Tag Archives: PWI

Appeased: Mississippi’s Flagship HBCU Gets An “Agreement” Instead Of A Law School

Posted on January 28, 2025 by | Leave a comment

“Freedom has never been free.” – Medgar Evers

It never ceases to amaze how easily appeased African America can be. We need 40 acres and instead allow ourselves to be given a pot with some dirt in it and are expected to act grateful. Ironically, often we do. “They gave us something” could be a whole mantra that we hear far too often when we need to show our communities that the mantra is “We fight not capitulate”. Time and time again PWIs show that they will put alligator and piranha filled moats around things like law schools, MBAs, and research to ensure that HBCUs never encroach on that institutional power. We get “agreements” that allow PWIs to pick and choose the best and brightest of our undergraduates for their graduate schools. The next Thurgood Marshall cannot come from one of our own HBCU law schools like the late justice but inevitably from a PWI law school where the molding of law and its purpose will be shaped how they see fit. Usually still to their benefit. The flagship HBCU in Mississippi cannot have a law school, it has an agreement. Imagine Ole Miss getting an “agreement” with something in Jackson State’s control. You cannot imagine it because it would never happen.

Historical and Structural Underrepresentation

  • Limited Legal Education Options for African Americans: Historically, African Americans were denied access to legal education at predominantly white institutions (PWIs) and were often left with no choice but to attend the few law schools established at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Today, there are only six HBCU law schools:
    • Howard University School of Law
    • Southern University Law Center
    • Texas Southern University Thurgood Marshall School of Law
    • Florida A&M University College of Law
    • North Carolina Central University School of Law
    • University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law
  • None in Mississippi: Despite Mississippi’s large African American population (nearly 40% of the state), there are no HBCU-affiliated law schools in the state. This lack forces African American students to compete for limited seats at existing law schools, often in environments that may not prioritize their unique needs or cultural experiences.

Historical Context of Discrimination in Mississippi Higher Education

  • Systemic Exclusion: For much of the 20th century, African Americans were excluded from attending predominantly white institutions (PWIs) in Mississippi. Segregation laws and practices relegated Black students to underfunded HBCUs, such as Jackson State University.
  • Funding Disparities: HBCUs in Mississippi have historically received significantly less funding than PWIs. This underfunding has limited their ability to expand academic offerings and infrastructure, including professional programs like law schools.

Ongoing Disparities

  • Resource Inequities: Mississippi’s higher education system continues to show disparities in funding and resources between HBCUs and PWIs. These inequities impact the quality of education and opportunities available to students at HBCUs.
  • Underrepresentation in Legal Education: African Americans remain underrepresented in Mississippi’s existing law schools, including the University of Mississippi School of Law and Mississippi College School of Law. These institutions do not adequately address the unique challenges faced by Black students and communities.
  • Pipeline Challenges: The lack of professional schools at HBCUs in Mississippi limits pathways for Black students to enter high-impact fields like law, perpetuating disparities in representation and leadership.

Historical Challenges at the University of Mississippi

  • Resistance to Integration: The admission of James Meredith in 1962 as the first African American student at Ole Miss was met with violent riots, requiring federal intervention. This historical event illustrates the extreme resistance to racial integration and set the tone for ongoing challenges faced by African American students.
  • Legacy of Segregation: The University of Mississippi, like many Southern institutions, has a deeply entrenched history of segregation that continues to influence campus culture and attitudes.

Ongoing Issues Faced by African American Students

  • Hostile Campus Environment: Many African American students at Ole Miss report feeling unwelcome or isolated due to a predominantly white student body and lingering racial tensions. Incidents of racism, such as vandalism of monuments and racist social media posts, contribute to a climate of hostility.
  • Symbolic Racism: The continued presence of Confederate symbols, including statues and the former use of Confederate imagery in campus traditions, reinforces a sense of exclusion for Black students. Efforts to remove or contextualize these symbols have been slow and controversial.
  • Underrepresentation: African American students are underrepresented at Ole Miss compared to the state’s demographics, limiting opportunities for meaningful diversity and inclusion.
  • Incidents of Racial Harassment: High-profile incidents, such as the noose placed around the statue of James Meredith in 2014, serve as stark reminders of ongoing racial animosity. These events create psychological distress and reinforce systemic barriers for Black students.

