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00:00 [silence]
00:19 Freedom.
00:20 Think about enslaved people coming out of slavery.
00:22 It was illegal to learn how to read or write, and now they really need the basics.
00:27 What do you do with four million people who are emancipated, who are going to come into the society?
00:31 They have to be educated.
00:34 Here on the island, they begin setting up schools immediately after Juneteenth, less than three months.
00:40 Hope.
00:41 There are stories about adults sitting in classrooms with little children.
00:45 It was really important for people, education.
00:48 Black history.
00:49 It didn't come easy at all. This is years of fighting.
00:54 Juneteenth is all about the spirit of this people.
00:58 Juneteenth. This is what we are. We overcome.
01:02 Push us down again, we'll overcome again.
01:05 Let's go!
01:06 [music]
01:09 It starts the tradition of HBCUs that still continue today.
01:13 Presby played an intricate role in it for black Texans.
01:16 It's a legacy instilled in my bloodline for generations.
01:20 It's the camaraderie. It's the family.
01:23 We have an obligation to never be silenced.
01:26 [music]
01:28 Give up your...
01:30 [applause]
01:31 ...stuff!
01:32 [music]
01:42 Historically black colleges and universities are more than just homecoming, marching bands and step shows.
01:49 In fact, right here at Prairie View A&M University, it is a direct result of Juneteenth.
01:55 But to get here, you must understand how HBCUs got started.
02:00 For 250 years, African Americans were denied the right to an education.
02:06 While you all were slaves, did they teach you to read and write?
02:09 Uh-uh. They didn't know nothing about reading and writing.
02:13 All that I know, they teach you to mind your mouth and read and miss it.
02:17 They sure didn't teach you to read and write.
02:19 No, they didn't. I remember picking cotton.
02:23 From the continent of Africa, we get math and science and language and culture,
02:28 all of these things that were lost in the transatlantic slave trade.
02:32 So there was much success and accomplishment and achievement.
02:36 African people, because they lived in areas where there were lots of different languages,
02:40 there's not one language, they were good at that.
02:42 And they very often served as translators and guides with Native Americans and Europeans as well.
02:48 So that's not something you think of when you think about enslaved people.
02:52 Enslaved people like the man depicted in Galveston's absolute equality mural.
02:57 He's considered the first African to come to North America.
03:02 Who was Estevanico?
03:04 Estevanico came to the area that is around Galveston in that part of Texas in the 1520s.
03:11 He came as an enslaved man, but because of circumstances,
03:16 ended up being pivotal to the survival of a group of people after shipwreck.
03:21 And he had been brought over because he had a talent for languages.
03:25 Centuries later, Africans from countries like Ghana and Nigeria quickly picked up the English language.
03:32 They were forbidden to speak in their native tongue and could be punished for doing so.
03:36 And while they could speak English, they were outlawed from reading or writing it,
03:41 forcing many to learn in secret.
03:44 You knew it was dangerous.
03:46 Some of us thought we couldn't read, I'm sure.
03:48 It's hard to control people when they can read, when they're literate, and certainly if they can write.
03:55 They wanted a workforce that was closed off as much as possible.
04:01 When you start to read, that opens up an entire world to you about who you can be
04:07 and about what life is like elsewhere.
04:10 That was the case in 1831, when Nat Turner led one of the biggest slave rebellions in U.S. history.
04:17 Since he was educated, a majority of slave states then passed official laws
04:22 against teaching enslaved people how to read and write.
04:25 But African Americans utilized other skills.
04:29 Well, they certainly had to be able to read the people who were their captors,
04:33 the people who were in control of them.
04:35 They had to learn to observe and to learn how to deal with people who were holding them in bondage.
04:43 They had to learn how to create ways of coping with all of those things.
04:47 That is, until freedom came with Juneteenth.
04:51 Plantation owners in Texas ignored the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863
04:56 until Union soldiers arrived two years later, officially ending slavery in the state of Texas.
05:03 June 19, 1865 is the day that Major General Gordon Granger arrives here in Galveston
05:08 to issue General Order Number 3.
05:11 The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a proclamation
05:15 from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.
05:21 This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property
05:26 between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them
05:32 becomes that between employer and hired labor.
05:36 The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages.
05:42 They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts
05:47 and will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.
05:52 So I'm sure the enslaved people were just blown away by the very sight of that,
05:58 not only the enslaved people, but the white citizens probably were shocked
06:03 to see so many of these Black soldiers moving throughout town and moving throughout the state.
06:08 They understood the society around them and paid attention.
06:12 When Granger comes to Galveston to announce that slavery is over,
06:17 many African American people, many enslaved people already knew it.
06:20 They developed a network, a way of communicating, sending information across long distances.
06:26 The grapevine, essentially, that people were marked upon,
06:29 that Black people knew what was going on all the time,
06:32 even though they didn't have formal education and not everybody could read the newspapers.
06:37 The ones who did have knowledge shared it with other people.
06:40 The 2023 calendar is exactly the same as the 1865 calendar.
