HBCU graduates are making milestones — but they need our help | Opinion

In this commencement season, I am not only thankful for the thousands of young people — and some old ones — who feel it necessary to further their education. I am especially thankful for the growing number of African Americans who are taking advantage of this awesome opportunity — some of whom are the first in their families to earn a college degree.

The love of learning is steeped in our African American DNA. Looking back over the history of African Americans, many of our fore parents died for the simple pleasure of learning to read. Yet, education was so important that many risked their lives just to be able to learn their ABC’s.

I sat among the hundreds of families and friends watching a sea of faces, most of whom were Black (3,100 at Howard University on May 9), heads adorned with the traditional mortarboard, many decorated with personal messages, marching into their future. It was a magical moment.

So many thoughts crowded my mind as I watched the procession. I thought of my own mom, who didn’t understand the significance of my earning a scholarship in voice in 1956, as a senior at Booker T. Washington Junior/Senior High School, and would not allow me to take advantage of it. I later learned she thought she was sparing me form the disappointment of not becoming a noted singer. She didn’t understand that I could use the scholarship as a steppingstone at Knoxville College to become a teacher or a nurse or a social worker, professions that African Americans were assured of getting work in the South back in the day. In the same manner, Momma never complimented me on anything I wrote for my English classes, nor did she ever display any of my art projects in our home.

When I eventually was able to enter Miami Dade College at 29, a widowed mother of two sons, Momma was my babysitter. I was an education major, which was fine with her. It was practical and I wouldn’t have trouble getting a job in some Black school.

That was Momma’s dream for me. It wasn’t my dream. My dream of becoming a writer was asleep. It took the advice of a white southern gentleman, the late Fred Shaw, to awaken it. Mr. Shaw was a vice president at the college, and he was also the book editor for the Miami Herald. We became friends when he came into the library, where I worked, to pick up the books to review.

One evening I got the nerve to ask him to read a paper I had to turn in the next day. He did. When he finished reading my paper, the conversation we had changed my life forever.

It went like this:

“What is your major?” he asked. I told him I was studying to become a teacher.

“You need to change your major to journalism,” he said.

I laughed. “The Herald won’t hire me,” I said. “I’m Black.”

Mr. Shaw didn’t laugh. He looked at me and said: “Bea, things are changing in this country. You need to be ready for the change. I want you to change your major to journalism and get in Barbara Garfunkel’s journalism class.”

I took Mr. Shaw’s advice, never telling Momma. When I became a reporter in June 1970, I know there were at least three people in Miami who were proud of me – Mr. Shaw, Miss Garfunkel, and Momma.

MORE: From file clerk to columnist: 60 years of Miami Herald memories

Only Momma never knew I’d changed my major until the day I told her I had been hired as a reporter for the Miami Herald.

That’s just a little backstory, as they say. Getting back to the HBCU commencements, let me pause to say this: To me, there is nothing quite like it. At the ones I have attended, the graduates are led into the ceremonies by a team of drummers wearing African attire, which seem to be appropriate for the occasion. The drumming seems to honor the memory of our ancestors, many of whom were never allowed this opportunity.

For the most part, the ceremonies are steeped with our religious traditions that have been the backbone of our survival as a people for generations. Sitting in the audience, listening to the speeches that could double as sermons, and hearing the ageless gospel songs and Negro spirituals, bring to mind the days of old when many of us Blacks invoked the presence of the Lord in almost everything we did. These commencement ceremonies give the feeling of being in church, listening to wonderful sermons that gives instructions for future living, while soothing away all of life’s pains with the soul-washing hymns and gospel songs.

Recently I was privileged to attend my goddaughter Cecily Anestasia (Stacie) Duffie’s graduation from Howard University, where she earned a doctorate in English literature, and was selected as one of the speakers at Howard’s Grad School graduation ceremonies. That day, she became the third of five siblings, to earn a post graduate degree. Her twin brother, Cecil Andrew, recently installed as Dean of the Chapel at Tuskegee University in Alabama, has a Ph.D. and a master of divinity from Howard, while younger brother Troy Adam has a master’s degree in finance, also from Howard, and is an ordained minister. Younger sisters Caitlyn and Trinity both have bachelor’s degrees from HBCU’s — Caitlyn from Louisanna State and Trinity from the Historic Wiley University in Texas.

This year’s graduates are equipped to go out and change the world for the better. But they can’t do it alone. The world can sometimes be a scary place. Our graduates need us to surround and cover them in prayer because we seem to be living under a cloud that often blocks the sunshine. Our graduates must be ready to get wet by the deluge of hatefulness that can be dumped on them at any time. While they might have the credentials, many are still babes who need to be nourished by our sanctified wisdom.