Units February 17, 2024
HBCUs Matter (Montclair State University)
State:
Grades:
This unit was created by the HBCUs Matter team as part of the 2023 cohort of The 1619 Project Education Network. It is designed for facilitation across three asynchronous lessons as part of a multi-week graduate level course.
Course Objectives
Students will be able to:
Students will…
- Develop an understanding of key themes and patterns in histories of HBCUs and HBCU leadership.
- Consider how local histories of HBCUs and higher education leadership have been represented in public history.
- Develop techniques, practices, and skills to think and write leadership statements grounded in personal and professional racial consciousness.
- Utilize creative writing, visits to museums, and visits with historical sites related to slavery in New Jersey as tools for self-representation and empowerment.
Unit Overview
The central themes explored in these lessons concern public history and slavery. Specifically we will explore:
1. Transformation, Social Justice, and Equity
2. Building Relationships in Leadership
3. Strength-based Approaches to Leadership
In her introductory essay, Nikole Hannah-Jones explores the promise of America and the way that promise was compromised by the institutionalized bondage of Black Americans. In these lessons, students will examine and reflect on the context of United States before, during, and after the establishment of various higher education institutions in order to identify the ways in which the institution of slavery and the dehumanization of Black Americans shaped the approaches and support for various types of institutions of higher education, and who those institutions served. A key component to these lesson plans will be connecting with Virginia Union University administrators, and journalists familiar with Mary Lumpkin and her connection to Virginia Union. This will allow students to make direct connections to the past by speaking with administrators about how they incorporate the transformative leadership of Mary Lumpkin into their practices as an HBCU (historically Black college or university). Through the study of primary source documents, as well as the experiential learning in the VUU community, students will be asked to reimagine how stories about slavery and higher education are told.
Performance Task:
There will be three main lessons connected to The 1619 Project. Each lesson will culminate in short essay responses designed by participants to share with members of our community. We will draw from various essays and creative pieces made available through The 1619 Project, including Reginald Dwayne Betts’ “The Slavery Act 1793” Nikole Hannah-Jones’ introductory essay, “The Idea of America.”
We will draw lessons about leadership and the role of education in the lives of enslaved people. We will engage in a case study about the founding of Virginia Union University, once a prison that held fugitive enslaved people, and how it was transformed by a Black woman named Mary Lumpkin. After learning about how higher education has engaged with the history of slavery, and learning about the transformative leadership of Mary Lumpkin, students will begin to write brief accounts of racialized transformative leadership in higher education. Students will be asked to focus on the following two questions:
- How do we write about leadership that centers the lives of enslaved and formerly enslaved persons?
- How do we incorporate these histories in our learning of leadership in higher education?
Over the course of several weeks, students will learn more about Mary Lumpkin and her role in founding Virginia Union University. Students will analyze texts from The 1619 Project, which provides context to the Mary Lumpkin case. They will then think through how this work can contribute to leadership theory today. The unit will conclude with students sharing their writings and theories of leadership.
Assessment/Evaluation:
Rubrics will guide assessment, encompassing students' grasp of historical contexts, critical thinking, application of The 1619 Project insights, innovative project execution, and their ability to convey leadership aspects of Virginia Union University. [.pdf][.docx]
Three lessons implemented asynchronously as part of a multi-week graduate level course o that include pacing, texts, teaching materials, and multimedia resources. Download below, or scroll down to review key resources included in the unit plan.
Unit Resources
Students will…
- Understand the political nature of historical narratives, and more specifically, local public history
- Develop innovative ways to connect classroom learning at an HBCU to the broader Montclair State/HIED community
- Interrogate higher education leadership and its historical relationship to slavery
The following examples capture student engagement with this unit in fall 2023 at Montclair State University:
- Students start the unit by reading "The Idea of America" Nikole Hannah-Jones" from The 1619 Project in The New York Times Magazine and reviewing an interview with Craig Steven Wilder, author of Ebony and Ivory: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America's Universities. Students then respond to the following prompt on a course discussion board:
In 500 words or less, discuss how elite college ties to slavery are connected to power, privilege, and inequity in the past and today?
When reading “The Idea of America” by Nikole Hannah-Jones, you get the sense that the higher education system would not be where it is if not for slavery. Hannah-Jones states “The United States is a nation founded on both an ideal and a lie. Our Declaration of Independence signed on July 4, 1776 proclaims that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights” (p. 16). Although Black people were not allowed to be educated in any form, the colleges and universities that were built in as early as the 1600s made sure to have an enslaved person on campus to care for the campus. Presidents of universities such as Harvard, Princeton, William & Mary continued to have ties to the northern slave trade with West Indies in order to continue to run their plantations.
AT, a student from Montclair State University who engaged with this unit in fall 2023 reflects on connections between their coursework and the essay, "The Idea of America" by Nikole Hannah-Jones
By slowing down to reflect on one’s positionality and considering how a decision may affect students (and specifically minoritized students), we combat automatic decision making. The automatic decisions that administrators make are the result of a long history of slavery and injustice in higher education, and on a broader scale, American society (Democracy Now!, 2013; Hannah-Jones, 2019).
JH, a student from Montclair State University who engaged with this unit in fall 2023 reflects on connections between their coursework and the essay, "The Idea of America" by Nikole Hannah-Jones
Hannah-Jones (2019) describes how leaders applied the concepts of liberty and equality in different ways throughout American history, including when it came to Black Americans. At one point, these leaders attempted to protect the institution of slavery and enshrined this belief as a part of the official Declaration of Independence. As a result, the societal systems in law, science, and literature contributed to "the racial caste system" (Hannah-Jones, 2019, p. 19). This is an example of how leaders use their power to maintain their privilege, and as a result, inequity could be generated. …In higher education, leadership is crucial. The history of higher education shows how education and the economy used slavery to secure their fortunes. Although leaders in the past made decisions to protect their values, their actions left a legacy of inequality that still affects us today.
SJ, a student from Montclair State University who engaged with this unit in fall 2023 reflects on connections between their coursework and the essay, "The Idea of America" by Nikole Hannah-Jones