Education, Race, and Class: A New Calculus for the 21st Century

Abstract

Thank you and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Having spent 10 years as president of Spelman College, I feel deep pleasure at being back on the campus of an historically Black institution of higher education, especially one as prestigious as Howard University in this era of rising enrollments and rising acclaim. I want to begin by acknowledging the unique role that Howard University continues to play 125 years since its founding by an act of Congress in honor of General Oliver Otis Howard, the visionary head of the Federal Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands. The goal in establishing this school, on a 150acre farm in what was then called Washington County, was to provide equal rights and knowledge for all. As you all may know, and as I just recently learned while doing the research for this lecture, Howard University was originally conceived as an institution that would reach out to all in its community-former slaves as well as those persons of any race or background who, though lacking in preparation and resources, were desirous of improving themselves. As you are also aware, Howard University grew and prospered, becoming, as Juan Williams (1992) recently wrote in The Washington Post Magazine, the darling of the federal government, reaching an apogee of intellectual prowess in the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s. The graduates of Howard are quite