United Methodist HBCUs Strive for Academic Excellence, Community Service

Second of two parts

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See Part 1: United Methodists Show Longtime Support for Black Colleges and Universities

A United Methodist Insight Feature

Angela Jones-Fitzpatrick and her entire family “bleed Wiley Wildcat purple.”

Jones-Fitzpatrick was 2020-2021 Outstanding Alumna at United Methodist-related Wiley College in Marshall, Texas. Wiley is one of the 11 historically Black colleges and universities supported directly by contributions from United Methodists through the denomination’s Black College Fund (see part one).

Recognized by local media as “a community force” through her work as principal of David Crockett Elementary School in Marshall, Jones-Fitzpatrick and her school were featured for Black History Month in 2021 by television station KSLA Channel 12 in Shreveport, La.

Jones-Fitzpatrick said she attended Wiley in part because her mother, as a college employee, got free tuition for her daughter. However, money wasn’t the only reason she chose Wiley, she said. Wiley’s close-knit college community gave her the opportunity to pursue higher education in an atmosphere of respect and support that didn’t exist at a predominantly white university.

University administrators confirmed Jones-Fitzpatrick’s experience. One of HBCUs greatest values in their estimation, stems from the lack of racism against Black students on campus and from a greater willingness to provide mentoring and academic support.

'People forget'

“Why do we need Black institutions? People forget their segregated history,” said Walter Kimbrough, president of UMC-related Dillard University in New Orleans, La. “For example, Tulane [University in New Orleans] was started specifically ‘to educate white students.’”

“Today HBCUs still play a role in the broad range of American higher education,” Kimbrough added. “HBCUs have always been places that did not discriminate against people; many HBCUs are more diverse than a lot of predominantly white institutions. When I got my bachelor’s degree at the University of Georgia, I had no Black professors.

“It’s illogical to say there’s nothing race doesn’t impact.”

Another major hurdle for all HBCUs, including those related to the UMC, is the false perception that historically Black colleges are academically inferior to predominantly white universities. A prime, if fictionalized, example of this prejudice was shown in the 2007 film, “The Great Debaters,” about Wiley College’s historic win in a national debate championship. (According to Wikipedia, “In 1935, the Wiley College debate team defeated the reigning national debate champion, the University of Southern California, depicted as Harvard University in The Great Debaters”). The film featured Oscar-winning actor Denzel Washington, who subsequently donated $1 million to restart Wiley’s debate team.

University development

Henry Tisdale, 1994-2019 president of Claflin University in Orangeburg, S.C., said Claflin offers an example of how an HBCU can develop into an outstanding institution, thanks in part to its support from the UMC’s Black College Fund.

A Claflin alumnus himself, Tisdale said that when he became Claflin’s president, he and the university trustees cast a vision of excellence that specified:

  • Staying within HBCUs’ history of being financially accessible;
  • Continuing to admit students who were considered academically at risk while also establishing an honors college with students who could be at any university in the country;
  • Investing in faculty development;
  • Focusing on STEM disciplines (science, technology, education and mathematics);
  • Gaining national accreditation for every academic program as resources became available.

 Tisdale, who holds a doctorate in mathematics from Dartmouth College, cited Claflin’s chemistry department, accredited by the American Chemical Society, as an example of the strategic plan’s success with STEM disciplines. “We became only the second private school in South Carolina to have an ACS-approved chemistry program and the only HBCU,” he said.

In addition, Claflin’s leaders became aware that there was no college nursing program between Charleston and Columbia in South Carolina, Tisdale said. Today Claflin has one of the strongest nursing schools in the state, offering both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in nursing science.

Claflin has become a valued pillar of the Orangeburg community, Tisdale added. In addition to its cultural contributions such as an annual performance of Handel’s “Messiah,” Claflin recently became home to a forensic science center established through faculty collaboration with the Orangeburg Department of Public Safety.

