Under an administration that has recently cut federal funding for HBCUs, Ashley Christopher’s HBCU Week Foundation is doing vital work.
Founded in 2017, the HBCU Week Foundation was created to promote HBCU enrollment to high school students. Students are provided with a homecoming experience with exciting events like educational panels, musical performances, and an annual college fair.
We made our way to Wilmington, Delaware, to partake in the festivities – starting with the HBCU Week concert series that featured headlining performances from K. Michelle and Juvenile.
The vibes continued the following evening at the VIP reception, where Christopher presented the organization’s first-ever Arts and Entertainment scholarship in partnership with Femme It Forward founder Heather Lowry. The scholarship will support an incoming or current HBCU student pursuing a degree in the arts and entertainment industries.
“I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I had such a love for advocacy and law, but also the entertainment industry,” the lawyer and organization founder said. “I couldn’t figure out how I could make that a job and that’s how I built HBCU Week, to marry the two things. But oftentimes the arts get overlooked when it comes to scholarship dollars and support to get through your four-year institutions.”
To shed light on the power of HBCU excellence in entertainment, Christopher invited celebrity guests like Gail Bean, HBCU alumni Lance Gross and Stephen A. Smith, and current HBCU student Laila Pruitt.
Pruitt, a current senior at Howard University and star of BMF, shared how her HBCU shaped her growth as a woman in adulthood.
“There’s a big, big fashion community at my school. To be able to step foot onto a campus that you just see a whole bunch of Black fashion, and it’s one of the places where our culture’s fashion is birthed from — it’s really amazing to see. It sort of helped me get into my style, a little bit into my feminine side.”
The 21-year-old also had words of encouragement for young creatives looking to pursue their passions while in school. “I’m not gonna lie and say that it’s not difficult at times [and] that you won’t have to plan weeks in advance for certain things. You’ll have to be extremely communicative with whoever’s behind you and in your corner. But, it’s absolutely possible, and it’s something that you can do if you lean into it and believe in yourself.”
Fellow Howard Bison and father of 2, Lance Gross, discussed how his time at an HBCU shaped him as a father and husband.
“It just strengthened everything that I knew. I came from a household with both parents in the house, and I came from a household of love. I constantly saw my dad loving on my mom, and my mom loving on my dad, and us loving on each other as a family,” he told BOSSIP. “So going to Howard, that was kind of strengthened, because I saw it in the relationships that I had at Howard [and] the relationships that I had with my professors being like aunties and uncles and pushing me to be great.”
ESPN sports analyst and Winston-Salem State University graduate, Stephen A.Smith, offered similar sentiments about the familial nature of HBCUs.
“I’ll never give more credit to an HBCU than I give to my mother, God rest her soul, because it starts with her. What she’s instilled in me, HBCUs helped reinforce,” he said. “To this day, there’s a particular professor named Marilyn Roseboro who used to work at Winston-Salem State as a professor. She retired years ago. To this day, everybody knows to get to me, you have to go through her, because that’s how much she meant to me.”
Snowfall and P-Valley actress Gail Bean, a proud supporter of HBCUs and member of Delta Sigma Theta, Inc., shared the importance of HBCUs and events like HBCU Week.
“We have to create safe spaces [like] HBCUs,” she said. “These events are important so we can network and share resources [while] also making sure that we’re sharing knowledge when it comes to educating the youth, keeping our youth safe, and protecting their minds.”
Education was certainly at the top of mind the following day when thousands of high school students bused in for the 9th annual HBCU Week college fair. At the fair, students met with HBCUs from across the country and even received college acceptances on the spot.
It wouldn’t be an HBCU homecoming-esque experience without good music, so MC Blake Saunders and DJ Blair were in the building to keep the energy up while playing all the hits like “Swag Surf” (of course), to which the students energetically engaged in the classic dance, continuing the HBCU tradition.
Is it even an HBCU experience without strolling? This year, HBCU Week hosted its first-ever stroll-off competition that offered the winning sorority and fraternity $2500 each. After competing in a multi-round competition, stacked with routines that combined new and old school music, the Epsilon Alpha chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority and Psi Epsilon Chapter of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity took home the grand prize.
BOSSIP was glad to be in the building for such a celebration of HBCU excellence and power. Even as HBCUs face threats to their existence, HBCU Week continues to showcase its advocacy not only for these historic institutions but for the youth they serve.
