Unearthing Promise and Potential: Our Nation's Historically Black Colleges and Universities (review)

Unearthing Promise and Potential: Our Nation's Historically Black Colleges and Universities is an ambitious attempt to examine the historical inception of HBCUs in the United States, their present role in higher education, and their potential future. These institutions—very diverse despite being grouped under the homogenous HBCU definition and label—have remained a vital part of the American higher education landscape for more than 125 years. As Marybeth Gasman, Valerie Lundy-Wagner, Tafaya Ransom, and Nelson Bowman III set forth, these institutions indeed offer great promise and potential for the continued and higher education of the nation.

In Chapter 1, the authors provide enlightening details surrounding the disparate historical origins of HBCUs, from the pursuit of higher education by free Black people in the North to a wide array of efforts to educate freed slaves in the South after the Civil War. These efforts included those of the Freedman's Bureau established in 1865 and of private groups such as northern White missionary societies and Black churches.

These efforts resulted in an array of HBCUs, such as public institutions established as purportedly separate but equal to southern land grant colleges and private Black colleges founded or supported through the philanthropy of wealthy White industrialists. The authors note that the history of HBCUs sometimes confines outsiders to acknowledging only their historical significance, while failing to see their continuing and crucial role in American higher education.

Chapter 2 presents a concise summary of judicial and legislative commitments, or the lack thereof, that have affected historically Black colleges and universities. Gasman, Lundy-Wagner, Ransom, and Bowman chronicle the policies of educational segregation for Blacks beginning with the initial segregation policies of the 1890s in the aftermath of the Civil War, through legal desegregation in the aftermath of Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka (1954), and onward to the various judicial acts that have since served to "bolster, defeat, and confuse the role of HBCUs in American higher education" (p. 11). As the authors point out, it was in 1962 (a mere 49 years ago!) that only by court decree was the first Black student admitted to the University of Mississippi. The authors' grim reminder of this relatively recent confrontation of de facto segregation serves as a historical reference point for how far we've come as a nation and how far we have yet to go.

Chapter 3 provides demographic characteristics of students at historically Black colleges and universities, including research on HBCU college choice which could affect recruitment and retention. The chapter also includes a disappointingly vague discussion on African American men at HBCUs and their experiences, followed by another brief section on African American males and females on HBCU campuses. The authors report findings on gender differences to add empirical justification for the continued existence of historically Black colleges and universities. However, the discussion of gender as a topic in this regard seems rather odd—a bow to the current "boy problem" bandwagon.

As important as those students' experiences have been, it seems an insufficient argument for continuing the existence of HBCUs. There are broader, deeper, and more unifying topics of achievement and engagement that serve as beacons of pride for HBCUs and would be more appropriate, such as service learning, academic accomplishment, and student leadership development. These subjects would better highlight the rich student experiences and outcomes of HBCUs and thus better defend the significance of these institutions.

Chapter 4 focuses on presidential leadership at historically Black colleges and universities. As presented, the chapter is very narrow in scope and begs for more research in this area from others. The authors acknowledge this deficit and agree that more research on the leadership styles and decision making of HBCU presidents with the goal of providing "a more comprehensive and nuanced depiction of these individuals" (p. 46) is needed.

Such research...