 To this first episode of the HBCU Experience, I am your host, Gwendolyn Harris. I am sure some of you are wondering what this show will be about. Well, I will tell you. February is Black History Month, and there is a lot of history to be shared. I thought I would give some knowledge on something that is near and dear to me, and that is the history and knowledge of the HBCUs, otherwise known as historical black colleges and universities. HBCUs are coming to the forefront because of our Vice President Kamala Harris, who is a graduate of Howard University and HBCU. Today, we will discuss the history of these institutions of higher learning. My guest today is Dr. Catherine Waddell-Tacarov, who is a professor, author, and publisher who has great knowledge of this subject. Let's welcome Dr. Waddell-Tacarov to the show. Aloha, Dr. Tacarov, how are you? I'm just very, very good to be able to talk about black colleges with you today. I am so glad to have you here. Just tell our viewers just a little bit about yourself, just a brief summary about yourself. I was born and raised in Alabama in a college community, Tuskegee, which is also an HBCU. I had my education at a Quaker School in Pennsylvania and my undergraduate in Boston, Tufts University. And then in between, I had gone to France for a summer, Africa for a summer, and then I got married. And when I moved to Hawaii in 1968, I changed my major. I had been a French major. Changed my major to political science because I had found that lots of people here knew very little about African Americans and our successes and our contributions to society. Wow. Wow. Well, I am definitely glad to have you here today, Dr. Tacarov. I'm gonna have a hard time saying that today. I really am. You can say Dr. Catherine. Okay, Dr. Catherine. Let's do that, Dr. Catherine or Dr. T. But anyway, let's get this conversation going. As I stated before, HBCUs or historical black colleges and universities are coming to the forefront now because of our new vice president, VP Kamala Harris, who went to Howard University. And there are so many notable people that have gone to HBCUs. Martin Luther King, we've had actors, civic leaders, Martin Luther King, our actors, and just a whole lot of prominent people that have gone to HBCUs, civil rights leaders, actors, musicians, inventors, poets, and the list goes on. I'm a graduate of HBCU Hampton University and I'm a proud HBCU graduate. But Dr. Tacarov, tell us about the history of the HBCUs. Okay, I'll try and be brief. Right after the Civil War, there were black soldiers that were sent out west to carry mail and lay the groundwork for many of the public, the big parks, like Yosemite. And then other blacks who were recently freed slaves in the south saw the need for education. Remember when they came out of slavery, very few could read and write. It was against the law and people were working all the time. And so unless you had a kind white master who had kids that might teach you a little bit to read and write. Or unless there was a master who loved their offspring from a black woman and sent them away to college up north or even to Europe, there were those. People needed an education. They needed to feel a sense of community. They needed to create communities. So the consequence was that there was the beginning of the HBCUs. Let me just say that although there are historically black colleges and universities mainly established after the Civil War, there were two or three colleges that were black before the Civil War. And one of those was Lincoln University, which graduated many, many famous black people. And then another one was Cheney. So those were the two that were at the earliest stage in the north. And a point that I need to make is that HBCUs were very diverse. They thought in terms of non-white people, I guess you could say. So that at the HBCUs, there might be Native Americans. There might be some Asians, not so much in the earliest days, but certainly now Native Americans, Hispanics, just a wide variety of students, predominantly black. And what made these institutions, these young institutions, these young schools so amazing was number one, the thirst for education. People would walk from Mississippi to Alabama, from Georgia to Alabama, just to get an education. That's how strongly they felt about it. I was born and raised in Tuskegee, so I have more to say about Tuskegee. But this thirst for knowledge and for belonging and for having a sense of community and political building, I guess you could say. The HBCUs, besides those two that I mentioned, Cheney and Lincoln, were often on land grants that the government gave, not only to African American colleges, but even the University of Hawaii was early on a land grant school. So there were the public schools, and then there were a lot of religious schools that didn't preach the religion, but their supporters