 Welcome to this episode of the HBCU experience. I am your host, Wendell and Harris. Historical black colleges and universities, also known as HBCUs are institutions of higher education that were established before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The primary purpose was serving the African-American community. For more than 100 years, HBCUs have been educating minorities, giving them economic opportunities and instilling great values. Not only have they consistently produced leaders in their communities and across the nation, but HBCUs today are consistently and affordably producing the leaders of the people. Today, HBCUs are at the forefront because of our Vice President Kamala Harris, who is a graduate of Howard University and HBCU. Today, we will ask the question, HBCUs are they still relevant in today's society? My guests today are Dr. Kamania Graham-Tutt, graduate of Howard University and Associate Professor of Community Health at University of Hawaii. And my second guest is Mr. Stephen Hill, graduate of Hampton University, actor. He is currently on the hit TV show, The New Bank and PI, where he plays TC. I am so happy to have both of them here today. Let's welcome them to the show. Aloha. Aloha. How are you? Wonderful, beautiful day today, wonderful. Yes, I am so glad to have both of you here, Dr. Graham-Tutt and of course, you know, Mr. Stephen Hill. So, I wanna get this rolling and I wanna ask you both of you and I'm gonna start with you, Dr. Graham-Tutt. What made you decide to attend an HBCU? Whoa, beautiful story, beautiful story. I'm so glad you asked and thank you so much for having me on today. This is such an enjoyable experience already. So, I'm originally from Houston, Texas and born and raised, attended high school in Houston, Texas and I had a great experience in high school. I graduated close to the top of my class and I knew I wanted to go to undergrad closer to home. And so, I mailed out some letters and to be honest with you, one school returned my letter back and they said, we'd love to have you and we can't wait for you to arrive. And so, that was it. That was the school I knew I needed to be at. So, I went to that school. I majored in pre-med at the time and I did pretty well for what I thought was a science major. I took those classes like anatomy, biology, chemistry. I worked my tail off at that school. I never really was told, hey, you should go on and do some lab work because you're scoring a perfect 100 on the chemistry test that you studied all night for, that you missed out on dinner with your friends for you're doing well in these classes. Unfortunately, I had an advisor that said, you know, you're doing okay. She was not a person of color. And I thought, well, she probably knows exactly what she's talking about. She's been working here for however long and she's saying that maybe I shouldn't go to pre-med route. Maybe I should go more of a health education route. Now, mind you at that time, I thought, okay, she knows what she's talking about. I'm going to follow her lead. I changed some things in my major. I had a lot of overlap in some areas. And so I went the health education route. Today, it serves me very well. I'm glad that I've done that. However, there was always a piece of me that wonders if somebody would have pushed me or someone would have said, uh-uh, what'd you come here for? Let's keep your focus that I would have continued on that track. Fast forward, I did my master's degree at the same institution. And then something clicked in me after the graduate experience at the master's level. No one really looked like me that was educating me. I was well taken care of. I was cared for as a student, but I didn't have that sense of home. So it took into my graduate education for me to say, oh, I need to go to the HBCU, okay? Not any HBCU, I need to go to the, what's the one? Okay. And so I quickly applied to Howard University for my graduate studies. I graduated with my PhD at Howard University. And I believe looking back from then to now, the reason I went to Howard University is because I needed someone that looked like me, acted like me, had the same struggles as me, understood me to push me to complete what would be the terminal degree in my area of study. I kept going to school because it worked for me, but I wanted to know, okay, what's the end? What's the end road? And I'm so thankful to God that I went to Howard University because I have almost like a second mother because of going there. When I would study and I would work in whatever office I was working in, it was the simple things that helped to get me through. For example, when you're doing your research and you're studying and someone says, hey, did you eat yet? And you're like, oh, I didn't have a meal. At my other school, maybe nobody was that close to me or felt that comfortable asking me those types of things, but I truly felt a sense of home when I attended Howard University. And I wouldn't change it, I wouldn't change my trajectory for anything. Personally, I have maybe the best of both worlds experience, but when I tell you coming home is like coming home to Howard, I am so thankful that I was there to see people who I could once be in the midst of where I was. Wow, that's a beautiful story. And I understand where you're talking about where you wanna go, you wanna attend the school to where you attend people that look like you. So Stephen, what is your story? We went to the same alma mater, so Hampton University. So what's your story? Well, I had to commend her. One, she's looks incredible, looks like she's still in school, right? So, you know, but like she said, she wanted to go to the HBCU, so she went to Howard, but I wanted to go to the HBCU with