Black Schools Go White

By TAMMERLIN DRUMMOND

After graduating from a St. Louis, Mo., high school where she was one of very few blacks, Elizabeth Johnson wanted to "try something different." She enrolled at Lincoln University, a historically black college founded by African-American Civil War veterans in Jefferson City, Mo. But Johnson was in for a shock when she arrived at her first class. "I was the only black face in the room," recalls the 19-year-old sophomore.

Johnson didn't realize that Lincoln is one of four historically black colleges and universities, out of 106, where white students are in the majority. Once revered as the black Harvard of the Middle West, Lincoln is now nearly 70% white. Overall, white enrollment at historically black colleges across the U.S. climbed 16% between 1990 and 1998. At Bluefield State College in West Virginia, more than 90% of the students are white.

Why? White students and parents are discovering what African Americans have known for decades--many historically black colleges offer a quality education for about half the price of comparable mainstream schools. Some black students and administrators welcome the new diversity. Others, though, argue that schools that are now predominantly white should no longer receive federal funds for their "unique mission" of educating African Americans. Most historically black colleges were founded before 1965, when African Americans were shut out of most predominantly white institutions. But today some historically black colleges with a majority of white students and faculty are at an important crossroads. Says M. Christopher Brown, a professor of higher education at the University of Illinois: "It doesn't mean they're going to disappear completely, but they will have a decidedly different shape."

Another reason white enrollment is growing at historically black colleges is that courts have ordered many of them to desegregate by admitting more whites. Many offer minority scholarships to white students. Given the tide of opposition to affirmative action at mainstream institutions, the whites-only scholarships have sparked an outcry. But with African-American enrollment dropping, historically black colleges have no choice but to recruit people of all races. "Lincoln is schizophrenic at this point," says Rosemary Hearn, who has taught English at the school for 42 years. "There's always that real concern about how we're going to maintain our heritage."

Lincoln, which has a strong agricultural program, has reinvented itself as an open-admissions school. Anyone who graduates from a state-accredited high school is eligible for admission. So Lincoln is attracting white commuter students from nearby farm towns who probably couldn't get admitted anywhere else. But Lincoln president David Henson insists that despite changing demographics, "the university's culture is still driven for the most part by African-American standards." All incoming students must take courses on cultural diversity and African-American history.

Yet despite the politically correct curriculum, one of the most jarring sights at Lincoln is its de facto segregation. It has even spawned the saying "White by day, black by night." That's because most white students drive home when their classes end. There's even an unofficial white student union on the fourth floor of the Martin Luther King campus building. The dorms, fraternities, sororities and other social activities are dominated by blacks. "It's really sad," says Tanya Servick, a 19-year-old communications major who is African American. Josh Cleveland, 19, a creative-writing major from St. Louis, says he commutes because he feels that whites like him aren't welcome in the dorms. "There were some white students who lived here a few years back that got run out," he says. "I didn't want to go through the same thing." (Administrators say they haven't heard of any such incident.) Being in the minority took a while for Kimberly McCullough, 18, a white student on a tennis scholarship, to get used to. She is one of four whites out of 300 students in the women's dorm. "Until I made some friends, it was kind of weird at first," she says. "But then it was no big deal."

In the end, it wasn't a big deal for Elizabeth Johnson either. After all, she was used to being in the minority.