WHERE ARE ALL OF THE BLACK WOMEN IN HBCU LEADERSHIP ROLES? BY DR. PATRICIA WILLIAMS LESSANE
Recently, I was assembled with three other Morgan State University leaders for a photograph that would accompany an upcoming article in the university’s magazine about each of our new posts at the university. As the four of us tried out our best professional smiles, rearranged ourselves for what we imagined were the most flattering shots, and gave the photographer a hard time about angles, staging, and lighting, I was awestruck by the company I was in—we were all African-American women who had been recently hired or promoted to significant posts at Morgan. In the last year, Morgan State University has hired or elevated women to the posts of dean, Vice-President for Institutional Advancement, Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs, and Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs. To say, that I am honored to be a part of that “number” as we say in the Black Church, is an understatement. As a proud product of an HBCU, I have long held dreams of one day becoming a college president at a small private HBCU much like Fisk University, where I attended as an undergraduate student. In many ways, coming to Morgan is like returning home to the rich roots of Black scholastic excellence of Fisk which nurtured and nudged me into the scholar-activist and globalcitizen I am today. The rigorous foundational liberal arts training delivered by a committed and talented cadre of faculty, staff, and senior leaders encouraged me to dream big, be courageous, and always give back. But even as I think fondly back on my days at Fisk, it struck me that I couldn’t think of a single Black woman
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who led as a senior administrator while I was there, except one, who as of this writing is still there: Dr. Jessie Carney Smith, Dean of Fisk University Library. Of course, there were a few department chairs and an associate dean of Students, but there were no Black women vice-presidents or provosts during my time at Fisk. It would be a decade after my graduation from Fisk that the university would appoint its first Black woman president, Hazel O’Leary. One might think—as I had before joining Morgan State University, an HBCU founded by the Baltimore Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1867 and Maryland’s preeminent public research university, that such an occurrence is commonplace at Black institutions of higher education and that the gateway to the HBCU e-suite is a more equitable path for Black women to navigate than at predominately white colleges and universities. However, the barriers to senior leadership at HBCUs, while different than those Black women face at predominately white institutions, are still barriers, nonetheless. During my first few professional gatherings with leaders from other UNCF-supported HBCUs, I was struck by the lack of parity between African American men and women in presidential and other executive leadership roles. Even with the recent appointments of Black women to the helm of several HBCUs including Tuskegee University, Elizabeth City, and, Norfolk State University, Black men still outnumber Black women presidents.
