Abstract
The silences and erasures surrounding the histories of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in many instances are caused by limited technology, lack of financial resources, and, most importantly, institutional priorities. Many aspects of HBCUs’ histories, particularly in the state of Texas, have been relegated to historical voids or are becoming endangered knowledge. These are the issues that jeopardize the long and rich history of Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU), Texas’s first public supported historically black university, which dates back to the post-Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras of American history. Emancipated blacks in Texas sought all avenues available to them to obtain an education, including establishing churches and schools. Freed people’s efforts culminated in the creation of Alta Vista School for Colored Youth, which subsequently became PVAMU following several name changes. During the Jim Crow era, PVAMU served as the administrative home base for black education in the state of Texas, offered agricultural extension services to black farmers, and served as the central facility for black grade school athletics and extracurricular activities. Due to lack of personnel and resources, all of the archival collections that document this history are unprocessed and unavailable to the public. This article considers the collaborative efforts of the history faculty and the Special Collections and Archives (SCAD) staff at PVAMU to bring light to this important history through preservation projects, public programming and student engagement activities. Additionally, the article uses endangered archival materials from PVAMU’s Special Collections to explore the history of this important institution of higher education.
Highlights
The recent debut of the documentary Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) has stirred much discussion and brought light to the histories of institutions of higher education established for emancipated blacks in the United States following the Civil War
Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU) administrators, faculty and staff played a significant role in the fight for racial justice in Texas, the American South, and the country, working alongside organizations on the national stage
We examine the importance of PVAMU’s Jim Crow-era history and the importance of efforts to preserve artifacts and documents, digitize photo collections, promote student engagement, and raise public awareness regarding this endangered history
Summary
The recent debut of the documentary Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) has stirred much discussion and brought light to the histories of institutions of higher education established for emancipated blacks in the United States following the Civil War. As the documentary shows, emancipated blacks joined forces with church-affiliated missionary societies and philanthropic organizations and began organizing schools all across the American South, including Texas. Historian Heather Williams argues that ‘[a]cquiring literacy in conjunction with freedom had the potential to open access to democratic political activity, and that in turn held a promise of enabling African Americans to participate in shaping the civil society in which they had hitherto been considered chattel’ (2005: 69) In this political climate, Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU), Texas’s first public supported historically black college and university, was established during the late 1800s (See Figure 1). The history of black colleges and universities in the US mirrors the country’s longer struggle with Jim Crow segregation and centers the role of education in the fight for racial justice (Cantey and Bland 2013). PVAMU served as the home administrative base for black public schools in Texas by hosting a yearly Negro Education Conference, which was initiated under. Regional, and national levels, PVAMU administrators, faculty, staff and students had a profound impact on American life and culture during the first half of the 1900s
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