Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) are dedicated to empowering students and alumni with the tools to drive significant civic and cultural change. Through their intentional focus on leadership, advocacy, and excellence, HBCU graduates have made remarkable strides in political, legal, cultural, and artistic fields. These institutions foster an environment where students thrive and emerge as trailblazers. By nurturing talent and commitment, HBCUs continue to shape leaders who make profound contributions to American democracy. Click through the slideshow below to learn about twenty inspirational graduates.
Kamala Harris
Kamala Harris, Howard University (1986): Kamala Harris is the first woman vice president in U.S. history and the Democratic nominee in the 2024 presidential election. She has also served as U.S. Senator, attorney general of California, and district attorney. During her time at Howard University, she interned as a mailroom clerk for California Senator Alan Cranston, chaired the economic society, led the debate team, and was a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.—the first sorority dedicated to the advancement of Black women and girls. [Image by The White House via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain]
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Thank you Prof. Deondra Rose for highlighting outstanding contributions of HBCUs and their pioneering graduates. They played leading roles in almost all walks of life. They include Nobel laureates, mathematicians, scientists, Supreme Court judges, lawyers, professors, media personalities and editors apart from civil rights activists and political leaders. For example, Hallie Quinn Brown was one of the northern missionaries going South to teach Black children and adults, moving to Mississippi and South Carolina. Booker T. Washington was the founder and first president of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (which became Tuskegee University) in Alabama.
W.E.B. Du Bois was a prominent sociologist, historian, and civil rights advocate. Anna Julia Cooper was the first African American woman to earn a doctoral degree in the US and the “Mother of Black Feminism”. Ida B. Wells was a journalist, civil rights leader, and NAACP co-founder. Ella Baker was a major force in shaping the Civil Rights Movement. Langston Hughes became one of the most prominent voices of the Harlem Renaissance. Thurgood Marshall was the first African-American justice to serve on the US Supreme Court. Rosa Parks – “the mother of the freedom movement”. Katherine Johnson – a mathematician at NASA who was critical to the success of the US crewed spaceflights.
Pauli Murray helped to dismantle Jim Crow segregation during the 1950s. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was the brightest star of Civil Rights Movement. Toni Morrison influenced American culture through her own fiction which earned her the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. David Satcher – an American physician, and public health administrator who was a four-star admiral in the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and served as the 16th Surgeon General of the US. Jesse Jackson, an American civil rights activist, politician, and was the first Black man to run for President of the US. John Lewis, American Baptist College, Fisk University (1967): John Lewis served as the chair of SNCC and later as a member of the US Congress. One of the latest examples of this ongoing struggle is current Vice President and Democrat Presidential election candidate Kamla Harris. These are all icons and beacons of hope for all those who dream of liberty, equality, fraternity, justice and dignity.