06:45 So this year we can go back and see what was happening that weekend,
06:49 the 16th, 17th, 18th, leading up to that Monday morning.
06:53 This was a time of hope for lots of people after what they had gone through.
06:58 What do you do with 4 million people who were emancipated,
07:01 who were going to come into the society? They have to be educated.
07:04 But immediately after June 19th, 1865, here in Galveston,
07:08 less than three months, they began setting up schools.
07:11 The first one on September 4th, 1865, at what is now called Avenue L. Baptist Church.
07:17 And then on September 6th at Reedy Chapel, they opened the second school.
07:22 So those two schools had roughly about 300 students and are recorded as the first two,
07:27 not publicly supported schools, but the first two schools opening in Texas in this area.
07:34 It was the first time that Black people in an organized way had an opportunity to achieve an education.
07:40 There's an early wave of migration that begins immediately after the war.
07:45 And they literally wanted to get away from the land owned by people who had owned their families.
07:52 So then the ability to move into Houston, into a community like Freedmen's Town,
07:58 offered this type of spatial freedom that staying in the country didn't offer.
08:05 I reside here in Freedmen's Town and this is a home that has been passed down through our family.
08:11 I'm like the fifth generation.
08:13 Are these original houses?
08:15 No, these are original. OK. And you had a variety of different families here.
08:21 The first time I walked along these bricks, I was very emotional.
08:27 This is where my people decided that they would survive.
08:31 About a thousand freed slaves moved to Freedmen's Town in the fourth ward.
08:35 And in 1872, four Black pastors purchased 10 acres of land in nearby third ward
08:41 as a place to celebrate the 19th of June every year and called it Emancipation Park.
08:49 That same year, the Gregory School opened, the first school for Blacks in Houston.
08:54 The idea wasn't just to have them in elementary schools.
08:57 That was important, that kind of education, but institutions of higher learning as well.
09:02 So, Prevey played an intricate role in it for Black Texans all across the first two decades of the 1900s.
09:08 During a time when it was illegal for African-Americans to learn, to read, to write,
09:14 to go to what we now call predominantly white institutions,
09:18 there were entities, you know, educating African-Americans.
09:21 And those entities became later known as our Historically Black Colleges and Universities, our HBCU institutions.
09:28 Our students stepped forward, understanding that, you know, things were not always fair.
09:33 Understanding the context in which they were being educated, you know.
09:37 We're here because of the color of our skin, we look a certain way.
09:41 And so they did not take that as a badge of discouragement.
09:44 They took it as a badge of courage.
09:46 [Music]
10:01 Homecoming is more than just a celebration of the university.
10:08 It's a celebration of our culture as a historically Black university.
10:12 [Music]
10:26 Founded in 1837 in Pennsylvania, Chaney University calls itself the first historically Black college and university.
10:34 But African-Americans were not able to get a degree there,
10:37 which is why Lincoln University, also in Pennsylvania, credits itself as the first HBCU to grant degrees.
10:45 Lincoln was founded in 1854.
10:48 Then in 1856, Wilberforce University in Ohio becomes the first Black-owned HBCU.
10:56 But remember, these states were in the North.
11:00 Two years after Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation,
11:04 Shaw University opens in North Carolina, becoming the first HBCU in the South.
11:10 Today, there are more than 100 HBCUs in the U.S. and Caribbean,
11:15 most of them in the Midwest, South, and East Coast.
11:19 Texas is home to nine historically Black colleges and universities,
11:24 and two of them are among the biggest HBCUs in the country.
11:29 [Music]
11:49 Prairie View, one of the state colleges of Texas, is designing courses to supply trained men and women
11:55 to the increasingly technical fields of industrial and military service.
12:00 I'm standing on land that was once the Alta Vista Plantation,
12:04 that is, until 1876, when it became the Alta Vista A&M College of Texas for Colored Youth,
12:11 now known as Prairie View A&M.
12:14 Here in the heart of Houston's Third Ward is Texas Southern University,
12:18 home of the TSU Tigers, founded in 1927 as Houston Colored Junior College.
12:25 George T. Ruby, along with Matthew Gaines, they were the only two African American state senators
12:31 in the state of Texas during Reconstruction at that first part,
12:35 and they pushed for the establishment of Texas A&M University and Prairie View A&M University.
12:40 So these public land-grant colleges are a direct result of the Black legislators
12:45 doing Reconstruction that made public education a priority,
12:49 because prior to that, public education was not supported as we see it today.
12:53 Prairie View A&M is a direct result of Juneteenth.
12:58 Those individuals who heard that message that day, they went forth with the zeal and the fervor
13:05 to realize what an education could do for emancipated Blacks.
13:10 Most of the first students were from the immediate area.
13:13 These were people who were free from local plantations.
13:16 In 1927, Houston Independent School District wanted to open up evening classes for its students.
13:24 And so at that year, that's when TSU, Texas Southern University, and the University of Houston were founded.
13:31 I want to say there were a few, maybe 50 students at the time,
13:35 just understanding what it meant to be a preacher or to understand what it meant to be in religious studies.
