Juneteenth is a time to celebrate the success of HBCUs

Today, America celebrates our newest federal holiday of Juneteenth — the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation’s full enforcement in Texas. June 19, 1865 marked the effective end of slavery throughout the defeated Confederacy.

On this day, we should also celebrate the success of the historically Black colleges and universities that transformed the lives of formerly enslaved African Americans and their descendants, including me.

As a graduate of two HBCUs in the 1980s — Morehouse College and the Howard University School of Law — I am a direct beneficiary of the schools that were created for Black people at a time when segregation barred nearly all of us from getting a higher education.

Importantly, HBCUs have not just benefitted their students and the Black community. They have also benefited our nation by taking advantage of the previously untapped talents of African Americans, enabling us to enter the middle class and move even higher. We have helped make America successful, prosperous, and true to its ideals of freedom, justice and equality.

As the enduring motto of the United Negro College Fund states, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” Yet before the end of the Civil War, America wasted the brainpower of enslaved Black people by denying them an education.

I will always owe a debt to the two HBCUs that gave me an excellent education. They also gave me the leadership skills and self-confidence I required for a successful career as a senior partner in a major law firm, and for my efforts in politics and elsewhere to build a better future for all Americans.

I can only imagine the horrors experienced by enslaved people like........

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