Camille Riley6035 Hamilton DriveRiverside, Ca 92506(951)536-4133As long as African Americans have lived in America, we have been a part of our country’s history. From slavery to the civil rights movement to the fight for equality and justice, we have made history in America. I am very much aware of the struggles that African Americans have endured in making education a priority rather than a luxury of very few. From the young African American boy that went around to African American quarters in the few years after slavery to teach families how to read and spell to Booker T. Washington, education was a necessity for the advancement of future African Americans. As history tells it, many African Americans in many states were not afforded the opportunity to achieve an education due to money costs, slaveholders that prohibited African Americans from learning, uneducated teachers and little to no resources for learning. Great people like Booker T. Washington, pushed themselves to pursue an education and came back to make opportunities for others, by building and starting their own schools for the purpose of providing African Americans a place with the resources to learn to better their lives. Had it not been for these schools that we now call Historically Black Colleges and Universities, we might still be enslaved to being uneducated. As more Historically Black Colleges and Universities rose up, more African Americans attended and new inventions were made, new surgeries were performed, more athletes competed in sports, and more African Americans became lawyers, doctors, and held positions in important parts of business. That is the history that was made and left an impact in American history because of what HBCU’s opened the door to. Though, now African Americans are being accepted anywhere in any school, given they qualify to get in, I feel that HBCU’s are still very much relevant. Many teens today have forgotten their history; they may be uneducated in our African American history or more concerned with learning just one side of our American history. HBCU’s make it relevant that our history is and never will be forgotten, they instill in us the pride and heartfelt struggles that our ancestors endured for us to be able to do the things that we are able to do. The lesson we can learn from HBCU’s is one simple thing that conveys so much: We’ve made history and we’re making history today and for all of tomorrow.