13:41 So few limited options back in 1927 for African-Americans, but there were options available.
13:46 We know that Jim Crow was burgeoning across the country, and Texas was not immune to that.
13:52 We tend to think of Jim Crow and segregation as a Southern phenomenon,
13:57 but this is something that starts up north before the Civil War,
14:01 and later, Southern state legislatures start to pass these segregation laws
14:08 after they've ousted Black Republicans and their white Republican allies out of office.
14:16 There are many, many examples of individuals who were hung or who were attacked because they did something.
14:24 It might have been a slight. It might have been failure to do something that they thought should have been done.
14:31 It might have been showing up in the wrong place, sitting in the wrong chair, going in the wrong door.
14:38 Segregation laws restricted every public space where Southerners could possibly make contact.
14:47 As a result of that, in terms of inferior education, people had tracks.
14:51 They were supposed to be trajectories in life that they were supposed to fit into.
14:55 In terms of the field of work in Texas, they wanted Black and brown people to go into it, manual labor,
15:02 and all of the white-collar jobs to go to Caucasian people.
15:05 All too often, when African Americans gained power, found success, or pushed back against the system,
15:12 they were met by violence and terrorism.
15:15 These would be private acts of torture and violence and murder.
15:19 Public hangings, steak burnings, at the hands of lynch mobs, heinous acts against mostly Black men as well as Hispanics.
15:27 And really, the thing you have to understand about this is men and women brought their children to see this.
15:34 This is how white supremacy was passed on to a generation of young people,
15:41 that this was the way you treated Black people who challenged white supremacy.
15:47 Lynchings from 1882 to 1942, the height of Jim Crow,
15:52 are documented in a database project by Sam Houston State University and Professor Jeff Littlejohn at lynchingintexas.org.
16:00 Here, they've collected information from old newspapers of the past, the NAACP, and a prominent HBCU.
16:08 Tuskegee said there were 458 lynchings in Texas.
16:12 We've documented almost 700, and certainly there were many more that are left undocumented.
16:18 The work continues, verifying and documenting what's happened here in Texas, as difficult as that history may be.
16:26 It's all there, on the database, a free public website and resource.
16:31 Make it something where if you were interested in a family member or your location,
16:37 that you could go online and find out about the lynchings in your community, your county,
16:43 that you would see documentation of those events,
16:46 and that you could begin to think about the implications that had for your community.
16:52 In the 1920s, a man was burned at the stake on Courthouse Square in Conroe, Texas.
16:59 In a courtroom, a Black man was shot.
17:01 And there were other instances that happened, incidents that took place, that sort of marked the place as a tough town.
17:09 The Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act was passed in 2022, making lynching a federal hate crime, punishable by up to 30 years in prison.
17:19 Texas Southern University students played a very important role in the civil rights movement in Houston.
17:25 About 13 of them, to be precise. On March 4, 1960, they marched two by two.
17:32 One, of course, had to have been walking alone because we had an odd number.
17:36 But they went to the lunch counters at the wine gardens on Almeda, and they sat, and they sat.
17:42 And so they initiated the civil rights movement in Houston, Texas.
17:47 When we give campus tours and we take students down Wheeler Avenue, which we now refer to on our campus as the Tiger Walk,
17:54 we talk about how that wasn't always a peaceful passage that it is today.
17:59 Cars drove by and not everybody had good intentions when they were driving through our campus.
18:04 It was the 1896 Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson that ushered in separate but equal doctrine as law.
18:12 But the issue with separate but equal, it didn't live up to its name.
18:17 The same resources and educational opportunities presented at white schools were not granted to black schools.
18:25 During the 50s and the 60s, there are a lot of court cases that are coming about during this time.
18:30 And so legislators and the powers that be within the state understand that there is going to be a reckoning that's going to come.
18:36 Ultimately, 1954, Brown v. Board of Education.
18:39 Before Brown, there was not a single state-sponsored school in any state in the U.S. South where a black person could get a doctoral degree,
18:47 where they could be trained as a medical doctor, where they could be trained as a lawyer.
18:51 That was state-supported, I mean.
18:53 That's only been 70 years ago. That's within my grandparents' lifetime.
18:58 That has created gross economic inequality and educational inequality, which we are going to have to do something about.
19:07 Just having programming and celebrating Juneteenth and Black History Month is not addressing the root at the core of inequality, which is economic inequity.
19:19 Houston's population in 1900, 45,000. Today, 1,400,000.
19:28 1964 Houston was just coming into its own.
19:32 A progressive metropolitan city with aerospace, arts, and architecture raising its profile and its skyline.
19:40 It's now the tallest building west of the Mississippi.
19:43 A desirable place to live, work, and play for both whites and blacks.
19:48 Still, this was the '60s, and for all Houston had going for it, it seriously lacked an equal education.
19:56 How are the schools here?
19:58 I might be stepping on someone's toes, but the schools are still backwards.
20:03 Houston was incredibly slow to integrate schools, despite Brown v. The Board of Education,
20:09 the 1954 Supreme Court case which found racial segregation of children in public schools unconstitutional.
