First Call-to-Action Robert F. Smith made headlines back in the spring of 2019 while delivering a commencement speech at Morehouse College.  During the speech, Smith announced he paid the student debt obligations for the group of approximately 400 graduating students.  Smith, a billionaire tech investor and philanthropist touted by Forbes as the richest black person in America provided a gift of $34 million to pay off the Morehouse students’ debt. Smith followed up his individual action during the Morehouse graduation with the creation of the Student Freedom Initiative (SFI).  T ..read more

Fisk University is one of several Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) making gains in enrollment.  The Covid-19 pandemic led to enrollment decreases and financial difficulties for HBCUs.  These gains in enrollment are due to an appreciation of the contributions HBCUs made to black culture. This appreciation is partly due to racial tension arising from a divisiveness in the nation’s politics.  The election of President Barack Obama as president of the United States of America led to a rise of divisiveness.  While his election was applauded by most of the nat ..read more

The HBCU designation was created by the US Higher Education Act of 1965 and included institutions established before 1964, with the “principal mission” being the education of Black Americans. The 105 currently operating HBCUs were founded with a common purpose: to educate a population that routinely had been denied even the most rudimentary level of literacy. From their beginning, HBCUs were intended to be a place of nurturing, a place that recognized that the world was not kind to people of African descent, and a place that recognized the importance of obtaining freedom. Freedom wasn’t just n ..read more

Once the primary means for Black Americans to get a college education, Historically Black Colleges, and Universities (HBCUs), now account for just 9 percent of such students, while 91 percent are enrolled in predominantly white institutions (PWIs). But HBCUs, long bastions of Black excellence, are increasingly becoming the first choice for some of the nation’s most sought-after black talent. This finding is reported in a New York Times article published June 11, 2022, Why Students are Choosing HBCUs: ‘4 Years Being Seen as Family’. The article reports interviews with dozens of students, guidan ..read more

The National Park Service (NPS) announced, on July 8, 2022, $9.7 million in grants to assist 21 preservation projects in 9 states for historic structures on campuses of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Since the 1990s, the NPS has awarded more than $87 million in grants to HBCUs from the Historic Preservation Fund (HPF). The HPF uses revenue from federal oil and gas leases on the Outer Continental Shelf and helps with a broad range of preservation projects. The projects must meet major program selection criteria, and all work must meet the Secretary of the Interior’s Stand ..read more

The Community Development Block Grant (CDGB) program, with the stated goal of providing affordable housing, anti-poverty programs, and infrastructure development to economically underserved communities, was established through the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974.  The law was a response to a funding moratorium placed on the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) programs by the Nixon administration in 1973. The 1974 Act replaced the original seven HUD programs with a single grant program that directly allocated funds to local urban and rural communities and to sta ..read more

The United States Department of the Treasury (USDT) is the national treasury and finance department of the federal government of the United States.  The department oversees the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and the U.S. Mint, and together, these two agencies are responsible for printing all paper currency and coins.    The USDT collects over $3.0 trillion in federal taxes through the Internal Revenue Service; manages over $20 trillion of US government debt instruments; licenses and supervises banks and thrift institutions with deposits of $15 trillion, and advises the legisla ..read more

The Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) started in 1979 with funding from the Ford Foundation to connect hard-to-tap public and private resources with underinvested places and people working to access opportunities afforded to people living outside of these communities. The premise is still as it was then: government, foundations, and for-profit companies have the capital; residents and local institutions understand the need, and LISC helps bridge the gap by offering the relationships and expertise to assist community organizations in attracting the kinds of resources that allow them ..read more

Enterprise Community Partners, Inc. (Enterprise) is a nonprofit corporation celebrating 40 years in the business of addressing the housing needs of residents of America’s communities that are inadequately met by the nation’s private sector housing market. The average income earned by the residents of these communities and the accompanying economic infrastructure lacks the ability to attract the private investment required to build housing in these communities. Enterprise works with these communities to overcome the obstacles preventing the flow of private sector investments needed to develop h ..read more

The decision by sons of two high-profile black celebrities to enroll as freshmen at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to play college basketball made quite a stir in the news media as evidence by the two news articles attached to this blog. These announcements are the type of positive support HBCUs need to improve their sports program, and to increase student enrollment which is desperately needed at these institutions. Hercy Miller, a son of the multimillionaire rap mogul Master P, announced his decision to play basketball at Tennessee State University, a HBCU located in Na ..read more