This chapter is concerned with the spirit and mindset of Black denominational leaders at the end of the Civil War regarding the building of HBCUs. It argues that Black church leaders across denominations were interested in providing a foundation that would outlive them and the formal education of their children and posterity would be the key component of that foundation. Structurally, this chapter addresses the vision of Black denominational leaders by looking at the lessons learned from the history of bondage, how that history informed the pragmatic thrust of the building of HBCUs, and how they desired those HBCUs serve the community for each subsequent generation where racial antagonisms are concerned. The chapter gives ultimate attention to the theological implications inherent in Black denominational leaders starting “secular” institutions like HBCUs and how that commitment challenges long-standing theological assumptions about Black religious leaders and the Black church regarding asocial and escapist tendencies.
TopOf the 106 current HBCUs, fifty-three have been founded by religious organizations and twenty-one have been founded by or turned over to African American denominations. According to the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, HBCU graduates currently make up forty percent of Black members of Congress, forty percent of black engineers, fifty percent of Black lawyers and eighty percent of Black judges. (Thurgood Marshall College Fund, n.d.). The only Black Catholic HBCU, Xavier University in New Orleans, has consistently produced more African American doctors than any other college in the nation and Tuskegee University, formally Tuskegee Institute, continues to lead the nation in producing African American veterinarians. (hbcuconnect.com and xula.edu) How did African Americans get from chattel existence to here? What has been the unique about the experience of formal education for African Americans? And how did black faith leaders overcome the obstacles of that experience to found HBCUs?
To be sure, denominational leaders were making an important decision for the future of the black community in founding HBCUs. But more important for our purposes was that denominational leaders were making a claim about their faith in God. They were answering the call to be sacrificial lambs in the tradition of Christ, giving their lives for full recognition as human beings – a day that if realized, they would not see with the physical eye. They were convinced that the key to black liberation in a post-slavery context came through education and that meant, among other factors, founding HBCUs. Slavery, the biggest sin in American history, without question, traumatized their being but the unshakeable faith demonstrated in persevering through the slavocracy also demonstrated that their hope was never extinguished, and their spirit was never destroyed (Singleton, 2018). It was clear Black faith leaders were not just interested in producing pious church members. They were also interested in producing societal contributors. In order to do that, and as the times dictated, most HBCUs were founded to train: 1) religious leaders; and 2) teachers.