20:17 Ten years later, in Houston, not much had happened.
20:21 Acutely aware of it and advocating for change was Hattie Mae White, a teacher who became the first African American elected to the HISD school board in 1958.
20:32 So you have a total of how many Negro children going to school with whites?
20:37 About 250 in ten previously all-white schools.
20:43 That's out of a total school population of what?
20:45 Of 211,000.
20:47 That wouldn't seem to indicate that integration has progressed very rapidly in the schools.
20:52 This is perhaps the greatest sore spot in the city of Houston.
20:56 Mrs. White spoke frankly.
20:58 Despite the racist backlash, she remained steadfast on the school board during this difficult time met with constant resistance.
21:06 There were multiple lawsuits and legal interventions to move integration along.
21:11 We will file suit in federal court on grounds of failure to integrate.
21:16 We charge that this dual system has been affected very little by the Supreme Court decision.
21:24 The Houston school board seems to put forth every effort they can to keep the status quo.
21:32 By 1968, the Department of Justice declared the district's desegregation efforts were lagging and unjust.
21:39 New efforts were made, new schools, new plans and more involvement from the federal government.
21:45 This is not the first time we have had differences of opinion with the Justice Department.
21:49 I doubt if it will be the last.
21:51 It took HISD decades to fully desegregate schools.
21:55 Hattie Mae White spent three terms on the HISD school board before losing a re-election and returning to teaching.
22:02 Today, her legacy lives on despite her passing in 1993.
22:07 Here in central northwest Houston is HISD headquarters, also known as the Hattie Mae White Educational Support Center,
22:15 named to honor the long-time advocate who strived for a truly equal education for everyone.
22:23 One of the country's leading authorities on blood plasma shows students how to determine the gravity of...
22:29 To get a better understanding of why HBCUs were so needed in the south, take a look at when predominantly white institutions,
22:37 also known as PWIs, began to admit black students.
22:41 The University of Houston began to "study the problems relative to integration" in 1956,
22:48 after the Supreme Court struck down "separate but equal."
22:51 A 1959 memo shows the Board of Regents recommending to reject integration.
22:58 One report states, "UH's president hopes to admit one or two Negroes if any extremely well-qualified persons should apply."
23:08 The memo states, "The president did not plan to admit more than a token number of students,
23:13 which he didn't expect to be a problem due to the high scholastic qualifications."
23:18 And even more important, the university's tuition is still six times that at Texas Southern University or other state-supported institutions.
23:27 Ultimately, in 1961, the first black graduate student is admitted.
23:33 Then, in 1963, the first black undergraduate students are admitted.
23:39 At Rice University, Raymond Johnson became the school's first black Ph.D. candidate in 1963,
23:45 but a group of alumni sued to block integration at the school, putting his admission on pause until 1964.
23:52 Decades later, Johnson became a math professor at Rice.
23:56 Seeing that 1963 lawsuit in the newspaper irritated then-teenager Jacqueline McCauley,
24:03 who was the first black national merit scholar in Texas.
24:06 She had her eyes set on Harvard and MIT, but then moved Rice to the top of her list to prove people wrong,
24:13 becoming the first black undergraduate woman at the school in 1965.
24:19 Since Baylor University was a private institution, it did not have to follow federal changes for integration.
24:26 Baylor would begin enrolling students in 1963, and their first black graduates would come in 1967.
24:33 According to Texas A&M University, in 1963, three black students quietly enrolled in a summer session as "special students,"
24:42 becoming the first to attend.
24:44 And the first black undergraduates would earn degrees in 1968.
24:48 The first black student who attended Sam Houston State was in 1964.
24:54 That was basically after John Kennedy, the previous year before he was assassinated,
25:00 wrote to the president of Sam Houston State and the president of Stephen F. Austin,
25:06 because they were both in the same system of schools.
25:09 Neither of those schools had desegregated and basically said, "Look, it's time. It's been 10 years since Brown."
25:17 But actual desegregation did not come until the summer of '64 with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
25:26 and the threat that federal funding would not go to institutions that were not desegregated.
25:32 A black man applied to go to the University of Texas at Austin in 1885, but was denied admission simply based on his race.
25:41 In 1950, the first African Americans were admitted to the law school and to graduate programs not offered at TSU and Prairie View,
25:50 but they were denied campus housing.
25:53 Six years later, UT admits the first black undergraduates.
25:57 John Hargis Hall is named after the first black student.
26:02 The groups of first black students at PWI's face momentous challenges at these universities,
26:07 and many of them became activists on campus, especially during the Civil Rights Movement,
26:11 like University of Houston's Lynn Usant, who was crowned the first African American homecoming queen at U of H
26:18 and co-founder of U of H's African American Studies program.
26:22 Society was changing and changing rapidly.
26:25 It was not gradual change in the '60s, and students who no longer wanted to be second or third stream
26:32 and wanted their own cultural identity recognized and respected.
26:36 We were 18, 19, 20-year-olds who were just out of high school who were confronting worldly problems.
26:44 Today, these universities all have growing black student bodies with a number of organizations to support them.
