Black Colleges Become Sanctuaries After Ferguson

In the midst of a terse na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion about po­lice vi­ol­ence against Black Amer­ic­ans came news that More­house Col­lege, my alma ma­ter and the na­tion’s only all-male his­tor­ic­ally Black col­lege, wel­comed one of its largest fresh­man classes.

More­house is not alone in see­ing a surge in ad­mis­sions in the past year. EDU Inc., which ad­min­is­ters Com­mon Black Col­lege, an on­line tool used to ap­ply to 42 of the more than 100 his­tor­ic­ally Black col­leges and uni­versit­ies with a single form, pro­cessed 10 per­cent more ap­plic­a­tions for the 2015-2016 school year than last year. Pres­id­ent Robert Ma­son says that after a year of news of po­lice killings of young Black Amer­ic­ans, Black stu­dents—Black males in par­tic­u­lar—are look­ing for safe spaces.

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