Bomb threats at HBCUs are an attack on learning while Black

Learning while Black. That’s what those behind Tuesday's national epidemic of bomb threats against at least 16 historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) would like to stop.

Threats went to Jackson State University in Mississippi, Spelman College in Georgia, Kentucky State University, Howard University and the University of the District of Columbia, among others. Schools from Maryland to Missouri were targets.

HBCUs educate about 300,000 students annually. They become our country’s doctors, scientists, journalists, engineers, lawyers, doctors and news anchors.

And therefore they seem to frighten the supremacist, domestic terrorist movement.

Start of Black History Month

One of us (Armistead) studies law and political science at Howard University. Text warnings from the school of the threats have been arriving back to back.

Midnight buzzing from the texts has disrupted students’ sleep.

That these threats came at the start of Black History Month is infuriating, but it reminded students why we go to HBCUs. They are popular because they avoid the many ways in which Black students are still discriminated against in education.

Our universities are more than schools, they are havens. Black students learn in every subject area, including the truth about America’s history through a lens whose focus is wide enough to include white supremacy in our nation. To have vibrant education interrupted amid the very same threats exemplifies the Black experience in America.

Terrorism against HBCUs backfires

Ironically, the terrorism has backfired. Our schools have recommitted themselves to young people whose education and lives matter. Students have reaffirmed their dedication to moving forward as leaders.

By report, the FBI has already identified six juveniles as “persons of interest.” The FBI needs to ensure it has true culprits in custody before something even more serious than bomb threats occurs.

Eight HBCUs were threatened on Jan. 4 and six on Monday.

Hence, it’s late to nip this trend in the bud. But it’s not too late to cleave the poisonous plant before it sends out seeds on the winds of nonaccountability. We have seen that the need for attention can drive militant racists and copycats to increasing levels of extremism.

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The roots of racist violence run deep. We remember the September 15, 1963, bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham by the Ku Klux Klan. That explosion killed four girls, aged 11 to 14, attending Sunday school.

In the arc of justice, that monstrous event, too, backfired. Outrage over the four girls' murder would help lead to the passage of both the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

But long after, supremacists continued to firebomb churches that served as centers of black life – 25 in 1995 and 1996 alone per a congressional report.

In 2015, admitted white supremacist Dylann Roof entered a Bible study group at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, and senselessly shot nine innocent people, including the Rev. Clementa Pinckney.

Threats latest in long line of trauma

Domestic terrorism has exploded in recent years. 

Former President Donald Trump exacerbated tensions. 

“There were very fine people on both sides,” he pronounced from the White House podium after the 2017 Charlottesville “Unite the Right” march at which brown shirts carried torches around Robert E. Lee’s statue, chanting, “Jews will not replace us.” White supremacist James Alex Fields rammed his car into a crowd and killed Heather Heyer, a peaceful counterdemonstrator.

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A year earlier, Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, while running for the Senate at the same time Trump was running for president, had spoken the quiet part out loud when he acknowledged that “of course” both his and Trump’s voters were the same.

At a September 2020 debate with now-President Joe Biden, Trump, when asked whether he would condemn the extremist Proud Boys, famously told them to “stand back and stand by.” The Justice Department has indicted four of its alleged militant members for conspiracy in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

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Prosecution matters, just as approval from the top did in the Trump presidency.

In 2020, hate crime reports surged, with the highest number for attacks on Black people.

This week’s bomb threats are the latest trauma in a long history. Now, however, the threats are directed at intelligent, motivated students learning while Black. Or better phrased, students rising while Black to meet America’s promise. And so we shall.

Angelyn Armistead is an undergraduate at Howard University and president of the school’s top-ranked mock trial team. Dennis Aftergut is a former federal prosecutor in San Francisco, currently of counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy.