Where Everybody Looks Like Me

At the Crossroads of America's Black Colleges and Culture

Ron Stodghill

• Publisher: Amistad
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN:
  9780062323279
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Études supérieures

A richly reported account of the forces threatening America's historic black colleges and universities—and how diverse leaders nationwide are struggling to keep these institutions and black culture alive for future generations.

American education is under siege, and few parts of the system are more threatened than black colleges and universities. Once hailed as national treasures, historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) such as Spelman College, Morehouse College, and Howard University—the backbone of the nation's black middle class which have produced legends including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Thurgood Marshall, and Oprah Winfrey—are in a fight for survival. The threats are numerous: Republican state legislators are determined to merge, consolidate, or shut down historically black colleges and universities; Ivy League institutions are poaching the best black high school students; President Obama's push for heightened performance standards, and cuts in loan funding from the U.S. Department of Education.

In this tightly woven narrative full of intriguing characters, Where Everybody Looks Like Me chronicles this near breaking point for black colleges. Award-winning journalist Ron Stodghill offers a rare behind-closed-doors look into the private world of the boards of directors, the black intelligentsia, the leaders of business, law, politics, culture, and sports, and other influential figures involved in the debate and battle to save these institutions. Told from the perspective of a family, Where Everybody Looks Like Me shows their struggle to secure the best education for their child. Where Everybody Looks Like Me is a tale of vision and vanity—of boardroom backbiting, financial chicanery, idealism and passion. Here are administrators, celebrities, alumni, and others whose lives are intricately tied to these institutions and their fate—whether they will remain strong and vital, or become a revered part of our cultural past.

CHAPTER 1

TO HOWARD, WITH LOVE

JUST RELAX, BROTHER. DIDN’T I TELL YOU I had this covered?

Renee Higginbotham-Brooks, the petite fireball attorney and longtime Howard University trustee, said the voice startled her; the familiar boardroom baritone cutting hard into her sleep that morning. She recounted the story sitting in the nook of her spacious kitchen in Fort Worth, Texas, the bright sun pouring across the swimming pool out back and then through wide rectangular windows. The house was quiet save for the autumn breeze rustling the groves of trees in her cul-de-sac. She sat at the table sipping her coffee and searching her memory for the moment, the exact moment, when she sensed that her beloved Howard University—and frankly black colleges overall—had hit a new bottom.

Everything’ll be fine. Trust me.

Higginbotham-Brooks said she recognized that commando voice instantly as none other than Barry Rand’s. Addison Barry Rand, the black corporate powerhouse whose admirers arced rainbow-like from Avis to Xerox to the silver-hairs of the AARP, over which, at the time, he reigned.

Higginbotham-Brooks was in her early sixties, fair in complexion, with a slight accent true to her small-town Southern belle roots in Martinsville, Virginia. Her voice was high-pitched and feathery, but she was not a delicate woman. She was tough, the sort who curses and coddles with the same bemused curl of her lips. Higginbotham-Brooks said that in her early-morning haze she, too, half-wondered whether the intrusive voice was merely her dreaming. The past few days, she recalled, had been rough. H. Patrick Swygert, Howard’s longtime president, was retiring, and the board of trustees had been working furiously to not only identify his successor, but to keep Howard on course during the transition. In ways Higginbotham-Brooks had never imagined, her beloved alma mater, Howard University, had begun to stumble. Its finances were weak, student enrollment was soft, and the faculty—which hadn’t enjoyed a pay increase since whenever—was becoming bitter.

To the casual observer, the erosion was virtually imperceptible, yet Higginbotham-Brooks saw clearly the dismal trend lines at Howard and in higher education generally; from skyrocketing tuition, to crushing student debt, to shrinking wages for graduates. She knew that Howard, more than ever, needed a leader capable of preserving and expanding the university’s preeminence even during this time of broad chaos throughout higher education. Founded in 1867 and based in the heart of Washington, D.C., Howard University had produced some of the nation’s most important figures, and she refused to stand idly by and watch such an august institution wither away.