and their boards were often white, maybe ex-avolitionists, maybe people just who had a sense of justice and equality, and they were supportive in the building of these schools, these HBCUs. And right now, there are 107 in existence still. Right after the Civil War, there was the Reconstruction period, so you had a conflict. You had people from the Union Army, the North, that were trying to reconstruct the South, and then you had people mainly from the South who wanted to go back to how it was. And so there was violence. There was a lot of violence around that, but built, they were Lincoln in 1854, Hampton in 1868, and Tuskegee in 1881. And I wrote a poem about Tuskegee. I think I'll just read a little bit of it now and then save the rest for the end. But there was this black connection with Hampton, and you had mentioned that you would like me to talk a little bit about that. And let me say first that King Calico, no, before King Calico, King Kamehameha IV and V traveled to the mainland United States and visited Hampton University, took gifts from Hawaii, feathers, feathered capes, and various other things that are there to this day. But before that, in 1823, a slave of the president of Princeton, now Princeton University, was freed by the president, who was her master, and given free reign of his library. She educated herself pretty much, and she wanted to become a missionary. She was not accepted to go to Africa at the time, so she came to Hawaii on the second ship of missionaries in 1823. She started a school, and this is getting back to the HBCUs in a minute. She was on Maui. She started the Lahaina Luna School, which is known by everyone in the islands in Lahaina. And at that school, it was the first school for commoners, and they were called Maka Ainana. And she taught the classic math, reading, a little bit of philosophy, those kinds of subjects. But she also taught industrial arts, how to do things with your hands. And so while on Maui, she had the opportunity of meeting the Armstrongs. Perhaps she was in Honolulu. I'm sorry. I don't remember that detail. But she met two Armstrong brothers. One was William, who traveled around the world with the first monarch, King Kalakawa, to travel all the way around the world. So he was like the interpreter to the king and traveled with companion. And then the other, okay, so that one's name, common name was, what was it? The second one, this King Kameha, may have a fifth, was Lot, L-O-T. The other one, I don't remember his name, but anyway. So there were these two brothers. There was William, who was the assistant to the king and his round the world tour. And then there was a brother, who was a general in the Union army, a general. And he was the first president of Hampton University after the Civil War. He knew Betsy Stockton. He knew that her curriculum. And I think that probably going around in a circle, Betsy Stockton indirectly influenced the Armstrong brothers, who then, one of them, was the first president of Hampton. So that was just an amazing piece of research that I found out about. Yeah, go ahead and ask me a question so I don't miss anything. No, you did fine. And it's Brigadier General Samuel Armstrong, who was the first president of Hampton University. And I did, and you spoke very well. And that was April the first of 1868, when Hampton was officially founded, because originally it was called the Hampton Normal School. And before it became Hampton University, it went from Hampton Normal to Hampton Institute. And then while I was there in 84, it switched over to Hampton University. But no, you did, I'm just enjoying listening to you. Because, like you said, there, you know, there's 107 HBCUs. And I know there were more. There was 120, 121, I believe, at first. But because of funding, which is a big thing, for the HBCUs, a lot, a lot have closed. Maybe I can just say that students at the various colleges, and they were most of them were called Normal School in the beginning, Tuskegee was. And then it was the Institute. And finally, it's the university. They walked from another state. It was just amazing, their determination to get an education, the values that these newly freed persons, as well as there was a whole host of freed persons, already freed blacks, that were in the north in Philadelphia, or that were runaways, all the way to New York, all the way to Canada. So there was this connection with Betsy Stockton, the Armstrong's Hampton University, from Hampton, graduated many future presidents of HBCUs. And talking about one of them is Booker T. Washington, who set up the school in Alabama at Tuskegee. And my family member, I guess it would be my grandfather, who also went to Hampton, was invited by Booker T. Washington to help to establish the school. And what happened was the students built this beautiful campus and this beautiful school. And that was an exercise