrates Jackie Robinson’s breaking of the color line of baseball and we as African-Americans cheer right along in joy. Yet, looking through the owners’ box of the three major American sports (football, basketball, and baseball) there is only one African-American owner 60 plus years later. Sorry, the Los Angeles Dodgers recent purchase by the Magic Johnson “Group” for $2 billion appears to have Magic Johnson as no more than the face of the group not the actual money, decision maker, or principal owner. He appears to be no more than a minority owner similar to that of Jay-Z with the New Jersey Nets and LeBron James with Liverpool FC. Magic as it were appears to be a convenient double irony if you will as the face of  the group buying the team that broke a mythical labor color barrier in Major League Baseball. A “color” barrier I will touch on later had nothing to do with race. The real money and principal financier behind the purchase of the Dodgers is the Guggenheim Partners, a financial services company with $125 billion in assets under management. The operations of the team appear to be in the hands of Stan Kasten, a baseball executive although there is uncertainty whether he too has an ownership stake. Ironically, the man we love to hate Michael Jordan is still the only African American principal owner of a North American sports team.

The Negro Leagues who have been long since forgotten provided ownership as well managers and a more talented league of baseball from its inception, and yet over 60 years later we see little celebration of Rube Foster the Father of Negro League Baseball for what he did for the African American community economically, socially, and culturally. Meanwhile, Branch Rickey is praised for his “courage” of breaking the color line. The real color line that Jackie impacted for Branch was the “green” color line as the Dodgers with Jackie would break attendance records for the league at both home and away games making Branch Rickey an even wealthier man as Jackie was “paraded” before all-white crowds amazed by the “super negro”. We will hail the accomplishment of Ernie Davis being the first African-American to win the Heisman at Syracuse, forgetting it only cemented the expedition of talent from our HBCUs both athletically and academically, and crippling them financially. Academically, we’d rather celebrate Ruth Simmons becoming the first to become president of an Ivy League college instead of celebrating Daniel Payne who was our first college president at Wilberforce. Our neighbor state to the east Arkansas, we celebrate the Little Rock Nine who desegregated the all-white school there but in the process, serving to cripple black controlled education. No teachers came with them, nor principals, administrators, nor ability to control or influence curriculum, and in the decades to follow the Arkansas public school system as it pertained to masses of African-Americans would be a microcosm of its former strength in producing quality and quantity of brilliant black minds. This year, I watched as many African American friends and associates cheered on different HWCUs in March Madness, schools who routinely have less than 5% African American populations, typically no more than one African American on the board of trustees if any, and African American donors (where the real power lies) typically are so insignificant the African American and African diaspora population at these HWCUs is at the mercy of whatever leftovers are seen fit for them. Yet, the majority of African American population has no problem throwing their social and economic support behind these schools no matter how marginalized we are within them in terms of institutional power. Meanwhile, Shaw University women’s basketball team won the division II national championship and received very little press (even from our own) or fanfare about this amazing accomplishment. It was HBCU Nation’s 1st national championship in basketball since 2005 when the the Virginia Union men won and the first since 1988 for an HBCU women’s program when Hampton won.

We are in the process of indeed celebrating our demise and forever imbedding in our subconscious that we and more importantly our institutions are, and always will be, second class in this country’s mind. Carter G. Woodson says simply “If a race has no history, if it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated.” To take Dr. Woodson’s quote a step further, we must do more than celebrate our history, but we must celebrate the history that moved us to a self-sufficient, self-governed, and most important a race that loves itself. Right and wrong can be argued and become a grey topic but I simply ask this continuous of cause and effect, that is to say, do the first we celebrate contribute to a positive impact on the African Diaspora going forward or are we celebrating a perceived subconscious step closer to being accepted as “white” that will destroy our culture and its history?  This editorial is not an attack on those above but seeks to raise a conversation of are we properly examining the history we celebrate. Are we simply trying to celebrate that still ever elusive ghost of “whiteness”? I dare say we would not celebrate the first African-American to have been allowed to serve in the Ku Klux Klan or would we? Malcolm X many times believed that America was just as guilty as Nazi Germany for her atrocities against African-Americans. Yet, we continue to celebrate the entrance of a few into the very institutions that even in 2012 commit social atrocities against us from industrial prisons to under funded schools from elementary to college level as if this is some accomplishment that is helping us solve the ails of restoring our community pride and ability to succeed. Instead of seeing it for what it is and that is a drain of our leadership and excellence from our community into theirs while the masses of us as African-Americans are still struggling to get out of the proverbial and literal gutter. Because we all know that acceptance into their institutions so many times means turning your back on your own if you want to remain “accepted” and the losing of institutional power. It is not enough to celebrate history but to celebrate that history which uplifted and moved along the hopes and dreams for all of us and not that which highlights the divide and conquer of us over time.