Higginbotham-Brooks stood as she described her next move: how she stepped gingerly across the carpeted room of Washington, D.C.’s Fairmont Hotel, and how she found her worst suspicions confirmed. There on the other side of her hotel room wall, in the adjacent parlor, were the sounds of a kind of postgame celebration, she says—lots of conspiratorial chuckling and back-slapping between Barry Rand and Sidney Ribeau, who the previous evening had been tapped by the board of trustees as the future of Howard, the sixteenth president of the eleven-thousand-student university. Here is her account of the meeting:

Man, I didn’t know if it was going to happen, Sidney Ribeau said. I mean, I was sweating bullets there for a while. I didn’t know if we were going to be able to pull this off.

I told you not to worry, that I was going to make sure it happened, Barry Rand told him.

Higginbotham-Brooks heard a laugh, then a clap, and figured the guys were high-fiving. The moment sickened her. These guys were buddies; she knew the truth: Sidney Ribeau was the brother of Barry Rand’s ex-wife. She had told Rand, warned him, when Ribeau’s name came up at the start of this search process, that he should recuse himself. He claimed he barely knew Sidney. “He was just a kid when I was married to his sister,” she recalled him saying. Barely knew him, huh? What a crock! It didn’t matter to her that fellow trustees and presidential search committee leaders Colin Powell and Richard Parsons tried to clean things up, publishing a letter to the editor in the Washington Post. “Despite no communication between these two men in more than thirty years, Mr. Rand, upon learning of Mr. Ribeau’s prospective candidacy, recused himself from voting,” the letter said. “At our request, however, he participated in deliberations.”

What Higginbotham-Brooks viewed as Rand’s ethical breach—despite what anyone told her—didn’t especially shock her. Unlike many of her swooning colleagues, she had never warmed much to Barry Rand. There was something about the man she didn’t quite trust; that cocky, old-boy “how dare you question me” testosterone that nearly soaked through his pinstripes. She respected the man’s professional record, which included, among other things, winning not one, but two coveted Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Awards during his days at Xerox. Sure, Barry Rand knew his stuff. “The man is smart as hell—there’s no denying that,” she said.

Her real problem with Rand was simply this: for the past couple of years, as chair of Howard University’s board of trustees, his performance, in her humble opinion, had been plain lousy. Under his stewardship, she felt that Howard University had turned a blind eye to a storm of potentially life-threatening forces, from steep declines in federal support to falling enrollment to a money-draining research hospital. While Higginbotham-Brooks had not yet brought herself to express it, she suspected many of Howard’s woes stemmed directly from Rand himself—or more specifically from what she viewed as his backroom style of governing.

Man, this was the best thing to happen for Paula and me, Sidney Ribeau said, referring to Howard’s new First Lady. We’re so happy to get out of the boonies. You know, Paula’s been going crazy out there in Bowling Green.

Bowling Green, Ohio, population thirty thousand, was the Rust Belt town where Ribeau had been president at Bowling Green State University for the past thirteen years.

It’s going to be okay, brother, Barry Rand said. Now let’s talk about your contract. How does this sound to you? Five years?

Yeah, five, that’s fine . . .

How about the money? It’s like $597,000. But there’s like fifty thousand for Paula to have this executive search firm to find her a job.

Man, Paula don’t need no job. She’s gonna be with me. Just put that fifty on the bottom line. Can’t you do that?

Yeah, that should be all right.

The men carried on like this for several minutes, according to Higginbotham-Brooks, one pal hammering out the compensation package for the other. Rand, for his part, declined to comment on Higginbotham-Brooks’s version of events. Stacey Mobley, a Washington attorney and Rand’s successor as board chair, acknowledged Higginbotham-Brooks’s recollection of a clandestine negotiating session between Rand and Ribeau at the Fairmont Hotel. But Mobley, speaking on the board’s behalf, characterized any such meeting as inconsequential. The board’s compensation committee hammered out that deal, as was customary. Whatever suspicions she harbored were misguided, Mobley said.

Yet the longer Higginbotham-Brooks listened that morning, the more unsettled she became. She wasn’t sure what to do about what she was hearing. She stepped over to the nightstand and from her mobile phone dialed another trustee, Wayman Smith, for advice. Smith, a former senior executive at Anheuser-Busch who had chaired Howard’s trustee board prior to Rand, dispensed his advice quickly. Call over there right now and tell Barry you hear every word he’s saying. And tell him you need to talk to him right away. As soon as his conversation is over, you need to talk to him.