The African American brain drain into predominantly white institutions (PWIs) poses a significant challenge to the mission of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) like Jackson State University (JSU). Establishing a law school at JSU would address this issue by offering a culturally affirming and accessible path for African American students to pursue legal education. This initiative would help retain talent, strengthen HBCU legacies, and diversify the legal profession.

Understanding African American Brain Drain

  • What is Brain Drain? Brain drain occurs when highly capable and motivated individuals, particularly African Americans, leave HBCUs to pursue educational and career opportunities at PWIs. This is often due to the lack of specialized or professional programs, such as law schools, at HBCUs.
  • Mississippi’s Context: Mississippi is home to several HBCUs, including Jackson State University, but none of these institutions offer legal education. As a result, aspiring African American lawyers in Mississippi are compelled to attend PWIs such as the University of Mississippi School of Law or Mississippi College School of Law, or leave the state entirely.

Impacts of Brain Drain

  • Cultural Isolation: African American students at PWIs often report feelings of isolation and marginalization due to a lack of diversity in faculty, curriculum, and campus culture. This can hinder their academic and professional development.
  • Loss of HBCU Legacy: When African American students leave HBCUs for PWIs, they miss the opportunity to benefit from the culturally affirming and supportive environments HBCUs provide. HBCUs foster a sense of community and empowerment that is particularly important in professional fields like law.
  • Weakened HBCU Influence: Brain drain diminishes the influence of HBCUs by limiting their ability to produce leaders in fields like law, where African Americans are already underrepresented. This affects the ability of HBCUs to contribute to societal change through their alumni.

The Role of PWIs in African American Brain Drain

  • Limited Inclusion: PWIs often fail to adequately support African American students. Issues such as implicit bias, underrepresentation among faculty, and a lack of focus on issues relevant to African American communities make these institutions less ideal for Black students.
  • Recruitment of Top Talent: Many PWIs actively recruit top African American talent, which they recognize as essential for promoting diversity. However, these efforts can inadvertently draw students away from HBCUs that would better align with their cultural and educational needs.

Mississippi became the last state to remove the Confederate battle flag from its state flag in 2020. The birthplace of Medgar Evers who was murdered in his driveway. It is the home of the Freedom Summer that saw three voting rights activists murdered that brought nationwide attention and shun a spotlight on the atrocities. The potential for the impact of a law school at Jackson State University and the creation of the seventh HBCU law school would be profound. African Americans constitute almost 15 percent of the US population and 40 percent of the Mississippi population, but less than 9 percent of Mississippi’s active lawyers are African American. An “agreement” with Ole Miss is highly unlikely to change that paradigm. This is a chance for an African American institution to not take the bull by the horns, but be the bull.

Amplifying the Civil Rights Legacy

  • Mississippi’s Legacy of Activism: The state has been at the center of the civil rights movement, with many battles fought for racial equality and justice. A JSU law school could build on this legacy, preparing lawyers to continue the fight against discrimination and inequality.
  • Empowering Marginalized Communities: By training lawyers from diverse backgrounds, the law school could directly address issues like voting rights, criminal justice reform, and educational equity—critical areas in a state still grappling with the effects of systemic racism.

The Role of JSU in Filling the Gap

  • Addressing Local Needs: A law school at JSU would directly address the absence of African American legal institutions in Mississippi, offering a local and affordable option for students who wish to study law in a supportive environment.
  • Culturally Relevant Curriculum: As an HBCU, JSU could design a curriculum that emphasizes the legal challenges faced by African American communities, such as systemic racism, criminal justice reform, and civil rights advocacy.
  • Building a Pipeline of Black Lawyers: By increasing access to legal education for African Americans, JSU could help diversify the legal profession and prepare graduates to address the specific legal needs of marginalized communities.

