A MESSAGE FROM THE PUBLISHER
By Bobby R. Henry, Sr.
In recent months, a troubling and heartbreaking pattern has emerged: shootings and acts of violence are invading the very places meant to be sanctuaries of learning, growth, and hope our historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and the surrounding communities that have long nourished them.
What once seemed like distant news has now become local reality. For too many, the fear is no longer theoretical it’s personal. It’s the sound of gunfire near the dorms, the sirens at homecoming, the candlelight vigils replacing graduation celebrations.
At South Carolina State University, gunfire disrupted homecoming festivities, leaving one person dead and another injured. In Mississippi, weekend celebrations ended in chaos after multiple shootings left several dead and dozens wounded. Across the nation, HBCUs have faced a wave of terroristic threats and violence, forcing lockdowns, evacuations, and heartbreak.
And somewhere between the joy of reunion and the sound of gunfire, our reality shifted:
One night of celebration turns into a night of duck-and-cover, and in the aftermath, memorials replace happy people.
Beyond the headlines, our community activists are being killed, our youth are being hunted by hopelessness, and our neighborhoods are being surrounded by trauma instead of protection.
When Did We Forget Our Common Sense?
We must ask ourselves and our nation some piercing questions:
When did we start putting metal detectors instead of advanced technology?
When did we erase common sense for tactical violence?
When did we substitute strategic planning for statistical murder?
These are not rhetorical questions. They expose a moral drift a loss of compassion and reason that has replaced community care with control and understanding with enforcement.
Our sacred spaces — our schools, our churches, our campuses — have become testing grounds for fear instead of temples of faith, knowledge, and unity.
A Crisis That Cuts Deep
The violence on and around Black campuses is not random; it’s the product of long-standing inequities. HBCUs and the Black neighborhoods that surround them have endured decades of underfunding, neglect, and the slow erosion of safety and trust.
Security measures alone — cameras, checkpoints, and police presence — are not solutions. They are reactions. Real safety cannot come from surveillance; it comes from investment, care, and prevention. Because as one student put it recently, “We don’t need more guards; we need more guidance.”
Gun Violence Is a Public Health and Moral Emergency
Gun violence is not just a crime statistic — it’s a public health emergency and a moral failure. It is claiming the lives of our young scholars, silencing future leaders, and creating ripple effects of grief that no community should ever have to absorb.
We must stop treating it as normal and start confronting it as what it is — a national sin that disproportionately bleeds through Black communities.
What We Must Do
Reclaim Our Sacred Spaces: HBCUs must be protected as zones of learning, not lockdowns.
Invest in True Safety: Build mental health networks, mentorship pipelines, and community partnerships that prevent violence before it starts.
Lift Up Our Activists: Stop killing the very voices calling for peace and progress.
Demand Accountability: Gun reform must move from campaign promise to moral action.
Reclaiming the Promise
We are losing too many lives, too many dreams, too many futures. But we have not lost our will to fight.
Our ancestors built these institutions under the weight of segregation and systemic hatred they built them as beacons of hope. We will not surrender them to chaos, bullets, or bureaucracy.
The question before us is not whether we can stop the violence, but whether we have the courage to care enough to do so.
Until then, the echo of our unanswered questions will haunt us:
When did we start putting metal detectors instead of advanced technology?
When did we erase common sense for tactical violence?
When did we substitute strategic planning for statistical murder?
The answer begins when we decide that our sacred spaces deserve sacred protection, not silence.