26:51 Growing up, you thought you would become a maid?
26:56 Well, every woman that I knew and was close to was a maid. That's what one did.
27:03 Ruth Simmons was the daughter of sharecroppers, the youngest of 12,
27:07 born in the East Texas town of Grapeland during the Jim Crow era.
27:12 Her parents taught her to be mindful, even careful, among whites.
27:17 You said you and your family pretended to be invisible. How?
27:22 To be outspoken, to be obvious, to be noticed always posed a bit of a danger
27:33 because often you didn't know what would offend.
27:36 At age 7, the family moved to Houston where she says school became her refuge
27:41 and teachers sparked her curiosity and thirst for knowledge.
27:46 First of all, education opened up to me the possibility that there was more to my life than what I could do with my hands.
27:53 I could develop my mind.
27:55 But she would also learn that educators would do more than just broaden her mind.
28:00 They would rescue her during the most difficult time of her youth.
28:04 When she was a 15-year-old student at Wheatley High School, her mother died.
28:08 When I went into my junior year, everybody in that school knew I had lost my mother.
28:15 The principal, all of my teachers, and you know what they did?
28:19 They gathered around and they tried to serve as surrogate parents.
28:25 They scolded me when I was being idiotic, and that was often by the way.
28:30 They made opportunities available for me.
28:33 They decided, they decided that I had to go to college.
28:37 They decided that I had to get a scholarship.
28:40 They decided where I should go to college.
28:43 She got that scholarship and in 1964 headed to New Orleans to attend Dillard University and HBCU.
28:50 It was the next chapter of an extraordinary journey for a woman who had attended segregated public schools with fewer resources,
28:59 except for the one resource that truly mattered.
29:04 We knew we didn't have the same books.
29:06 We knew we didn't have the same access to enrichment opportunities.
29:12 But we had something else that cannot be underestimated in an education system.
29:20 And that is we had people who cared about us.
29:23 After graduating from Dillard, Simmons went on to get two graduate degrees from Harvard,
29:28 then crisscrossed the country working at several universities.
29:33 Along the way, becoming president of Smith College in Massachusetts,
29:37 and became the first black president of an Ivy League school, Brown University in Rhode Island.
29:43 In 2017, she came out of retirement to become president of Prairie View A&M, leaving in 2023.
29:54 But slowing down is not in Ruth's DNA.
29:57 She is now a distinguished presidential fellow at Rice University and a special advisor to the president of Harvard.
30:05 Ruth Simmons, the little girl once told to be invisible, is an outspoken influencer in education and sought after speaker,
30:14 and just wrote her memoir, simply titled "Up Home, One Girl's Journey."
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30:59 Why an HBCU?
31:01 Because it's my people.
31:03 Like, why would I not be comfortable with anybody else except my people?
31:08 I knew right off the bat when I went to the State Fair Classic, my dad took me years ago, and I came there.
31:14 I just loved the energy, and I knew I would be here.
31:17 It's more like you get to know your family, because this is a big family.
31:21 And you just get to interact with everybody, make new friends, new family members.
31:25 I just love it. I love my HBCU.
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33:12 Today, we're a little shy of 9,000 students, and with all that's going on right now, we will definitely be at 9,000 in the very near future, or fall '23.
33:20 We've seen a 10% growth in enrollment over the past two years, and we're up 15% in applications for our first-time freshmen, even bigger number, 20% for our transfer students.
33:30 So, new freshmen, new transfers are really getting to see TSU in a new light, and we're so excited about that.
33:35 TSU remains one of the largest HBCUs in the nation, and even in the state.
33:40 We're certainly in the top 10 of our HBCU institutions.
33:43 We have a goal in the next eight years to be over 15,000 students.
33:47 Houston draws so many students from across the planet, across the country.
33:52 I think students get a chance to see that international culture added to this HBCU culture.
33:57 It's a win-win for TSU and for Houston.
33:59 Meanwhile, Prairie View A&M University holds a diverse student body of more than 9,000.
34:05 You'll be surprised if you go and you look across our campus.
34:08 We have one of the more diverse campuses in the state, in terms of Hispanic, Black, and even other outside of the United States of ethnic groups that are here now.
34:17 So, that's always been our hallmark in terms of being a haven and a place for enlightenment and education.
34:23 And today, the school remains true to its motto of producing productive people.
34:30 So, when we think about the impact that Prairie View had in emancipation, it's unmeasured.
34:36 And still to this day, you know, we're putting out teachers, we're putting out engineers, architects, leading in the top five, top ten all across the country.
34:45 The tradition of HBCUs that still continue today and actually now are sort of engaging in something of a renaissance.
34:52 African American students are beginning to go back to them.
34:55 I chose Prairie View because, first, I wanted to come to an HBCU.
34:59 And this is the closest to California, and that's where I'm from.
35:02 So, it's actually the closest state that has HBCUs to the West Coast.
35:06 Over the past few years, historically Black colleges and universities have seen a rise in enrollment.
35:12 In 2022, Texas Southern University in Houston welcomed one of its largest freshman classes in its history.