Claflin’s record of excellence has earned it a spot on U.S. News & World Report’s annual ranking of best college values for 12 years. In 2012, the university received an award from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for its high rates of student retention and graduation.

Out of the shadows

Like Claflin, Dillard University in New Orleans also has acted upon strategies for achieving academic excellence and community leadership, said outgoing president Kimbrough.

“Dillard was sort of in the shadows when I arrived, so my time was to tell the outside world that Dillard is one of the great institutions in higher education,” Kimbrough said.

Located in New Orleans’ Gentilly neighborhood of middle-class Black families, Dillard is home to Louisiana’s oldest nursing program and is the second-ranked U. S. college producing undergraduates in physics programs, said Kimbrough. One of Dillard’s top-rated academic specialties is its popular film production program that taps into New Orleans’ identity as the “Hollywood of the South.”

Dillard strives to be its community’s “living room” for “critical conversations,” Kimbrough said. The university has been the site of mayoral and gubernatorial debates on key civic issues, along with sponsoring events by and for neighborhood associations.

The Dillard president put himself into a public health debate in September 2020 when he volunteered to participate in a clinical trial a COVID-19 vaccine. As an example of the university’s commitment to community service, Kimbrough’s move was significant because Black people have suffered higher rates of infection and death early in the coronavirus pandemic, and health care was, and remains, poor in many Black communities. In answer to those concerns, Dillard partners with a local health care provider, DePauw Community Health, that offers free care to the surrounding community from a campus clinic.

A family atmosphere

At the other end of the college spectrum from large universities like Claflin and Dillard, Paine College in Augusta, Ga., typifies a quality of educational excellence through nurture, said its president, Cheryl Evans Jones, who has been on the Paine faculty and in administration for 29 years. In that respect, she said, Paine continues the tradition of historically Black colleges and universities that brought higher education to those kept out of academia by slavery and racism.

“Paine is a relatively small institution, but we have a matrix of competent, professional faculty and staff,” Jones said. “We foster a family-type atmosphere where faculty and staff get to know students by name. That doesn’t mean we require less of students. Our first value is excellence – in everything.

“We take students who may not be able to gain admission into other institutions, who may be underprepared or unable to go elsewhere,” Jones said. “In our small, nurturing environment they do well.”

Begun by a collaboration between what were then the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, (now the United Methodist Church) and the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church (now the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church), Paine offer majors in five academic departments: business, media, mathematics, science and technology, and humanities and social sciences.

Like Claflin and Dillard, Paine also has forged strong ties with its surrounding community.

“We’re the only HBCU in the central Savannah River area,” Jones said. “We encourage our students to get involved in service and community projects in Augusta. Our athletic teams do service projects such as food banks and tutoring in schools, so people from the community get to see our students.”

For a small school, Paine has a strong athletic presence. The college boasts men’s and women’s basketball, track and field, women’s volleyball and softball, men’s baseball and, as could be expected, men’s and women’s golf, given that its community is home to the prestigious Augusta National Golf Club. This year, Augusta National established a golf scholarship in memory of Paine benefactor Lee Elder, the first Black golfer to play in the PGA Masters Tournament. Elder became associated with Paine in 1975 after former president Julius Scott offered Elder housing and meals when racism kept the golfer out of local establishments during his first Masters appearance.

Enumerating their schools’ respective “gifts and graces” as Methodists say, the three HBCU presidents interviewed for this series agreed on two things:

  • The United Methodist Black College Fund has been a consistent source of financial underpinning that has kept higher education available to Black students; and
  • The colleges’ relationship with The United Methodist Church brings priceless intangible benefits of strong values and human connections.

“United Methodists’ Black College Fund offers the best support of any denomination in the United States,” said Kimbrough. “Other HBCUs struggle, but United Methodists’ support has been consistent, and it has made a difference.

“It’s something United Methodists should really be proud of.”

Cynthia B. Astle serves as Editor of United Methodist Insight, which she founded in 2011.