The Leaders Who Built HBCUs Knew Talent When They Saw It. DO WE? BY DR. PHYLLIS WORTHY DAWKINS, LALOHNI (LA) CAMPBELL & DR. JULIETTE B. BELL The pipeline is not the problem. The door is. Seventy years after Willa Beatrice Player became the first African American woman to lead a fully accredited, four-year liberal arts college in the United States (Bennett College), the HBCUs that thrive next will be those that develop legacy leaders who change the world.
navigated academic governance, fundraising, enrollment pressures, board politics, student crises, and the delicate, unceasing work of protecting institutional culture. They have carried the weight of leadership — often without the title, the compensation, or the visibility that should have come with it. They are not waiting in the wings. They are already doing the work. Perhaps also willing to do more. That is why the future of HBCUs is not simply a question of who will lead next. It is a question of whether we have the courage, discipline, and imagination to recognize the leaders already among us. The most consequential act a leader can take is to recognize leadership in someone else. That was true of the men who built HBCUs against impossible odds. It must be true of those who steward them now. THE NUMBERS TELL THE STORY Start with the enrollment figures. Women make up roughly 70 percent of HBCU students (Gasman et al). They are the majority constituency of these
institutions — the demographic whose tuition dollars, degree attainment, and alumni engagement will define what the next generation of HBCUs looks and feels like. Now consider the leadership numbers. Of the nation's 102 HBCU presidents, 29 are women (CASE, 2019). A decade ago, the figure was closer to 10. That trajectory is real and worth recognizing. But the arithmetic also reveals the distance that remains. That gap does not reflect malice. It reflects momentum — the tendency of institutions to reproduce the patterns they inherited. The question is whether HBCU leadership has the self-awareness and the will to interrupt that momentum before it becomes a liability. When the majority of HBCU students are women — when so much of the institutional labor is carried by women in classrooms, cabinets, advancement offices, student affairs divisions, and alumni networks — the gap between who builds these institutions and who leads them becomes not just a question of fairness but a question of institutional coherence.
Here is something worth sitting with: At this very moment, there are women inside historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUS) who are fully prepared to lead them.
They have the credentials. They have the relationships. They have
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