35:20 So large, the campus faced a dorm shortage.
35:23 As fast as we're growing and we're excited for the growth, we must quickly develop plans to serve a student body that is looking to not just go to TSU, but live at TSU.
35:36 The reason for the resurgence? Perhaps a number of things.
35:40 Such as NFL legend Deion Sanders coaching at an HBCU in recent years.
35:46 I mean, oftentimes HBCUs are underfunded and overlooked.
35:51 I can help with that. I can help with the relationships that I have, and I can help with the exposure that I have to bring the eyeballs and the necessary eyeballs and the pivotal eyeballs that we need.
36:03 And famous HBCU graduates, such as Vice President Kamala Harris and Houston rapper Megan Thee Stallion.
36:10 But more importantly, because these institutions provide a safety net for some Black students.
36:17 I think admissions are up in HBCUs because the country is going through a difficult time where we're seeing the resurgence of some of the behavior earlier in our history.
36:29 And there's this. HBCUs taking center stage Houston native Beyonce paying homage to historically Black colleges in her 2018 Coachella performance.
36:42 We just expect that just a little concert, things like that. But when it came with the band, it just made it way, you know, it just brought the whole situation.
36:49 We're such a national treasure in terms of expressing American culture.
36:54 An integral part of it in terms of the music, in terms of performing arts. A lot of these things got their start at HBCUs.
37:04 [band playing]
37:12 Homecoming is more than just a celebration of the university. It's a celebration of our culture as a historically Black university.
37:20 [crowd chanting]
37:27 Homecoming is a great tradition. You think about homecoming across the spectrum.
37:31 That's an opportunity where people come back from whence they came.
37:35 Every year at the football game, you come back to see familiar faces, those who groom you, those who mentor you.
37:43 Coming back to the place that made you the great man or woman that you are, that people poured so much into you, contributed so much to you.
37:53 That's what homecoming is all about.
37:55 The number of people who descend on the campus, it's unbelievable.
38:01 It's the family. It's that special feeling once you hit the hill, alright, and say, "I'm home."
38:07 The best part about homecoming is the band, to me.
38:10 [band playing]
38:17 So when we see this, we see the best that we are as Americans at these homecoming events,
38:23 and how we pull together and how the culture is displayed through the band performing, through the majorettes dancing,
38:30 through people sharing songs of old that they learned chanting.
38:35 [band playing]
38:40 The best part, I would say, is just coming to the game, showing our school spirit, and having a great time.
38:46 [crowd cheering]
38:55 The best part is seeing all the alumni come back and give back to the university,
38:58 and want to come back and show love to the students, so that's the best part of this week.
39:02 For me, as a fifth-generation Prairie View graduate, my great-great-grandfather graduated from Prairie View in 1890,
39:10 homecoming is a family affair for me.
39:13 It's a legacy instilled in my bloodline for generations.
39:18 This illustrious university is so important to our culture, and I love being here.
39:23 I don't miss homecoming, ever.
39:26 It's just like one big party, but like a safe one.
39:30 [crowd cheering]
39:32 None of us is so far advanced that we don't recognize how thrilling it is
39:40 to be associated with a university and graduated from a university.
39:45 And so, every homecoming, you get to celebrate that.
39:49 You're celebrating the fact that you have done something.
39:53 [drums]
39:54 Decades of black excellence are personified in brains, beauty, and melanin.
39:59 Miss Prairie View 1994, Donna Wendt.
40:03 Miss Prairie View A&M University 2002, Nella Moupir.
40:08 Miss Prairie View A&M University 2008, Cara Iguatu.
40:14 Miss Prairie View A&M University 1974, Jackie Washington.
40:21 These are the once-grounding queens of the campus.
40:24 The Prairie View A&M University Misses.
40:27 It's a sisterhood that is beyond us.
40:30 [crowd cheering]
40:32 PWIs have a homecoming queen.
40:34 HBCUs elect a Miss to represent the campus and the culture.
40:39 Coronation appropriately happens around homecoming.
40:43 It is the greatest honor a woman can receive at Prairie View A&M University.
40:47 I love to make sure that the Prairie View image of a woman is of grace, poise, and intellect,
40:53 and it's my honor to do so.
40:55 We had to go through an interview process, talent, swimsuit, evening gown.
41:02 There's a panel of judges that makes that determination.
41:06 But what has changed with that is that now there is a student vote piece incorporated.
41:14 Students can now vote who they want to represent the university.
41:18 Other things have remained the same for the Misses, like their return to campus for homecoming,
41:23 the accolades earned, and the success they find following their reign.
41:27 It's accomplished women from all industries and backgrounds.
41:30 We have Miss Prairie Views who are engineers, they are architects, a lot of military.
41:36 We have some decorated Miss Prairie Views as well.
41:39 Also, we have one Miss Prairie View that was a Secret Service agent.
41:43 There's plenty of pride to go around in this well-established sisterhood,
41:48 a 90-year-old tradition, and title of distinction, fit for a queen.
41:54 [chanting]
42:03 As more African Americans entered college, they began to create their own fraternities and sororities.