How a JSU Law School Can Address Brain Drain

  • Retaining Talent in Mississippi: Establishing a law school at JSU would give African American students in Mississippi the option to pursue legal education at an HBCU without leaving their state or community.
  • Culturally Relevant Education: A JSU law school could tailor its programs to address the legal challenges most relevant to African American communities, such as civil rights, voting rights, and criminal justice reform.
  • Strengthening HBCU Legacies: By offering a law program, JSU could enhance its reputation as a premier institution for African American education and leadership, attracting top talent to remain within the HBCU ecosystem.

The Need for an Inclusive Legal Education at JSU

  • Safe and Supportive Environment: An HBCU law school at Jackson State University would provide a nurturing environment for African American students, free from the racial hostility that has been reported at Ole Miss.
  • Focus on African American Legal Issues: A law school at JSU could emphasize areas of law that disproportionately impact Black communities, such as civil rights, voting rights, criminal justice reform, and housing law.
  • Addressing the Legacy of Exclusion: By creating a pathway to legal education specifically designed to empower marginalized groups, JSU could challenge the structural inequalities that have persisted in Mississippi’s higher education system.

Broader Benefits of a JSU Law School

  • Community Impact: Graduates of a JSU law school would be more likely to practice in underserved and predominantly African American communities, addressing legal deserts in Mississippi and beyond.
  • Representation in the Legal Profession: Increasing the number of African American lawyers trained at an HBCU would help diversify the legal profession and create more advocates for systemic change.
  • Economic and Cultural Reinvestment: Retaining African American students at JSU would help prevent the economic and cultural losses associated with brain drain, fostering stronger HBCU communities and alumni networks.

Mississippi’s lack of African American legal institutions highlights the urgency of a law school at JSU. Such a school would address historical exclusion, provide a platform for empowerment and justice, and meet the unique legal needs of African American communities. JSU’s law school could play a pivotal role in advancing social justice and transforming the legal profession.

The challenges African American students face at PWIs like the University of Mississippi further emphasize the need for supportive alternatives. A law school at Jackson State University would create an environment where Black legal scholars can thrive, challenging systemic inequities in higher education. By fostering a new generation of African American lawyers, JSU could significantly advance African America’s institutional empowerment, justice, and opportunity across Mississippi and beyond.

It is hard to imagine with the current social and political climate that has seen the Southern “attitude” towards African America emboldened that a partnership or agreement with the flagship institution of that attitude being anything more than cover for continued behavior and a means of a subversive quelling of African American institutional empowerment and independence. The Medgar Evers Law School at Jackson State University located in the capital of the state that is a symbol of power being named after Medgar Evers and a substance of power being a law school in the heart of Dixie. A heart that African America needs to be break.

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The Tupac Doctrine: A Strategy For HBCUs Taking Back Social Capital From PWIs

Posted on September 24, 2017 by | Leave a comment

“He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.” – Sun Tzu

Unapologetically for African America and its interests. This is the message that HBCUs needs to send its own community.  After all, this is the message the European American citizenry of the United States has always made clear to their population since the Europeans arrived on occupied land and it continues to be the message it has laid in its policy when it interacted with the rest of the world. Their social, economic, and political interest were first, second, and third priority and they would build and defend those institutions at all cost. The only time others are welcomed to be a part of their institutions is if they are serving to enrich their interests.

It is no secret that HBCUs since desegregation have seen a rapid decline in the opinion of African Americans who sought the perceived colder ice of America’s historically white colleges and universities. Currently, between 10-12 percent of African Americans college eligible choose HBCUs. The reasoning that if you could get inside, then you too would enjoy the spoils of association with whiteness and if we all just tried hard we could get our fair share of their pie. We bought into the idea that access for 1 out of 100 at the expense of the 99 is progress.

Unfortunately, at every turn HWCUs seemingly have outmaneuvered us with resources while siphoning many of our best and brightest minds for their academics and best bodies for their sports, all while maintaining a firm grip on the power their institutions wield.  They have sold African America a lie of inclusion, when in reality nobody can include you without relinquishing their own interest – something that over and over is clear they will not do without a fight. The better question is why have we so long been naive to this reality. Our invite into their institutions has been nothing more than a misdirection of us being occupied by access to them, while systemically ignoring and destroying our own institutions without so much a shot being fired. They have in fact used our desire to have access to their love and affection as Ossie Davis said once to manipulate us into continuing to keep their institutions as that which we should all strive to achieve and pursue.