the extra E for extra excellence. So I went to Hampton University, okay? So sorry, didn't make it a little further down than 95, 95, but, you know, unfortunately, not all of us could be as illustrious as a Hamptonian. So anyway, I decided to go because I applied to one school and very similarly got accepted to one school. So I said, that's the one for me. No, seriously, I did apply to one school because they had, they offered cinematography. And at the time I thought I was gonna be behind the camera. So, and I didn't wanna go as far as like the Morehouse, Clark Atlanta, Spelman triangle since I was coming down from New York and New Jersey. So Hampton was it. And at the time I didn't have the money to go to the college tour, the campus tours that they had. So I asked a good friend of mine who lived in Mont Blanc named Shawnette Bright. And she actually ended up running a track for Hampton. I asked her, I said, what was the best school? And she said, hands down, Hampton was the most beautiful campus I've ever seen, you know, out of all of the school. They went to pretty much all of the HBCUs, many of them on the Eastern Seaboard. And so I said, okay, and I applied to Hampton and I got accepted. And they didn't have cinematography anyway. So, you know, this is a very HBCU thing, you know, you get there and they were like, oh baby, you got a, you got an old catalog. I said, what? And then she said, well, you could take some mass media classes and maybe some photography lessons. You know, so I did that actually. And I'm really glad I did it because, you know, I grew and I thrived at Hampton. I started modeling there. And I had a lot of room for me to hustle, a model to hustle. I often, even sometimes model would focus on Howard as well. Wonderful, we're wonderful. Yeah, and then, and then we all did, we actually did the first televised, now it's all big, you know, we ripped the runway and stuff, but the first televised BET fashion show was at Kings Dominguez and it had models from Hampton, Howard. I think maybe a couple of people might have been from Morgan and some people from Norfolk State. But yeah, we did that first fashion show that was televised by BETs. I don't know if you guys remember, BET used to have a clothing line called X-Tel. I'm aging myself right now. But yeah, I was wearing their clothing in the fashion show. But anyway, fast forward, you know, that was the start of my acting career unbeknownst to me. And as soon as I graduated, you know, I started acting and I've been doing that ever since. Not even sure if that answered your question, but it was a nice little tangent. We all know some of my background. Yes, and just for the listeners, if you don't know, the reason why, you know, Stephen made that remark is Hampton and Howard were kind of rivals, you know. We're not competing. Yeah, well, we didn't erase you already. One. No, no, because, you know, it's, you know, they want to be, you know, the best, but we just want to be the right HPC. You know what I'm saying? Like, you know, you want to come to the right one. Make sure you make the right choice. If there's any young students out there, you know, that want to escape the inner city turmoil and want to come to an oasis, come on down to Hampton, you know what I'm saying? I have one title, Vice President Mike Drop. And we're going to, and that's one of the questions. She better get to doing some work. She better get on it. And that's one of the questions when I'm going to get to that in a minute. But I want to do like a little fast, like a little fun fact, as far as what HPC use are responsible for. HPC use are responsible for 75% of black PhDs. They are responsible for 46% of black business executives. They are responsible for 50% of the black engineers. They are responsible for 80% of the black federal judges. They are responsible for 85% of the doctors. They are responsible for 50% of the black attorneys. HPC use are responsible for 75% of our black military officers and they are responsible for 40% of our black dentists, 50% of our black pharmacists and 75% of our black veterinarians. So I asked that question because, you know, at the beginning, and I'm pretty sure this is going to have to go into a part two series, all right? But the question is, are black or HPC use still relevant in our society today? But the one question that I want to ask is because of like you said, Dr. Grandet is, do you think that our administration, our new administration with President Biden and Vice President Harris, do you think that our administration supports our HPC use 100% and your attention? To me, absolutely. I do think that they support our HPC use 100%. Luckily for us at this time, the proof is sitting in front of them. And so never at a time have we been able to have such a position be filled by someone that looks like us, has been through our journey and can speak to the value of attending an HPCU. And to be very honest with you, the passion that comes from it once you graduate, it's just something in your heart that makes you go back, give back, give to someone else, share that knowledge. And I'll tell you, it's quite infectious. Living here in Hawaii, having HPCU paraphernalia on your car, wearing it, I get more questions about how was your experience than I have about any place where I've worked or that I've been to. And I know it's because so many individuals across the country can share that pride and that love. And I do think our administration is hearing it and seeing it. So I think that's a positive thing for us today. What do you think, Seagan, Mr. Hill? Well, you know, not to really get into politics, you know, you know, first I wanna say you listed a lot of the stats on what HPCUs are, the percentages of what we are