Higginbotham-Brooks hung up from her call with Wayman Smith, took a deep breath, called the hotel operator, and asked to be put through to the parlor. Barry Rand picked up. Barry, I’m in the next room, Higginbotham-Brooks told him. I hear every word that you’re saying.

There was a long silence and then Rand’s response. What?

I said, I’m in the next room. They put me in the next room. I’m next door. I hear everything. I need to talk to you. As soon as y’all finish, I need to talk to you.

There was another long silence, followed by soft footsteps of the men stepping away from the wall over to the dining room table. Howard’s trustees always stayed at the Fairmont for meetings, so Higginbotham-Brooks knew well how the parlor was situated.

Okay, he said.

A few minutes later, Higginbotham-Brooks’s phone rang. Rand asked: You want me to come over there?

No, I’m coming to you.

By then, Higginbotham-Brooks had dressed. She unlocked the door leading into the adjacent parlor and strolled in. Ribeau was gone.

Barry, she said, we gotta talk.

Long before Renee Higginbotham-Brooks became the gadfly of Howard University, she was just another dyed-in-the-wool black college loyalist. Such loyalists generally subscribe to the notion that while American higher education favors the white and well-heeled, black college students can still flourish inside an old underground movement more interested in building successful black academies than integrating white ones. Through the years, these loyalists have grown to become a fierce, if underestimated, bunch—impressively ubiquitous in generation as in geography. Within their ranks are lawmakers in Washington, D.C., software designers in Silicon Valley, financial traders in London, preachers in Mississippi, teachers in Detroit, pediatricians in Cameroon, and mechanical engineers in Tokyo. They are feeble octogenarians living in Arkansas farmhouses and young B-boys strutting through Harlem. They stand as devout Christians, Muslims, Seventh-day Adventists, and atheists.

A self-proclaimed leader of these proud and few, Renee Higginbotham-Brooks champions most everything about black colleges. She relishes their small class sizes and intimate instruction, a student body representing every hue in the rainbow mixing it up with professors speaking a patois of high-minded theory and grandma’s common sense. She cherishes the social scene, too; the fierce, brassy marching bands peacocking across football fields in brilliant, colorful formations, the pageantry of Greeks stepping and stomping with so much flair, bravado, and humor. And the friendships—yes, the friendships—sprouting in late-night talks in cramped dorm rooms and nurtured at weddings, births, and funerals, and seasoned into old age. Degreed black folk who didn’t attend a black college missed a big, important aspect of black culture.

What frustrates Higginbotham-Brooks and other black college loyalists is how even the best of these schools lack cachet among most high achievers; how graduates of predominantly white institutions tend to snub their noses at HBCUs, without sufficient knowledge of their contributions. Of course, black colleges themselves are partly to blame for this image problem. All too often, the social scene at black colleges eclipses their intellectual legacies. Who knew, for instance, that Beth Brown, the late NASA astrophysicist, was a Howard graduate, or that W. E. B. Du Bois began forming his ideas about the “Talented Tenth” as an undergraduate at Fisk University, or even more recently that a couple of obscure black professors, Michael O. Ezekwe and Samuel E. Besong at Alcorn State University and Delaware State University, respectively, published breakthrough research on heart disease prevention through the ingestion of purslane plant leaves? Or that the chief architect of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C., was Deryl McKissack, the twin sister of Cheryl McKissack Daniel. The women are part of the fifth generation of McKissack & McKissack, founded in 1905 as the nation’s first African American–owned design and construction firm. What’s more likely to get talked about is how Erykah Badu, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, and Big Sean ripped it at Howard’s homecoming.

In February 2013, for example, a historic event unceremoniously unfolded on Howard’s campus: for the first time in the university’s 146 years, Harvard University’s debate team traveled to Howard’s campus for the competition. The event, held in Cramton Auditorium, was billed as “The Great Debaters,” a playful nod to a film from a few years back starring Denzel Washington and based on the life of a Wiley College professor who in the ’30s spirited his debate team to a national championship against Harvard University.