In fact, specifically to the fact of higher education and HWCU consumption of African America’s intellectual capital for its own gain, it has been utterly fascinating as HWCU/PWIs have tried to create almost a bubble of an HBCU on their campus to appease their chosen “few”. Everything from a welcome mat of the Divine 9, Black Student Organizations, to in the case of the University of Virginia’s Black Alumni Weekend. Irony of sorts given the school’s recent hosting as well of white supremacist groups on their campus. Yet, despite all these wonderful packages and smoke and mirrors at the end of the day there is no denying that African American students face hostilities by their mere presence that they would not face at institutions built for their interests and by their forebears.

Here is a snapshot of recent racially charged events on the campuses of PWI/HWCUs:

  • The “N” word is written on African American student dorm rooms and possessions at University of Michigan. (2017)
  • University of Virginia is ground zero for protests over confederate statues in the college’s town. A bystander ends up dead in the chaos. (2017)
  • White supremacist posters are put up on the office doors of African American faculty at Indiana University. (2017)
  • Sorority at Samford University makes shirts depicting slaves picking cotton for their formal dance. (2016)
  • An African American student is assaulted at East Carolina University with police concluding it was racially motivated. (2016)
  • UNC-Chappell Hill academic fraud that used African American athletes for financial gain, but provided no real education to them during their matriculation. (2013)

The first five of these events have happen within the past eighteen months at the time of this publication and by no means the only as the history of racial incidents at HWCU/PWIs is littered with enough it would require an encyclopedia to catalog them all. Now, in fact historical incidents of racial strife at white colleges is used as good PR for them as a sign of their progress in racial justice that these incidents are of the past and that those African Americans were “trailblazers” of sort making the world a better place by forcing institutions to deal with their outwardly blatant prejudice and disregard for African America empowerment. However,  where do you not see racially motivated incidents in the history books or present media? At HBCUs, not even toward white students who are at HBCUs do we hear such claims of verbal or physical abuse being experienced.

HBCUs, HBCU alumni, and HBCU support institutions need to stop being quiet about this. It is time to take a page out of one of the greatest diss record’s of all-time by noted hip-hop legend and Pan-Africanist, Tupac Shakur. The record, Hit ‘Em Up, was directed at his bitter rival Christopher “Biggie” Wallace, but certainly not limited too him as those even around Wallace would feel the ire of Tupac’s ire in the song. During the song, Tupac put the niceties of subliminal lyrics and instead went straight after his enemy with a visceral barrage of lyrics in layman’s vocabulary that left nothing to the imagination of his grievances with his rival.

The HBCU community must stop playing nice about the recruitment of African American students and let them know who truly represents their interest versus those who just want them for appropriation. Perhaps HBCUs do not want to muddy themselves directly publicly with such a campaign, but it is clear that HBCU support organizations and something along the line of creating HBCU PACs could be formed to run campaigns that spell it out bluntly for this new generation of potential HBCU students. Explaining to them that even if you gain access to the academics, simply put, we are still excluded from the power because those institutions were not built to serve our interests. That we have instead found ourselves on academic plantations where the board of trustees, major donors, and the power structure that is remains rooted in the interest of European Americans whom it was built to serve. For this, we can not fault them because they are looking out for their interests. However, where we can be faulted is not looking out for our own interest and ensuring that African America understands African American institutions like HBCUs, communities, businesses, etc are here to do just that. If it means continuing to point out just how blatantly PWI/HWCUs have and continue to use us, then so be it.

An HBCU is a place where an average student can still be great because they are not walking into a classroom having to uphold the entire race. They are allowed to have the emotional and mental space to be and grow into themselves. Things like this need to be continuously reminded to African American parents and potential students and if it must be done juxtaposition against the pains of African American students at PWIs, again then so be it. Oh, and we do not need a Black Alumni Weekend, we just call it Homecoming. Hit ‘Em Up and put a flamethrower to their ice.

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