Presenter: Khirsten Scott

Respondents: Alaina Roberts (Pitt), Elon Dancy (Pitt)

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) were created as a corrective to the legacy of slavery’s having outlawed the formal education of Black people. Although the U.S.’s 107 HBCUs now account for merely 3 percent of US colleges and universities, public discourse surrounding them often hinges on questions about their efficacy and relevance in addressing structural racism. Throughout their history, many institutions, including Tougaloo College, an HBCU in Tougaloo, MS, have sought to be a means of survival for Black people in the face of systemic society-wide structural racism.

“What’s in A Name: Considering Tougaloo College and HBCU Naming Practices” offers an examination of the semantic history of the initialism ‘HBCU’ spanning its 1965 introduction through the US Higher Education Act to its 2014 inclusion in the OED and its ongoing use in print and digital texts. The “naming” of HBCUs contributes to the talk’s larger occupation of exploring the rhetorical and linguistic implications of naming practices of Black spaces and the resulting distinctions within public discourse.

Using Tougaloo College as a case study, Dr. Khirsten L. Scott traces the college's naming connections to Choctaw and Cherokee people revealing the complexities of HBCU nomenclature and rhetorics of Black survival. In doing so, attendees will be challenged to consider what happens when we endeavor to restore origin stories and restory institutional narratives. Attendees should read a precirculated paper that will be made available via the Humanities Center Google Drive two weeks ahead of the colloquium.