HBCUs look to use March on Washington anniversary to highlight new threats

Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) taking part in this week’s celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington hope to use the event to highlight the threats to teaching Black history that are percolating across the nation.

The threats take different forms, including new state laws attacking critical race theory, the academic theory that laws and movements are shaped by race and systemic racism, to increasing books bans.

Almost one-third of the nearly 1,500 books banned this year are about race, racism or include characters of color — and four of the most banned books are written by authors of color, according to PEN America.

And in Florida, the fight over critical race theory has been at the heart of a battle over educational standards. Florida’s Board of Education in late July approved controversial standards that include the provision that students be taught about the skills slaves learned during slavery. That specific provision became a flashpoint in the GOP presidential race as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis came under criticism over it from Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), who is Black. Both men are running for the GOP nomination.

“We want to highlight that history and then talk about what can be done … to push back against these attempts to erase Black history,” said Clarissa Myrick-Harris, professor of Africana Studies at Morehouse College and head of the Committee to Commemorate the Atlanta Student Movement. The Atlanta Student Movement was formed in 1960 by college students to fight for civil rights.

The fight over how to teach race is hardly restricted to Florida.

Federal, state and local government officials introduced 563 measures restricting teaching about race and racism from 2021 through 2022, according to a UCLA study published this year. Of those, 241 measures have been adopted.

“It is sad that many of those things that people in 1963 were marching for and marching against are still issues in the world,” Myrick-Harris said.

HCBUs have long played a critical role in providing educational opportunities to Black Americans, and the March will be another way to show their continued importance.

“There are too many people for too long who had been saying that HBCUs have had basically, past their expiration date, they were no longer necessary, in part because they didn’t even understand why they were in existence,” said Cassandra Newby-Alexander, the Emeritus Director of Joseph Jenkins Roberts Center for African Diaspora Studies at Norfolk State University.

Clarence Dunnaville, a class of 1954 graduate of Morgan State University, vividly remembers attending the March on Washington and the long journey it took him to get there. Dunnaville, who at the time was an assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, traveled from New York to Washington, D.C., with his uncle to attend the march.

“It was a long drive on a very hot day,” Dunnaville said. “And Highway 95 had not been completed yet, so you had to drive through all those little towns and there were stop signs. It took us forever to get to Washington.”

Dunnaville, who later became the nation’s first Black attorney to work for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), described a sense of “jubilation” at the march.

“There were flags waving out of the car windows and people were shouting back and forth,” Dunnaville said. “It was a really jubilant occasion.”

Dunnaville told The Hill that he does worry the history that he was part of will be erased.

“It’s kind of a different subject, but Black history has been changed and what’s happening in Florida that is something that … troubles me a great deal,” Dunnaville said.

“I think the HBCUs should take an important role in that to make sure that Black history is taught and that it’s taught correctly and … be an emphasis in making sure that it is not obliterated.”

Dunnaville also acknowledged the power of HBCUs, saying that without the drive of student led organizations pushing forward with the march, many milestones and achievements made in the last 60 years wouldn’t have happened.

“But we have to hold on to what they accomplished because people are trying to take that away,” Dunnaville added. “That’s the challenge for the 21st century to keep what we want, but overall we’ve made progress.”