My Homecoming Morgan State University 2019
It's that season again across the black college and university communities across this nation, homecoming season. That one week a year when alums from all across the nation venture home to the HBCU's that they attended to celebrate past times, renew friendships and establish new friends. It is the circling of experiences and renewals of friendships that make a homecoming at a historically black college and university so very special.
I love my school's homecoming season. I attended Morgan State University from 1973-1977 and I can certainly say without question my foundation and principles were solidified as a result of being a student of this outstanding university. If you attended a college or university that was majority white and you happened to be black. The experiences would be far different than what you may have experienced at an HBCU. You see while the resources that those white schools afforded you were never lacking.
One thing that an HBCU provided was the historical sense of family. My oldest brother attended the University of Maryland when the school had a grand total of about 100 minority students in a college population of nearly 30,000 students. You think that he ever felt a sense of family at this university? I saw personally the trials and tribulations he suffered being one of few minority students during the late 1960s'. I never wanted to be like him because I needed a sense of family in order to gain my maturation and footing in life. That's why I choose to attend then Morgan State College. What I may have lacked in the available resources he had at the University of Maryland was outweighed by the familiar settings of blackness that he never experienced.
I don't think my brother ever attended a Maryland Homecoming after he left that university. I don't think he ever looked back once. While I look back every year to a week in early Fall when I know I can go back to my alma mater and relish the past as I look ahead to the future. Every HBCU thinks that their homecoming is the best. You have North Carolina A&T which proudly pronounces that its homecoming is Greatest Event in the history of celebrations. Of course, you have Howard University's homecoming which is a revelation because what do you expect from the Mecca? However, to me, personally, my homecoming at Morgan State University is by far the greatest. Why? Simple, because of the fact that its mine and the experiences I treasure are those I will forever cling to.
Don't argue with me on that fact because I surely won't argue with you about whether your HBCU homecoming is better than my own. The reason is that your homecoming is your and the experiences that your HBCU homecoming provides are yours to cling to as well. One thing I can be assured of is that yours, or mine, HBCU homecomings are going to be historic and grand. Our black history was formulated on the campuses of each and every HBCU in this nation. So in so many ways, our HBCU homecomings are blended events to be celebrated by each and every black person in this nation.
So, for me, Homecoming 2019 begins the week of October 6, 2019, and I will visit my school at Morgan State University on October 12, 2019, to celebrate the greatness that comes when all the Morgan State University comes together to celebrate our fair Morgan.
