Article: We went to Howard—not Harvard

[LiberalArkie]

I graduated from Fordham University in NYC in 1991, close to 30 years behind schedule, (I graduated from high school in 1964) but when discussing my earlier college attendance in the ‘60s with a white friend, I mentioned having gone to Howard. “Harvard?” my friend queried. “No Howard,” I replied. I got a blank look. I have to admit I was taken aback, because in my black world there is no one who doesn’t know Howard University. Described as a Historically Black College and University (HBCU), for many black Americans Howard has been our “Harvard.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates writes about Howard, where he went to school for 5 years, and where his dad had worked as a librarian, in his National Book Award-winning Between the World and Me:

"I was admitted to Howard University, but formed and shaped by The Mecca. These institutions are related but not the same. Howard University is an institution of higher education, concerned with the LSAT, magna cum laude, and Phi Beta Kappa. The Mecca is a machine, crafted to capture and concentrate the dark energy of all African peoples and inject it directly into the student body. The Mecca derives its power from the heritage of Howard University, which in Jim Crow days enjoyed a near-monopoly on black talent. And whereas most other historically black schools were scattered like forts in the great wilderness of the old Confederacy, Howard was in Washington D.C. -- Chocolate City -- and thus in proximity to both federal power and black power. The result was an alumni and professorate that spanned genre and generation -- Charles Drew, Amiri Baraka, Thurgood Marshall, Ossie Davis, Doug Wilder, David Dinkins, Lucille Clifton, Toni Morrison, Kwame Touré. The history, the location, the alumni combined to create The Mecca -- the crossroads of the black diaspora."

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http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/11/29/1453769/-We-went-to-Howard-not-Harvard