of the industrial arts and working as masons and as, you know, all the brick layers and all of those things. And then there were the plumbers and this, that and the other. So Tuskegee was taking off. Howard, of course, was there and was big time. I'd like to read this poem at this point, because it gives the history, as I knew it, as I lived it, kind of sort of Tuskegee. And the name of it is just Tuskegee. Tuskegee, divine mirror of two due attitudes, black folk, hard work, rewards of success, diamond of a small southern town, mind from dark slavery, sharecropping, miscegenation, and born in dreams. Tuskegee. Students walked for miles to arrive from neighboring states with one change of clothes and determination. They arrived to labor, to learn, to progress themselves and the race, to seek an education, help to build a school, a campus. Students made the bricks one by one, cultivated the grounds and built the Tuskegee Institute Chapel in 1898, renowned towering stained glass windows by a French glass designer, precious colors, royal gems. A whole community witnessed the Great Midnight Fire destruction of the Belissimo Cathedral Chapel in 1957, flames seen from my house two and a half miles away. A whole community, new fear, understood endings, listened to rumors of KKK violence, remembered, remembered burning crosses and vulnerable churches. Tuskegee, people watched the recurring tragedies of race so connected, yet disconnected by color and class, and unknown, quilted histories, whispered in closets, behind doors and bedrooms. But where was the brotherly love? Trepidations of whites dominated the unspoken discourse, fears of educated, articulate, uppity niggers who sang jubilee songs and spirituals, traveled and got degrees. Oh yes. Blacks thrived, got jobs, created jobs, researched and learned Black history, understood the value of Black pride and self-help. Chief Anderson, light-skinned and confident, taught the Tuskegee Airmen at Motenfield at Tuskegee, took up Eleanor Roosevelt in his plane. She dared to fly with a Black man. My dad, Bill Waddell, walnut brown and handsome, came to Tuskegee to work on peanut oil therapy with George Washington Carver, to research a liniment for those paralyzed by polio, like President Roosevelt, who reluctantly visited the campus with his wife, who went flying. My mom, Latte, proud, smartest of whip, fabulously stylish, from a well-to-do family who owned land and had servants, descended from generations of Black teachers. She taught languages even after marriage, French, German, English. When women were expected to stay home, she kept her job. Today, I see so many mind-to-pictures, family resemblances, processes evolving, Tuskegee, Tuskegee, my home, prototype of hard work and determination, so much history, open and hidden. Wow, thank you so much, Dr. DeFar. That is a wonderful poem. Wow, and that in itself, that poem in itself basically tells the history of Tuskegee and, of course, your family. So that is awesome. I have one question for you, though. What do you think? Because, first of all, this show, the HBCU experience, you can't do all this in one show. It's so much things that we will be talking about in this show as far, and you will see this as you continue to watch. But my question to you is, what do you think will be the future of the HBCUs? Well, I think I'd like to mention why people attend, attended, and many of those all Black universities have quite a large number of Blacks. My father was a co-founder of the Veterinary School at Tuskegee, and that was in the 1930s. But what happened now is that there are more white students at that veterinary school than there are Black students, which isn't to say there aren't Black students. There are plenty. But I'm just saying how the times have moved on, and why people would choose a Black college. And I wrote down these few little points. They get a top-notch education, STEM, engineering, medicine, nursing, psychology, political science, the arts, all of that. Second, the supportive atmosphere of the professors, of the community, and the building of a positive self-identity. Then the diversity, which I mentioned at Tuskegee, there were always some foreign students. I saw Africans. I saw people from South America, as I mentioned. I saw lots of different people, even if it was 90% Black, there was always diversity. And then affordability. Black colleges, HBCUs, although pretty expensive these days, maybe $22,000 at Tuskegee, plus room and board. But that's not like Harvard or Stanford or a state university. And the HBCUs were either public or private, as I mentioned earlier. There's a lot of alumni support. And that would help people to attend and networking. And it goes from the sororities to the fraternities to the various organizations. And people felt that they had support once leaving their undergraduate education. Then there's