To read the 1st Miscelebration of African-American “First” published click here.

Mr. Foster is the Interim Executive Director of HBCU Endowment Foundation, sits on the board of directors at the Center for HBCU Media Advocacy, & President of AK, Inc. A former banker & financial analyst who earned his bachelor’s degree in Economics & Finance from Virginia State University as well his master’s degree in Community Development & Urban Planning from Prairie View A&M University. Publishing research on the agriculture economics of food waste as well as writing articles for other African American media outlets.

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Land Ownership: African America’s 40 Acres Crisis

Posted on March 13, 2012 by | 5 comments

By William A. Foster, IV

“He felt his poverty; without a cent, without a home, without land, tools, or savings, he had entered into a competition with rich, landed, skilled neighbors. To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.” – W.E.B. DuBois (Souls of Black Folks)

The United States as a whole is comprised of 2.3 billion acres of land.  As the Civil War came to a close in 1865 it was General Sherman who issued Special Field Order No. 15 that would establish the 40 acres & a mule so that former slaves could establish family farms. With 4 million African Americans who were now free this would equate to approximately 160 million acres (or 7% of America’s land) in African American control. Unfortunately, with the assassination of Abraham Lincoln this order would find no support by new president, Andrew Johnson. The 10,000 African American former slaves who had received 400,000 acres would see this land stripped and returned to its former European American owners courtesy of the Johnson administration. This would have profound social, economic, and political (SEP) implications for African America going forward for generations to come, and be as close to reparations as African America would ever see from the U.S. Government.

In the early part of the 20th century as African America looked to establish itself,  the reality was and is that African America like all groups in America and in the world are in a competition for resources for the survival of its very existence and it is of no incentive for another group to make this competition easier for its opponent. In other words why would McDonald’s ever give Burger King a prime property rather than use it for its own development? Or America give Canada control over valuable resources it controls? This applies to ethnic Diasporas (African, Arabic, Asian, European, & Latino) as well. Control of land is the foundation of SEP development. In capitalism that equates to land ownership. As African American continues to lose wealth, the primary cause could be argued that this is in large part because of the depletion of our land ownership.

Land is at the base for everything. It develops neighborhoods and communities. Neighborhoods are designed with great detail, such as who will live in it, and not just haphazardly put together as many assume.  A land developer already has done multiple SEP studies before they dig the first piece of dirt from the Earth. Who they want to attract to the development can be something as simple as making sure there is a specific religious building in the development or pricing the housing at a high-end average like $5 million per home or $1 million per lot, or placing certain commercial developments in proximity such as a Whole Foods or Wal-Mart. You certainly know that will narrow you down to a certain demographic of people who most likely share similar values and the vice versa is true as well. On the lower income end when one builds government funded housing, which is typically owned by someone wealthy, they receive subsidized payments from the government for use of said property to house low-income tenants which brings a completely different demographic, but again all well studied and placed depending on land values. Low-income developments tend to get the brunt of locations near undesirable locations in a town or city while more affluent will have access to city services more abundant per capita.

In any economic development you need land. Even a web-based business like Amazon has a facility or economic interest in land somewhere for production of its Kindle and other products. When a store chooses where to build a new business it searches for enough land that a lot of times they lease (which provides its owner long term cash flow) for its business’s building capacity to be met. It also seeks land around a demographic that it caters too. This is why luxury brands are located on Rodeo Drive and not in South Central. The location is catering to a certain demographic and hoping to discourage other demographics. My former professor happened to be in possession of a piece of property that a certain do-it-yourself orange box company wanted to build a store on. They leased land on a multi-decade lease and once the lease is up if they leave – he keeps the land, the building, and all the cash generated by the lease along the way. Its more likely they will continue to lease the property from him and he will pass the land and its cash flow onto his heirs.

