A relevant and practical book for the Nation's Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) leadership and administrators, HBCU faculty leaders and researchers that want to uncover the ways and means for cultivating success within the HBCUs longitudinally.

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) are valuable institutions that provide intellectual domains for racial uplift, racial refuge, and cultural empowerment within a continually polarized nation. Today’s current racial climate reminds us of the historical context that gave birth to HBCUs and segregated athletic experiences. While the sporting life at HBCUs is an integral part of these institutions’ mission, there is a dearth of research about HBCU athletics. In The Athletic Experience at Historically Black Colleges and Universities: Past, Present, and Persistence, leading scholars from across the nation present a holistic examination of the integral role sports have played at HBCUs. Chapters in this volume cover a range of topics, from HBCU Football Classics to economics. It begins with a historical overview of HBCUs and the early sporting life before delving into the experiences of today’s male and female student-athletes—including the unique perspectives of athletes who transferred from historically White colleges and universities to HBCUs. Other chapters examine economic issues at HBCUs, such as the financial viability of their athletic departments in the context of the larger NCAA economic framework, and recommendations for the future of HBCU athletics to restore both academic and athletic excellence at these institutions. An important addition to the existing literature on race in contemporary society, this volume provides a narrative of the Black experience from the historical origins of educating Blacks, their early athletic experiences, and the current state of athletics at HBCUs. The Athletic Experience at Historically Black Colleges and Universities is a significant contribution to the debate on college athletics and higher education, in general, and athletics at HBCUs, specifically. It is a must-read for sport studies scholars and students, sport management practitioners, and sport enthusiasts of the inter-workings of athletics and the HBCU experience.

Historically Black colleges and universities play a vital role in the education of African Americans in the United States. For nearly 150 years, these institutions have trained the leadership of the Black community, graduating the nation s African American teachers, doctors, lawyers, and scientists. Despite the wealth of new research on Black colleges, there are topics that remain untouched and accomplishments that go unnoticed by the scholarly community. The chapters in this edited volume focus on topics that deserve further attention and that will push students, scholars, policymakers, and Black college administrators to reexamine their perspectives on and perceptions of Black colleges.

2020 Museum of African American History Stone Book Award 2020 Lillian Smith Book Award Finalist, 2020 Pauli Murray Book Prize For generations, historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have been essential institutions for the African American community. Their nurturing environments not only provided educational advancement but also catalyzed the Black freedom struggle, forever altering the political destiny of the United States. In this book, Jelani M. Favors offers a history of HBCUs from the 1837 founding of Cheyney State University to the present, told through the lens of how they fostered student activism. Favors chronicles the development and significance of HBCUs through stories from institutions such as Cheyney State University, Tougaloo College, Bennett College, Alabama State University, Jackson State University, Southern University, and North Carolina A&T. He demonstrates how HBCUs became a refuge during the oppression of the Jim Crow era and illustrates the central role their campus communities played during the civil rights and Black Power movements. Throughout this definitive history of how HBCUs became a vital seedbed for politicians, community leaders, reformers, and activists, Favors emphasizes what he calls an unwritten "second curriculum" at HBCUs, one that offered students a grounding in idealism, racial consciousness, and cultural nationalism.