A snowstorm along the East Coast added a bit of drama: clad in their signature crimson blazers, Harvard’s team hustled onto the stage just minutes before the debate’s scheduled 3 p.m. start time, a near no-show due to a flight delay out of Boston. For ninety minutes, the students squared off over whether gun manufacturers should be held liable for mass killings and whether women should be required to sign up for the Selective Service System. As is customary in such collegiate debates, no victor was declared, and the event was measured along the lines of the respect, decorum, and intellect displayed by each team. “Howard can hold their own against anybody,” Higginbotham-Brooks boasted. “We have always attracted some of the brightest kids in the world.”

If Renee Higginbotham-Brooks boasts constantly about Howard, she had in recent years worried about her alma mater. It was her concerns, and airing them, that triggered the university’s abrupt changing of the guards; her questions and then criticism of Howard president Sidney Ribeau’s performance, her scathing—and mysteriously leaked—letter to fellow Howard trustees, Ribeau’s resignation under fire, trustee Vernon Jordan’s search for a new president, the selection of Dr. Wayne A. I. Frederick as the new president, and, of course, Higginbotham-Brooks ultimately losing her position as board vice chair for going rogue. The board would ultimately decide not to renew her contract, ending her eighteen years of service.

Reactions to Higginbotham-Brooks’s crusade run the gamut. Some have praised her as valiant and courageous, while others dismiss her efforts as alarmist and self-centered. Both assessments harbor some merit. After numerous meetings and conversations with her, it is easy to understand doubts about the purity of her intentions; to be thrown off, for instance, by her self-described sense of modesty, yet see a track record that suggests relishing control over the levers of power. Higginbotham-Brooks is strategic always, and Machiavellian when necessary. She is also an unabashedly political creature and a name-dropper of the first degree. (“Oprah is a friend of mine,” she is quick to remind folks.)

Attorney Stacey Mobley said the board not renewing Higginbotham-Brooks’s contract was anything but vindictive; it was an attempt to bring new blood to Howard’s new president, Dr. Wayne A. I. Frederick. While Higginbotham-Brooks had served the board admirably, Mobley believed that eighteen years was too long to remain effective. Under his board leadership, he would enforce the twelve-year maximum written in the bylaws. “If you’ve been on the board for more than twelve years, I think your independence starts to be affected,” Mobley said.

In some instances, Mobley said he understood and even shared some of her views on Dr. Ribeau’s performance. These times required visionary strategic leadership, especially in stewarding Howard’s hospital, a community safety net that had become a serious financial burden. In some cases, Dr. Ribeau had not proven equal to some of these larger functions. “We’re at a point where we’re looking at and leveraging many of our assets, from real estate to intellectual property, in ways that provide revenue to the university so that we don’t have to rely on tuition,” he said. “But this is not an issue of HBCUs—this is an issue of American higher education.” The board had been hashing out a plan to address these problems for some time, and Higginbotham-Brooks’s leaked letter merely complicated and burdened the process, he said.

The most important issue was that Howard University was taking some hard, necessary measures to fulfill its mission, a mission more urgent than ever. “People tend to think that we don’t need black institutions now that some blacks have their pick of white institutions, but this notion is completely false,” he said. “HBCUs are as relevant today as they ever were. And it’s our responsibility to do all we can to support them.”

On this fact, at least, Higginbotham-Brooks and Mobley seemed to agree. And in this light, Higginbotham-Brooks’s motivations seem to lean more toward noble than selfish; it is easy to believe that she pressed forward against her detractors with the university’s motto, “Truth and Service,” ringing somewhere in her spirit.

The conceit of America’s black college is rooted in its tradition of producing first-generation graduates. But there is always some currency in lineage, and few boast a purer black college pedigree than Renee Higginbotham-Brooks. Both her maternal and paternal grandfathers were black college graduates; one from Virginia State University in its first graduating class, and another from Shaw University in North Carolina, before going on to Leonard Medical School in 1909. As was...

Table of contents

• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• In Order of Appearance
• Introduction
• 1. To Howard, with Love
• 2. Cosby, Unplugged
• 3. Eagles’ Eggs
• 4. Break Point
• 5. Letter from a Trustee
• 6. The New Black on Black Crime
• 7. Diversity Weekend
• 8. Obama and the Morehouse Men
• 9. The Hip-Hop President
• 10. “Who Are These People?”
• 11. Scandal
• 12. The War at Wilberforce
• 13. Magic City
• 14. A Wolf by the Ear
• 15. A Rogue Revisited
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Credits
• Copyright
• About the Publisher