AJC Sepia HBCU of the Week: N.C. Central University’s legacy helped mold AJC reporter

It is my favorite because the name – a product of its times – perfectly captured what was at the heart of Shepard’s mission, to educate the sons and daughters of former slaves in the state of North Carolina. To even a playing field littled with racism, low expectations and self-doubt.

He succeeded.

Shepard started with 130 students. Today, more than 8,000 are educated along the sloping hills and verdant green. NCCU’s enrollment is about 80 percent black. But it still adheres to that core principal of blackness, which has produced such greats as Julius Chambers, Ivan Dixon and Ernie Barnes.

Don’t get me wrong, as the nation's first state-supported liberal arts college for black students, NCCU has always had an open-door policy.

One of my favorite stories was told to me by one of my mentors Alex Rivera, who graduated in 1939. One day, as the school was preparing to host a famous singer, state officials called to tell Shepard that the governor’s wife would be attending.

“The man asked Dr. Shepard if there was segregated seating,” Rivera said. “Dr. Shepard said no. She could sit wherever she wanted. He hung up the phone and just laughed.”

No clear plan

I was born and raised in Brooklyn, deeply surrounded by black culture.

Aside from the great libraries and museums that were right in my neighborhood, my neighborhood itself – with its African Day festivals, burgeoning hip hop movement and even the free lunch programs sponsored by Black Panther-inspired activists – teemed with soul.

But I can’t remember ever hearing about a black college.

We moved to Rocky Mount, N.C. in 1980, where I was exposed to a different kind of black. Calmer.

I settled into life of suburbia, MTV and ACC basketball. So college for me, as it was for most everyone, meant the University of North Carolina or North Carolina State.

My counselors were not tremendously helpful and I started to explore my options alone, as I would be the first person in my immediate family to even go to college.

Black colleges – there are 11 in North Carolina – started to appeal to me. I applied to all the schools I was supposed to, as well as North Carolina A&T in Greensboro.

I got in, and since my high school counselors were of little use to me, I visited a man named Mr. Gilliam, who helped black kids navigate the financial aid system.

I walked into his office and he asked me what was going to major it.

“English,” I told him.

“So why are you going to school in Greensboro,” he asked.

I honestly had no answer. No real plan actually. I was just going to the school.

He gave me an odd look and picked up the phone. I could hear him talking to a woman about me. About my grades, my activities, my life.

Gilliam hung up the phone and told me that Nancy Rowland had just enrolled me into North Carolina Central University. I was going to school in Durham.

I agreed and although I had never stepped foot in the campus until freshman orientation on Aug. 18, 1985, it was the best decision I ever made in my life.

Building a nest

My best friend from high school, Cedric Bullock, was also planning to attend NCCU, so we became roommates.

Four years I lived with that dude and never once did we have a fight – although I found it frustrating that he played Elvis every morning.

In retrospect, I can say that my years at NCCU were the best of my life. But I can honestly say that it didn’t start that way.

I like, many of my classmates, was on financial aid. Which meant sometimes standing in line for days to get processed. The same with registering for class.

The cafeteria closed on weekdays at 6 p.m. and at 2 p.m. on Sundays.

So we spent some nights hungry, unless somebody came through the dorm with a bag full of stolen chicken from his job that he was selling for a quarter apiece.

The dorms were not co-ed and there was no visitation. All of the men stayed in the one male dorm on campus, Chidley Hall.

It was not hard to look eight miles down the road to Chapel Hill or across town at Duke to see what they had and what we didn’t. Some of us didn’t make it past freshman year.

But for those of us who stayed, standing in those lines taught us patience and resilience.

The fear of going to bed (mildly) hungry made us make better decisions with the little money we had, or get a job at the mall after class.

Having no visitation slowed us down and taught us how to court women. If we wanted to see a girl (and in my life, I had never before seen such beauty that strolled across that campus daily), we had to go to their dorm and page them. Then sit in the lobby until curfew.

Living in Chidley, as bad as it could be, was a badge of honor. Besides, nearly every man who attended NCCU for close to a century lived in that castle on the hill. And all of us still remember our room numbers.

It was at NCCU where I learned how to love literature and where I became so prepared as a journalist that I was back working in New York for a major newspaper two weeks after graduation.

Where I met Romare Bearden and James Baldwin.

Where I played college soccer and watched our basketball team win the 1989 national championship.

Where I pledged Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity.

Where today, some 26 years after I graduated in 1990, not a day goes by where I am not communicating with someone that I went to college with.

North Carolina Central University made me.

The campus has changed so much now for the better. It has grown to the point that if I didn’t go back regularly, I wouldn’t even recognize it.

My niece, a second generation of Eagles in my family, is a senior there now. She registers for class online, eats whenever she wants to and lives in a co-ed dorm. Even parts of Chidley have been razed and rebuilt as a co-ed facility.

No Ordinary Barnyard Fowl

When I started the AJC Sepia HBCU of the Week series on April of 2015, I wanted to create a space that would highlight black achievement, accomplishment and education in a world dominated by images of crime, police shootings, the latest drama from Katt Williams and Worldstar.

I knew it would take at least until 2017 to get through all of the 100-plus schools. And with the way the math worked out and with my complicated, yet random selection process, NCCU was not slated to run until late 2017.

But Ayana Hernandez, NCCU’s associate vice chancellor for university relations called and gently encouraged me to move the school up on the schedule.

My only question was what took her so long.

Each of the 30 schools we have highlighted have been able to tell their wonderful stories about the same things I am no doubt experiencing.

But it has been a pleasure this week to help so many of my Eagles tell their stories, from those in the local alumni association like Junel Dinkins, to those teaching new generations of scholars like Donald Mason and TaKeia Anthony, to those at the height of their profession like Jan Lennon, to those who dance with greatness like Mike “City” Flowers and 9th Wonder.

So in the spirit of my brothers and sisters who attended the National Religious Training School and Chautauqua or the National Training School or Durham State Normal School or North Carolina College for Negroes or North Carolina College at Durham or North Carolina Central University, we are reminded that Dr. Shepard instilled in us the importance of “Truth & Service” in 1910.

But he also reminded us, and we are still reminded, that the “Eagle is no ordinary barnyard fowl.” 

North Carolina Central University name changes:

1910 - National Religious Training School and Chautauqua for the Colored Race: The School was founded by Dr. James E. Shepard for "the development in young men and women of the character and sound academic training requisite for real service to the nation."

1915 - National Training School: After the school was sold and reorganized.

1923 - Durham State Normal School: After the state legislature of North Carolina appropriated funds to buy the school.

1925 - North Carolina College for Negroes: After the legislature dedicated resources to a liberal arts education and the preparation of teachers and principals. The college thus became the nation's first state-supported liberal arts college for black students.

1947 - North Carolina College at Durham: As a sign of the times in post-War American.

1969 -  North Carolina Central University.