scholarships. And then it's location, location. If you're a part of or near a Black community, that's very nurturing and brings forth pride. And I mentioned before, but I'll mention it again, the supportive faculty. And I'd like to say, in relation to Black faculty at the University of Hawaii, there are very, very few. Almost probably 90% of the students have never had a Black professor or even a Black teacher in high school. So there are these things that still need to be worked upon to bring, if not balance, more equity in the educational system in Hawaii, that we have. What you say is true. And this is one of the segments that we'll have on one of the shows as why people attend an HBCU. Because like you say, it's not all Black people. Even when I went back in the 80s, we had people of other races to attend Hampton University. I say Hampton University, Hampton University. So it is very diverse. And I can tell you really quickly why I went to a HBCU is because growing up, I went to predominantly white schools. And I just, I got accepted to all these different other colleges, big time colleges. But when it came down, when my mother and I went to go visit Hampton, as soon as I stepped foot on that campus, I was like, this is where I wanted to go. And as soon as I got that acceptance letter, I think a few weeks later, that was out of all the other college acceptance I received, that was my favorable one. And that I can tell you is lifelong friendships at an HBCU. Lifelong, it's like, it's kind of like, you know, you find your identity, you know, I found my identity at an HBCU. But like I say, it's a lifetime friendships, you know, and that's 30 plus years, you know, I'm still friends, friends with my people there. Another attraction I think of the HBCUs is the campus itself, not just the campus life, not just the great professors that care about you, and don't dismiss your attitudes and ideas. But you learn this, this black history that is so rich. Now it's much more available since, you know, Carter G. Woodson and all of that. I mean, it's really become much more available. But research continues. And the research is phenomenal. My research was on blacks in Hawaii. And that took me a long ways with publishing articles and doing a lot of oral histories, because our tradition is an oral history tradition. I say, I say of myself that I'm an Afrofuturist, Afrofuturist. And I say that because the traditions of black people, and many people in fact, is an oral tradition. And through my poetry and public speaking, I feel that I use that tradition from the past, bring it to my my present, through my teaching and through my public presence, and then to think that that in turn influences the future. I mean, we can look back at jazz musicians. They were futurists. They felt and divined chords and rhythms and things that were not available somewhere else. And so this tradition of song, of dance, of storytelling, of history telling is so very rich. And it's across the African diaspora. It is. It's just so there. So Dr. T, if people want to find out more about HBCUs, where can they go for that information? Well, the easiest thing, of course, is to Google HBCUs. There's many, many, probably hundreds of pages there as they break down the different colleges and what they have to offer and blah, blah. But also, I think that people need to get more out from themselves and their particular community. I think that if Black people and local people of the diverse ethnicities and races, if they talked more together, then that would be an education on both sides. My history in ethnic studies was that I started out teaching Black studies and introducing courses of Black studies. But I had to learn, and joyfully, it was a great blessing, the history of the Native Americans, the Native Hawaiians, the Mexican Americans, the Chinese and Japanese Americans, the South Pacific Islanders. It's so important to begin to see connections, not just differences. The diversity enhances the expansion of the mind, the consciousness, and the vision that, hey, I can go beyond. Well, Dr. Takara, I thank you so much for being here on this first episode of the HBCU experience. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I've learned a lot just by talking with you, and I hope to have you back for some other shows. Thank you. Thank you so much. And don't forget to ask your viewers to send a note or text or something as to whether they found it instructive and what areas they might be interested in. So you heard that from my viewers from my first show. If you like the show, if you have any other questions that you want to know about HBCUs, which I'm sure we're going to cover in future episodes, just drop a line and let us know. But until next time, I thank you all for tuning in to this first episode, and I hope to see you again next time. Until then, aloha and God bless.