42:10 You may know about stepping.
42:12 [music]
42:18 These youth make art form with ties to West African traditions that Black Greek letter organizations created in the late 1900s.
42:27 But these organizations do a lot more than just step.
42:30 They were all founded with missions dedicated to scholarship and service.
42:35 The first was a fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha, founded in 1906 at Cornell University.
42:42 Then in 1908, the first Black sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha, founded at Howard University.
42:49 More organizations would come, Kappa Alpha Psi, Omega Psi Phi, Delta Sigma Theta, Phi Beta Sigma,
42:57 Seta Phi Beta, Sigma Gamma Rho, and Iota Phi Theta.
43:02 They're not just clubs. They're not just here for the four years.
43:05 These are national organizations that have lifelong membership.
43:09 There are now thousands of chapters worldwide making up the National Panhellenic Council, also known as the Divine Nine.
43:18 One of the founding members of Delta Sigma Theta was born right here on the island.
43:22 Jessie McGuire Dent was one of 22 women who founded Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.,
43:28 on the campus of Howard University on January 13, 1913.
43:33 She graduated from Central High School, valedictorian, and then went on to Howard University.
43:38 The organization was founded on sisterhood, scholarship, and service,
43:42 even participating in the Women's Suffrage Parade back in 1913.
43:46 They forced the black women to march at the end of the parade.
43:50 So even within the fight for equality to vote, there was segregation between the women.
43:57 But that didn't deter her.
43:59 After graduating from Howard, Dent returned to Galveston,
44:02 where she had a successful career as a teacher at Central High, the very school she attended.
44:07 Thirty years later, in 1943, she sued the Galveston Independent School District for equal pay for black teachers
44:14 because they were getting 20 percent less than white teachers, and she won.
44:18 Jessie McGuire Dent died on March 12, 1948,
44:22 a woman who spent her life fighting for the equality of all people.
44:28 Praise, every praise.
44:32 Juneteenth was Juneteenth way before the country acknowledged that it was Juneteenth.
44:38 Of course, Juneteenth became more popular in 2020,
44:41 but it was always important to the former enslaved and their descendants.
44:45 It's always been important here in Texas.
44:48 And when I was a child, people were talking about that day to celebrate.
44:54 The oral history of Juneteenth has been passed down for generations and decades
44:59 prior to it becoming a state holiday in 1979 and a national holiday in 2021.
45:05 Sometimes people in those earliest days, people were punished for celebrating.
45:10 The very first celebration happened here, July 1st, 1865.
45:15 The mayor of Galveston got upset and arrested the promoter.
45:19 But the mayor was not really in charge of the city any longer.
45:22 The Union Army was.
45:24 The officer then who had given permission for the event,
45:29 arrested the mayor, put the mayor in jail, let the black promoter out.
45:33 And on July 15th, they had another reception where they honored the troops.
45:38 The celebrations involved food.
45:41 Obviously, you were supposed to have a red drink.
45:45 When we were kids, it was usually red soda water.
45:47 But I gather that at the time it was red hibiscus tea, which was on the menu.
45:52 They gathered at churches, parks and so forth.
45:55 There in Houston, Emancipation Park was started by a group of men who
45:59 pooled their resources in the 1870s and had this land that was supposed to be
46:04 strictly for the purposes of celebrating Juneteenth.
46:07 Now it's becoming more commercialized.
46:09 So you see Juneteenth napkins and Juneteenth banners and signs and T-shirts.
46:15 And so that's a part of it.
46:17 But while we are celebrating and partying, we have to, as David O'Neill says,
46:23 party with a purpose.
46:25 And we need to make sure that education is a part of this conversation.
46:29 [drumming]
46:34 Parades are one of the main ways Juneteenth has been recognized
46:38 over the decades across the state of Texas.
46:40 Today in Galveston, there are a number of events,
46:43 both historical and new to the island.
46:46 From historical markers on almost every corner to the absolute equality mural
46:50 on the Strand.
46:52 There's also the annual Juneteenth banquet and Juneteenth gala,
46:56 as well as the annual Juneteenth scholarship gala where Miss Juneteenth is crowned,
47:00 gospel and jazz concerts, spoken word and panel discussions.
47:05 The holiday also consists of exhibits, festivals, reenactments and guided tours.
47:10 You can also check out impactful artwork at the Nia Cultural Center,
47:14 which hosts Freedom School every summer for students.
47:17 And new this year, for a limited time only, the powerful Blank Slate Monument.
47:23 The Blank Slate Monument was done by international artists and Ghanaian artists
47:29 from Maricota, Banffa.
47:31 In 2021, it made its debut in the United States.
47:35 It's been to 19 other locations before coming here to Galveston.
47:40 The Blank Slate Monument was created to challenge the narrative of Confederate monuments.
47:46 The artist says it's a visual representation of the black experience and struggle in America.
47:53 Here's how it's explained.
47:55 You see people lifting each other up, starting with an enslaved person's face pressed into the ground.
48:01 He has no rights, yet struggles to support future generations.
