UNCF Celebrates 80 Years of Working to Advance Black Educational Opportunities

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An NAACP flyer campaigning for the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives in 1922, but was filibustered to defeat in the Senate. Dyer, the NAACP, and freedom fighters around the country, like Flossie Baily, struggled for years to get the Dyer and other anti-lynching bills passed, to no avail. Today there is still no U.S. law specifically against lynching. In 2005, eighty of the 100 U.S. Senators voted for a resolution to apologize to victims' families and the country for their failure to outlaw lynching. Courtesy of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Some Exhibits to Come – One Hundred Years of Jim Crow

Bibliography – One Hundred Years Of Jim Crow

Claude, age 23, just months before his 1930 murder. Courtesy of Faith Deeter.

Freedom’s Heroes During Jim Crow: Flossie Bailey and the Deeters

Souvenir Portrait of the Lynching of Abram Smith and Thomas Shipp, August 7, 1930, by studio photographer Lawrence Beitler. Courtesy of the Indiana Hisorical Society.

An Iconic Lynching in the North

Claxton Dekle – Prosperous Farmer, Husband & Father of Two

Ancient manuscripts about mathematics and astronomy from Timbuktu, Mali

Some Exhibits to Come – African Peoples Before Captivity

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Some Exhibits to Come – The Middle Passage

What I Saw Aboard a Slave Ship in 1829

Life After Hate: A Former White Power Leader Redeems Himself

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March 8, 2024

By Micha Green, The Washington Informer

The United Negro College Fund (UNCF) celebrates its 80th anniversary and honors those who work to support the legacy. (Jacques Benovil/The Washington Informer)

In an event that included a three-course dinner, inspirational speeches, and entertainment from the Fisk Jubilee Singers and Vanessa Williams, the United Negro College Fund’s (UNCF) “A Mind Is…” 80th-anniversary gala celebrated the organization’s long legacy of working to advance Black educational opportunities.

Hosted at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center on March 7, the event was not only a fun way to honor UNCF’s work but emphasized the importance of investing in African American students’ futures.

“Help a student in need,” said Dr. Melva K. Wallace, president and CEO of Huston-Tillotson University.

[…]

“Collaborate. Work together like you do the Electric Slide,” Wallace said.“Five thousand dollars is an average UNCF scholarship, that’s what some of our students get; $1,000 helps a student with tuition for part of a year; $500 helps a student with room and board; $200 helps a student with a laptop … [and] $100 helps a student with textbooks.”

The Washington Informer has more details about the event’s attendees and fundraising.

The UNCF has provided crucial funding to HBCUs.

More Black education news.

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