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Thursday, February 23 2006
Small HBCU faces challenges
WE ASSOCIATED PRESS
MEMPHIS, Tfenn. -WiUie
Herenton did not have much
choice in 1958 when he was
deciding where to go to col
lege
The region’s main public
university, Memphis State,
still refused to admit black
students, so the man who
would later be Memphis’ first
black mayor chose the only
local school open to him:
LeMoyne-Owen College.
‘1 could not have gone to
school if not for LeMoyne,”
Herenton said.
The college has played a
unique role in Memphis’ histo
ry and has graduated an illus
trious list of alumni, but that
may not be enou^ to keep it
in business. Like other histor
ically black schools in the
southeastern United States,
LeMoyne-Owen is struggling
with a mountain of debt and
fitting to keep its accredita
tion.
The school traces its begin
nings to the 1860s and eflforts
to educate former slaves. It
was a primary source of black
teachers when public schools
were racially segregated.
LeMoyne-Owen graduates
helped build a black middle
dass in what is now a pre
dominantly black dty and
they took part in the political
power shift that put Herenton
in ofl&ce in 1991,
But the small school has a
difficult time these days
attracting ambitious black
students, who have more
optiojis than Herenton did.
LeMoyne-Owen, which has
had more than 1,200 stu
dents, now has just over 800.
Offidals are in the middle of a
recruiting effort to raise that
number to 1,000 —the level it
needs to meet expenses.
“Black colleges, particularly
smaller, private institutions,
thou^ they’re doing valuable
work and graduating lots of
students, are struggling in a
very competitive climate,”
Black contributions
honored in Idaho
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said Lynn Walker Huntley,
president of the Southern
Education Foundation.
“And many schools doiit
have the money they need to
raise money”
While historically black
schools make up 3 percent of
U.S. institutions of higher
learning, they graduate
almost 25 percent of the black
students earning undergrad
uate d^rees, according to the
United Negro College Fund.
LeMoyne-Owen’s most
urgent problem is $6 million
in debt, taken out over the
year's to meet finandal short
falls, The debt prompted the
Southern Association of
Colleges and Schools to place
LeMoyne-Owen on probation
for accreditation in
December.
Tb turn its finances around,
the collie has launched a
fundraising campaign direct
ed primarily at aliuuni,
churches and businesses.
Focusing on alunuii is a
good idea and a tactic too
often overlooked by small,
private schools like LeMoyne-
Owen, said John Donohue,
the United Negro College
Fund’s vice president
When corporations and
foundations are solicited for
donations, they often ask,
‘Well, what are your alimmi
doing?” Donohue said. ‘Wliy
should I invest in you if your
alumni aren't?’
WE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BOISE, Idaho—As the new director of the Idaho Black
History Museum, Kimberly Moore’s job starts with convincing
people that such history actually exists
"It’s interesting, when you talk to people, what they know or
they think they know,” said Moore, who left Detroit’s Motown
Historical Museum to take the position in Boise this month.
"African-Americans have made a significant contribution to
this state.”
Ask most people in or out of Idaho about the state’s black his
tory and you’re likely to get a blank look. There just aren’t many
black people here _ 11,000 is Moore’s estimate, less than 1 per
cent of Idaho’s 1.4 million population.
But black people have a history in Idaho. It starts with York,
the slave of William Clark who traveled throu^ Idaho 200
years ago with explorers Clark and Meriwether Lewis.
The Idaho Black History Museum tells the story of York and
of the black explorers, flir traders, gold prospectors, miners,
ranchers and others who came after him. Some traveled to
Idaho for the same reasons as other newcomers _ for work in
the mines or on the railroad, for religious fisedom, or simply as
settlers needing land.
And others came to escape oppression in the post-Civil War
south.
The museum is set in a tiny former black Baptist church - a
space that Moore hopes to quadruple in size. Exhibits introduce
characters like Gobo Fango, a West Afiican who was bom in
1855 and adopted by white Mormons. He started a sheep ranch
near Oakley
There’s a piece on Les Purxe, the first black city councilman in
Idaho (in Pocatello, in 1973) who went on to become Idaho’s first
black mayor.
Another covers the visit of famed singer Marian Anderson in
1940. Anderson was snubbed because of her color in other cities
during her opera career, and Boise was no different: She stayed
at the Hotel Boise, but only on the condition that she enter and
exit by the back door.
The black history in the exhibits is bittersweet, mixing tri
umphs on the fix)ntier and during World War EE with the oppres
sion that was a fact of life.
Idaho’s black history in that respect is no different fiom that
of other states. What sets it apart is the stain left by the infa
mous Aryan Nations.
That anti-Semitic, white supremacist group was founded by
neo-Nazi Richard Butler, who bou^t 20 acres near Hayden, in
north Idaho, in the mid-1970s. Six years ago Butler declared
bankruptcy and gave up his land. He died in 2004 at the age of
86, and the grounds of his compoimd were turned into a park
dedicated to peace.
Even though Butler is associated with Idaho, he wasn’t fix)m
the state, noted Janet French, who is on the museum’s board.
“He was basically real estate shopping for some remote place
where the federal government would leave him alone,” said
French "My understanding is the locals up in northern Idaho
were incensed their character was being tarnished by a bunch
of people who weren’t fixim Idaho in the first place.”
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