Land also allows a group to control the political makeup of a community in terms of how political lines are drawn for voting districts and how schools are zoned in terms of funding. This is why there is often an uproar when lines are being redrawn and such because by moving certain lines -be it schools or voting-it can ensure certain economic development will come your way in the future, be it through the development of neighborhoods or commercial. As a land developer you know you can get people to pay a premium if you build a neighborhood in a higher rated school district.

Historically control of land provided African America after reconstruction the opportunity to create and control the SEP of their communities as it was with European Americans when they first came to America, and all other cultural groups who followed in immigrating to the U.S. and built communities united by similar cultural values. Buying land they were able to build communities like Black Wall St. in Tulsa, OK and Rosewood in Florida. In these communities the strong social fabric of families, control of the curriculum in the schools, and faculty who could relate to the students helped provide a social setting that led to a strong economic development. This included a number of African American owned banks, grocery stores, doctors, and the only African American founded and owned automobile manufacturing company in Greenfield, OH named C.R. Patterson Automobile Company. These communities because they were controlled and owned by us (as with any group) hired predominantly people from its community and therefore it kept employment rates high and crime rates virtually non-existent. Unfortunately these communities had not been given enough time to develop proper political capital that would allow them to defend themselves and many communities would find themselves burned to the ground with the complicit relationship that neighboring European American communities had with the mixing culture of the police and Klansmen (which is why the police distrust in large part continues today). With no way to protect themselves and in many cases all out massacres would take place and these communities would be left with no way to rebuild as they appealed to governing bodies made of the very neighbors who burned them. Today, we lose our land through gentrification of our neighborhoods (see Harlem), poor estate planning (social), unpaid taxes or rising taxes on the elderly on fixed incomes who can’t afford to keep up with them as developers use their political capital to muscle into an area, and simply just selling land to those outside of our community instead of circulating it.

So what is the state of our land ownership today? According to Federation of Southern Cooperatives Land Report the early 20thcentury was our zenith in terms of land ownership at almost 20 million acres –  a far cry from the 160 million acres we would have had if Special Field Order No 15 had been honored. However, today that number is even more tragic at roughly 7.7 million acres (or 0.33% of America’s land) spread across the ownership of 68,000 African American landowners. To put this in perspective Land Report Magazine who tracks the top 100 landowners in the United States who are all European American – their top 5 landowners own 7.8 million acres combined. Ted Turner owning 2 million acres by himself or roughly 25% of African America’s total land holdings.

Another tidbit to note comes from my visit to Timberland Investment World Summit in 2009. I was the only African American present at this 3-day conference in which some of the heaviest hitters in terms of financial institutions were present along with timber companies looking to invest in land for the use of timber. It just so happened that during the recession timber was the only asset class that did not decline. Why? Because as one presenter said “As long as the sun is shining trees will grow and so will their value.” The minimum investment amount a family or business had to invest to have an institution manage their timber investment – $50 million (which was down from its $100 million minimum thanks to the recession and banks need for cash).

More importantly the question has to be what now? There is no recourse for our 40 acres and African American farmers continue to fight today for past discrimination with no resolve even under the Obama administration. But the fight is costly and many of the older farmers are dying out. I dare say the U.S. Government is simply waiting them out. My belief is with $800 billion (said to reach $1.1 Trillion by 2012) in buying power the largest amount by far of any minority group in America we must begin take this fight in our own hands with our own dollars as Native Americans have begun to do as featured in “Tired of Waiting, Native Americans Buy Back Their Old Land”. But it must become a priority and a conscious effort. Our HBCUs, primarily the Agriculture HBCUs and African American financial institutions must begin to hold more seminars that help us understand the process of the importance of buying land and the obstacles that go along with it which are much different than buying a home.

I didn’t even begin to mention land as the very base of agriculture (or this would end up being a doctoral thesis) which supplies the quality foods a community eats, the ethanol that is the new rage in alternative fuel, and the land which has valued minerals beneath it and water running through it which just happens to be the very base of life and existence. Land. Yes, it is kind of a big deal or as my grandmother always told me “They’re not making any more of it so you better hold what you have and try to get more of it.” A wise woman she indeed is.

