Next stop?

Credit: Amy Grant

Credit: Amy Grant

Atlanta for Spelman College’s homecoming where she will reconnect with friends and celebrate her 30th anniversary as a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.

“I was not going to miss this homecoming for anything,” said Grant, a 1994 Spelman graduate. “This is really your chance to revisit the best four years of your life. Homecoming gives you a dopamine rush of being comfortable and safe. You are in an oasis of peace, happiness and fun.”

In the wake of the pandemic, 2022 marks the return of full-participatory homecomings at Spelman, Morehouse College, and Clark Atlanta University (CAU), as thousands of graduates have descended to celebrate with the 10,000 or so students on the campuses.

Credit: Natrice Miller / Natrice.Miller@ajc.com

Credit: Natrice Miller / Natrice.Miller@ajc.com

In 2020, at the height of the pandemic, many HBCUs canceled homecoming. By 2021, many homecoming activities were either canceled or offered virtually. The limited on-campus events were just for students.

CAU held its homecoming last weekend, while Spelman and Morehouse will hold their traditional joint “Spelhouse,” this weekend. Morris Brown celebrated homecoming in September.

“We have always emphasized alma mater,” CAU President George T. French Jr. said in an interview last week. “This has been the other mother for tens of thousands of people. So it is time to go back home and see how the family is doing.”

CAU’s celebration was marred by a drive-by shooting early Sunday, where four people, including two of its students, were wounded with nonlife-threatening injuries.

The suspects were not students, police said.

A communal spirit

Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com

Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com

For more than a century, graduates of the nation’s historically Black colleges and universities have made the pilgrimage back to campus to celebrate homecoming, which is equal parts family reunion, revival, therapy, and a re-baptism into the joys and comforts of Blackness.

According to the United Negro College Fund, while Black colleges represent just 3% of all higher-education institutions in the United States, they matriculate roughly 10% of all Black students.

Additionally, 17% of bachelor’s degrees and 24% of STEM-related bachelor’s degrees earned by Black students came from HBCUs in 2019.

“In the context of HBCUs, there is a very communal spirit here,” French said. “When you are not going to class, your instructor will call you and if you are not careful, they will call your mother, because they care about the student.”

It allows you to keep going

Credit: Clara Jackson Johnson

Credit: Clara Jackson Johnson

It is difficult to pinpoint when homecomings began at HBCUs.

Douglas L. Allen, an assistant professor at Emporia State University and an expert on race and ethnicity, has written that the modern alumni-centered homecoming dates back at least to a 1924 Morehouse football game.

Credit: Natrice Miller / Natrice.Miller@ajc.com

Credit: Natrice Miller / Natrice.Miller@ajc.com

The football game is often secondary to the parades, parties, pageants, tailgates, Greek step shows, marching bands, concerts, convocations, scholarship galas and just being back — to breathe again.

“Homecoming, for anyone who went to an HBCU, is our time to connect back with what arguably has made you in your adult life,” Grant said. “It allows you to keep going.”

Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com

Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com

Stephany Spaulding, 43, has seen it from both sides.

After graduating from CAU in 2000, she became a professor and chief diversity officer for the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs.

“There is nothing like an HBCU experience and there is no other space that nurtures black students like HBCUs,” said Spaulding, who is now doing DE&I consulting in Chicago. “And this is coming from a Black professor at a PWI.”

Credit: Stephany Spaulding

Credit: Stephany Spaulding

Love and loss

The emotional healing surrounding the concept of homecoming can’t be understated, especially as people are easing out of the COVID-19 malaise.

But some of the trauma remains. Comparing people of the same age, Black people have been far more likely than whites to die from COVID-19, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health research nonprofit.

Robert Cole, a government affairs consultant in Los Angeles, who graduated from Morehouse in 1987 and chairs his class’ reunion committee, said the pandemic forced them to be creative and intentional in how they communicate.

Credit: Robert Cole

Credit: Robert Cole

Which makes the normalcy of this homecoming so significant.

“A couple of my classmates have died,” Cole said. “We are realizing now that we are of an age that tomorrow isn’t promised.”

Cole’s connections to Morehouse’s homecomings run deep.

In 1988, he was a back-flipping member of Morehouse’s Alpha Phi Alpha step team chosen by Spike Lee to appear in his classic, “School Daze.” The movie is a loosely-based account of Lee’s time at Morehouse centered around homecoming activities at the fictional Mission College.

“The college experience was wonderful,” Cole, 57, said. “It was, up until then, the only time in my life that I was around that many positive Black people. That was a blessing.”

Spaulding has attended homecoming about a half dozen times since graduation. The pandemic also made her look at life differently. It drew her back to campus this year, where she partied, but found time to grieve.

Spaulding’s mentor, Gwendolyn Morgan, who taught in CAU’s English department for 41 years, died in September.

“She is the reason that I have a Ph.D. because she saw something in me,” Spaulding said. “Homecoming is not just for maintaining relationships. It is also about being able to give what was poured into us to another generation of students.”

Finally

For Grant, this year’s homecoming marks a historic family milestone.

Her older brother, Jordan, a 1993 Morehouse graduate, will attend his first homecoming. And he will bring his two sons.

Credit: Christina Matacotta

Credit: Christina Matacotta

“Finally,” Grant said about Jordan’s decision to come. “That makes me so happy.”

On Sunday, Grant will take a 14-hour flight back to Doha.

She has work to catch up on.