FROM HAMPTON UNIVERSITY TO BRIGADIER GENERAL BY KEITH HARRISON
When Janeen Birckhead was still in high school on Maryland’s Eastern Shore and thinking about college, her mother issued a challenge: apply for a Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) scholarship. “There was never a question whether I was going to college. The question was how to pay for it. I thought to myself, yeah, mommy, the military. That’s not a great idea,” Birckhead said in a recent interview with HBCU Times. “But she knew I liked challenges.” The then-high-achieving student at Worcester County’s Snow Hill High School, where she was an athletic majorette and cheerleader and volunteered for organizations like the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion, applied. And, she won a four-year scholarship that she could use at any university where it was accepted and that had an ROTC program.
military service. She is now Brig. Gen. Janeen Birckhead, among the highest-ranking black women in the National Guard. She leads the Maryland Army National Guard, where the highlydecorated Birckhead is in charge of the state unit’s 4,500 Army soldiers. She took over the position in June 2019 and became part of a first in the nation—a state National Guard unit led by a command staff who are all women. “Back then in high school, there was lots of discussion with my parents about what college I should attend,” Birckhead recalled. “One question was whether I should go to an HBCU. Well, I had an uncle who attended Hampton. I had a cousin there. My mom thought it would be a great experience for me to see lots of black people doing wonderful things.”
“Once I was selected for the scholarship,” she said, “it was hard to turn down such a great opportunity. I didn’t view it as a calling or a dream to join [ROTC]. All I wanted was something greater than myself and to serve my state and nation.”
She finished Hampton in 1991—a semester early—as a distinguished military graduate with a B.A. in political science. Her choice to join the ROTC was all about the challenge from her mother. Her father had been in the Navy before she was born. And her mother had been an elected official in their home county. So, there wasn’t lots of family military background to help influence her decision.
She chose Hampton University in Virginia, an HBCU on the banks of the Hampton River, about a three-hour drive from her childhood home. Hampton turned out to be the launching pad of a career that has taken Birckhead to the highest levels of
Birckhead remembers her time at Hampton fondly. She met her husband, Craig Morton, there. She met her current best friend, Chena Younger, during her first-semester. She cites three faculty members in particular for helping to guide her during
16 | HBCU Times 2020 Winter Issue