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HBCU Credit Union – Why It Needs To Be A Reality

Posted on February 27, 2012 by | 7 comments

“Find a need and fill it. Successful businesses are founded on the needs of people.” – A.G. Gaston

By William A. Foster, IV

Imagine a financial institution whose branches span from coast to coast and in every major city in the United States that has a large African American population. A full service financial institution that provides affordable mortgages, insurance, student loans, small business loans, commercial loans, investments, lines of credit, manages over 100 institutional endowments, provides financial literacy, employment for thousands, and even conducts financial research as a de facto Federal Reserve. Now imagine that it is controlled by, operated by, and serves African America. That financial institution would be the HBCU Credit Union and its scope, reach, and impact for African America and even the African Diaspora if the vision is aggressive would be unrivaled in the world of finance.

A credit union is a cooperative financial institution that is owned and managed by its members, and is regulated by National Credit Union Administration. Typically, a credit union is formed around a shared interest. Some examples are teacher’s credit unions, firefighters, and in the case of the Navy Federal Credit Union any member, family member, or employee of the entire Department of Defense. Currently, there are a number of credit unions that are located in HBCU towns, like Prairie View A&M University Credit Union and Virginia State University Credit Union just to name a few. Usually, each has a single branch and provides very limited products and services to students, faculty, and the respected HBCU that bears its name.

We’ve all heard the numbers. African America has over $1 trillion in buying power annually and yet less than 1% of that money sits in financial institutions owned or controlled by us. HBCUs and many African American organizations, like UNCF and Thurgood Marshall Fund, bank with European American owned banks. In fact, the only HBCU, albeit a non-traditional HBCU, that I know of that had an African American banking presence on its campus was Medgar Evers College in New York who had Carver Bank, one of African America’s top 3 largest banks, with a presence on its campus. Controversy would follow at MEC when the administration decided to replace Carver’s ATMs with ones from a European American owned bank. It is actions like this that are an enormous strategic failure on our part. You’re giving all of your economic and financial power to other communities who do not have your same economic interest. These types of actions are also cutting off our ability to circulate the dollar which, if a financial institution is operating properly is its real purpose. Financial institutions also protect the economic and financial interest of the community or group of people that owns it. Unfortunately, we give up that institutional control (see desegregation) and then we are surprised when our neighborhoods are gentrified because we can’t get access to capital to build them up, we are burdened with absorbent fees, our HBCUs can’t find funding for renovations or buildings, students can’t get financing for school, or we’re given an abnormal amount of subprime toxic mortgage loans even if we qualify for traditional ones. At some point we need to take control of our own financial destiny.

Moving to an economy of scale with any of our business industries has plagued African America’s economic growth time and time again particularly because we have too many generals and not enough soldiers. As mentioned, we have a number of singular credit unions with reach typically not beyond their locale. They are not full service institutions and the desire to use them becomes more and more limited as students or faculty members financial needs mature. In some cases they are even lacking basic products like debit cards and services like online banking. These credit unions are of virtually no use to the HBCUs themselves who have far more complex financial needs than simple checking and savings. The lack of size and capital of a singular unit simply does not provide the depth of scale that is needed.

From the very outset the HBCU Credit Union would have access to 180,000 full and part-time employees, approximately 400,000 current students, well over a million alumni, national accounts of the Divine 9, city and town accounts of which the HBCU is located, HBCU endowments worth over $1.5 billion, $400 million in HBCU research expenditures, $10 billion in short term economic impact annually, countless number of HBCU owned businesses, and a pipeline of the brightest African American business minds in the country to run it.

All HBCUs would move their financial assets into the HBCU Credit Union as well as the UNCF and Thurgood Marshall Fund. Non-traditional HBCUs like Chicago State, Medgar Evers in New York, Roxbury Community College in Boston, and Charles Drew Medical University in Los Angeles and others would all be invited to form the credit union. This would give the credit union a truly national reach as alumni graduate and move to different areas of the country. If they are feeling really bold (and I’d pray that they were) they would include the University of West Indies and some strategic alliances with colleges and universities in Africa that would give the HBCU Credit Union a global reach.

There is something to be said for a quote by Albert Einstein who once famously said “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” It is the knowledge of what we know that helps us look at our situation critically but it is the imagination that with ideas, such as the HBCU Credit Union that will give us the keys to control and build our destiny.

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