Shelter in a Time of Storm: How Black Colleges Fostered Generations of Leadership and Activism by Jelani Favors (review)

Leadership within the Black college context is complicated, with some historians extolling the conservatism of these campuses and their leaders, others lauding them for their role in fostering activism, and still others trying to understand the nuances and complexities of these venerable institutions. In Shelter in a Time of Storm: How Black Colleges Fostered Generations of Leadership and Activism, Jelani Favors delves deeply into issues of student activism at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and sets out to write a more complex history of Black colleges. He details how the unique and empowering environments of these institutions fostered educational attainment as well as training and support for important aspects of the Black Freedom and civil rights movements.

In an appealing approach, Favors walks the reader through the history of HBCUs, the nation, and African American education, using individual HBCUs to help the reader see the changes and the transition in activism and leadership throughout the nation. He focuses on several HBCUs, including the Institute for Colored Youth (now Cheyney University of Pennsylvania), Tougaloo College, Bennett College, Alabama State University, Jackson State University, Southern University, and North Carolina A&T University. Favors doesn’t explore these institutions in full as it pertains to his overarching topic; instead, he focuses on particular situations and moments. For example, his depiction of Tougaloo College begins in 1869 and ends in 1900. These are interesting and volatile decades for the small Mississippi college, but I would have liked to see the narrative described in the chapter connected to the later periods in the 1940s and ’50s as this approach would have complemented Joy Williamson-Lott’s important work in Radicalizing the Ebony Tower: Black Colleges and the Black Freedom Struggle in Mississippi (2008). Favors does touch upon this period in Tougaloo’s history in his depiction of Jackson State University later in the book.

Favors also examines student activism at Bennett College from 1900 to 1945, but ends just before the remarkable and brave presidency of Willa Player (whom I discuss in articles in 2007 and 2011 for American Educational Research Journal). She is, however, mentioned briefly at the end of chapter three. Given her staunch support of civil rights and her willingness to host Martin Luther King, Jr. on her campus when nearby HBCUs caved to pressure from the Greensboro leadership, I wanted Favors to continue his examination of student activism and campus support into the 1960s. I saw opportunities for him to weave in the support of Bennett’s women in 1960, when the North Carolina A&T University students integrated the Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro. The Bennett women are often left out of history, but they nevertheless played an important activist support role on this important day. Unfortunately, Favors’s depiction of North Caroline A&T University begins in 1967, thus missing the early 1960s. Including a richer depiction of these institutions would also have complemented more fully the work of historian James D. Anderson in his important book The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935 (1988) by filling the gap after 1935 and moving the reader into the early 1960s.

Of course, Favors does investigate later years as he continues to explore additional HBCUs. His interest in the 1940s to 1970s is focused on public HBCUs in the South. In these chapters, we begin to understand fully how much risk was involved for student activists and how they were supported, not supported, or even threatened by HBCU leadership. Much like Williamson-Lott in Radicalizing the Ebony Tower, Favors takes a close look at Jacob Reddix, the president of Jackson State University. Favors is adept at sharing the stories and lives of the Jackson State students and faculty and what they had to endure under Reddix’s leadership. He draws upon the voices of students, faculty, and others to tell the story of...