48:06 Above him, a black Union soldier with a noose around his neck.
48:10 He's trying to keep an American flag up, even as he supports an activist mother who has a child on her back.
48:17 That mother is holding a lantern as she fights for her baby's future.
48:22 This is the Blank Slate Monument, a traveling art piece where the voice of the ordinary person
48:28 can share their views on issues concerning black history.
48:32 The experience of being African American.
48:34 It's the journey to the freedom of African Americans here in the South.
48:39 It feels good to know that they fought for it.
48:42 We have an obligation to never be silenced.
48:46 Protect our kids, they are the future.
48:48 It's sad, but also it makes me feel good that I am where I am now and be able to do the things I do.
48:55 The Blank Slate Monument will be in Galveston through July 5th.
49:00 There are so many firsts in black history and education that happen right here on Galveston Island
49:06 and recognized with this historical marker.
49:09 It mentions the first public high school for blacks west of the Mississippi River.
49:14 Yes, Central High School was established in 1885, 20 years after Juneteenth.
49:20 And here on the school's third campus is the old colored branch of the Rosenberg Library.
49:26 And in 1905, it's believed to be the first public library for African Americans in the southern United States.
49:34 While getting an education was one struggle,
49:37 learning about African American history was and continues to be another.
49:43 I wasn't really taught much about it growing up.
49:46 I didn't think Galveston would have this type of history.
49:49 I thought it was maybe somewhere in Louisiana.
49:52 I really learned about Juneteenth when I started going to freedom schools.
49:56 I started learning about Juneteenth in freedom school.
49:58 In Galveston, we really don't get the opportunity to learn more about our culture as a whole, especially in school.
50:06 But Miss Rooks, she's adamant about us learning about Juneteenth.
50:11 One thing about history, if you aren't aware of your history in the past,
50:16 to learn from it, to grow from it, then in many aspects, you're doomed to repeat it.
50:22 I think it's important that we understand our history.
50:25 No matter which side of things that you're on, you need to be educated.
50:29 Being quiet about it all is not healthy for our society.
50:34 In 2021, Texas passed a controversial law which gives specific instruction
50:39 on how Texas teachers can talk about current events and America's history of racism in the classroom.
50:46 Texas is one of several states that passed legislation aimed to ban the teaching of critical race theory in public schools.
50:54 Critical race theory is defined as ideas holding that racial bias is inherent in many parts of Western society,
51:02 especially in its legal and social institutions.
51:06 In recent years, there's been a push on banning certain books in schools and libraries across the country.
51:12 In fact, one nonprofit, Pen America, found Texas school districts banned the most books of any state
51:19 between July and December of 2022 with 438 book bans.
51:25 Florida came in second with 357 bans.
51:28 The nonprofit found 30% of the titles banned were books about race, racism or featured characters of color.
51:36 In February of 2023, Texas Governor Greg Abbott told state agencies to stop considering diversity in hiring.
51:44 And in May of 2023, the Texas legislature passed a law banning diversity, equity and inclusion offices at public universities.
51:54 There's simply no way to tell the history of Texas without diversity and inclusion
51:59 because Texas has been a diverse place from the very, very beginning.
52:04 This movement is part and parcel of this regression to the world that I experienced as a child.
52:13 Of course, one couldn't, when I was a child, you dared not talk about race.
52:18 You have to face that.
52:20 It wasn't all great.
52:22 You know, it was racism was a part of it, not just against African-American people, but native peoples.
52:29 There was oppression of women.
52:31 Women were treated as in a second class status, as a second class status.
52:35 And the story we should be telling, I think, is about how we have tried to overcome that.
52:40 So let's say that in the educational realm, we decide that there are certain things that we don't like
52:48 and we're just not going to talk about them and we're not going to study them at all.
52:51 Can you imagine what would happen to the future of advancement of any field if you reach that conclusion?
53:01 These young people, they don't know what to do.
53:04 They're very discouraged to think that they are going to live a life with people hating them
53:10 for reasons that they don't understand.
53:12 So I'm trying to give a message to them that we've been there before.
53:17 And just as we have in all times, we will overcome that and you will be a part,
53:23 overturning that just as others have before you.
53:26 We, as the generation that's coming up, and we as the generation, looking towards the generation
53:31 that's coming behind us, have an obligation to them to make sure that they know their history,
53:34 to make sure that they know their culture, to make sure that they don't let it die,
53:38 like everyone has in the past before us.
53:41 When I think of Juneteenth, the first word that rings through is freedom.
53:45 Slavery takes hope.
53:49 It's always a story about what they don't have instead of the kinds of talents that they actually did have.
53:56 You think about how they persevered and you think, we're in tough times now,
54:02 but if they could survive, if they had the ingenuity and the will and the creativity to survive, we do too.
54:10 Juneteenth, this is what we are. We overcome. Push us down again, we'll overcome again.
54:17 Juneteenth, it's not just black history, it is American history,
54:23 and it is the first step in the ongoing fight for equality in education.
54:28 And now it's up to all of us to continue learning and sharing the Juneteenth message of freedom.
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