Who Knows What an HBCU Is? About 60% of High Schoolers Don’t

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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

Shackles for Adults & Children from the Henrietta Marie

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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January 23, 2026

A report from the United Negro College Fund said high schools need to do more to introduce students to HBCUs.

by Alvin Buyinza, WordInBlack

25-CLDS-HBCU graduates group_-6-scaled.jpg

Long gone are the days of “A Different World,” the iconic 90s sitcom and “Cosby Show” spinoff that brought the nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities out of the shadows and into the spotlight.

Each week, fans saw HBCU life and culture in living color at the fictional Hillman College, from a Black fraternity step show on the yard to students protesting the apartheid government in South Africa. The show introduced a generation of Black college-bound students to a college environment designed exclusively for them.

But the world is different.

Continue reading…Who Knows What an HBCU Is? About 60% of High Schoolers Don’t

Check out our exhibits about the struggle for justice during the Civil Rights Era.

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