responsible for. But I have to say Howard it's gotta be responsible for at least 50% of black entertainers. They got all the black actors, boy. I am hanging on by a thread over there, over here trying to represent as an actor from Hampton. But, you know, kudos to Howard for producing so many of our really dope, dope actors that I look up to and respect. Rest in peace, the Chadwick Boseman. And to answer your question about, you know, whether they are supporting the HPCUs. You know, I'm not so sure, you know? I think we could use a lot more funds than we have, you know? A lot of our schools are dealing with some issues with mold in the dorms and, you know, not the best food options, you know? Our infrastructure could be a lot better at HPCUs. So I can't say that we're fully supported by our government if those things aren't taken care of. But, you know, in the case of Hampton, you know, we're a private school, and I know that we rely on people to get back. And a lot of times, HPCUs don't, you know, the graduates don't, you know, we get out into the world and we don't have generational wealth, multi-generational wealth. And although we are working at these corporations and we're moving up the ladder, you know, we don't own the corporations, you know? So at PWIs, predominantly white institutions, you know, a lot of their graduates are coming from that old, old, old money, you know? And they are the owners of corporations. And then they also get to rely on, you know, sports franchises that bring tons of money to the school as well, you know? But obviously, you know, the people on those courts and fields are a lot of people that look like us. So, you know, I don't know how I really feel about that, but I do think that the original reason for opening these schools was to figure out what we're gonna do with these black folks, you know? And it's just in our blood to excel, you know? And if you give us the opportunity, too, we will. And these schools provide an excellent opportunity to excel regardless of what our dorm rooms look like and what our cafeteria lunch looks like. We're gonna- I need to ask you one quick question, though. You bring up a point about generational wealth in the baby PWI, but it's so interesting to me that we have this incredible sense of legacy when we attend these schools. I've seen families out of Hawaii and credit to Hampton University. I've seen whole families where mother, father, met at Hampton, send the first child, the second child, and it's automatic that the third child will attend. And I wanna bring in the fact that maybe we need to start a conversation about how we can help this legacy feed back into our schools in a way that's gonna support the infrastructure. Because I don't know that we talk like that in our homes or at our alumni associations to make true change. And you're right about that. First of all, I wanna ask, would you guys be able to come back in about a couple of weeks to do a part two? Because there's a video that I have to show at the end of this segment because it is Black History Month. But I wanna make sure you guys will be able to come back. And like in 30 seconds for each of you, I want you just to tell me something, like what do you think can be done to bring more awareness and funding to our HBCUs? Because like we said, some have already closed. Okay, so really quickly. And this is just part one everyone. We're gonna have a part two. Trust me on this one. Okay, can I use my 30 seconds really quickly just to say I know the good doctor, she said that you have Kamala Harris over there representing, but I wanna highlight another Black woman, Hampton University. We're here in Hawaii. There's a general that started Hampton University or he's credited with starting Hampton University. His name is General Armstrong. And he went to Punahou and he got ideas for starting Hampton from seeing boarding schools here in Hawaii. But when he decided where to get the plot of land to start Hampton, he actually saw a woman that was teaching Black students and Native American students underneath an oak tree. And her name was Mary Peak. And he got that idea from Hampton from her. So I wanna highlight the Black woman that was actually doing the groundwork seven years prior to Hampton University starting. So if by technicality, Hampton started by Black woman. Well, all right. Yeah. Dr. Graham Tut, do you have anything to say really quick? Absolutely. And we definitely will need a part two when thanks again so much. I do think that what I'm seeing is a very positive trend despite the turmoil that might be happening on some of these campuses. I'm seeing a wonderful trend of our students understanding that our HBCUs are almost like an extension of their home life. And so to be able to provide more opportunities, debt-free opportunities, I'll repeat as someone who has her own student loan debt, debt-free opportunities for our students to be educated at our institutions would be awesome. And I'll just leave it there. For now, we'll talk more later. So we're gonna do a part two, everyone. I promise you we're gonna do a part two. But I thank you all for tuning in with us today to the HBCU experience. Since this is Black History Month, I would like to leave you with this video. Jessie J.T. Jazz Thompson, who attended Central State University, plays a beautiful version of Lift Every Voice and Sing, a hymn which is known as the African-American National Anthem. It was written in the 1900s by James Weldon Johnson who did the lyrics. And by his brother, Rosamund Johnson, J. Rosamund Johnson, who did the music. I hope that you enjoy this video because there'll be some prominent slides that will be popping up during that video. And until next time, aloha and God bless.