Decisions of the HEAD & HEART - African American academic leaders

Black Issues in Higher Education, May 11, 2000 by Ronald Roach

More Black leadership talent making deliberate choice to serve HBCUs

JACKSON, Miss. -- From the outside, choosing Ronald Mason Jr., a former Tulane University senior vice president and general counsel, to be president of Jackson State University seems like an obvious positive step for both him and Jackson State.

Mason's impressive resume -- which boasts an unusual tenure as chief executive of the New Orleans public housing department while simultaneously serving as Tulane's general counsel -- reveals a solid track record for any higher education institution needing a tested and experienced administrator. His last job at Tulane was executive director of the Tulane-Xavier National Center for the Urban Community.

"I was trained to be a college president by [former Tulane University president] Eamon Kelly," Mason says of his Tulane experience.

But instead of smooth sailing, the appointment process that led to Mason's becoming president of Mississippi's largest HBCU this past February stirred campus and community protest and dredged up a recurring debate over Black leadership in the academy.

Last fall, Jackson State students, faculty and community activists staged protests over the Board's decision not to consider Dr. Bettye Ward Fletcher, a Jackson State veteran who was then serving as the interim president, as a job finalist. Jackson State leaders also charge that other presidential candidates with Black college experience did not make it as job finalists.

"We didn't like the process," says Dr. Ivory Phillips, the faculty senate president at Jackson State.

Critics argue that the board, a defendant in the long-running Ayers v. Fordice federal lawsuit to desegregate the state's public universities, ignored an obvious choice in Fletcher. During her previous tenure as vice-president for research and development, Jackson State garnered part of a $12.9 million federal health research award along with three other institutions. Fletcher cultivated significant support for the school's research programs.

That Mason had a strong reputation as an administrator proved to be of little consolation to a university community feeling betrayed by its state higher education board. Mason, a Columbia University-educated attorney, was seen as a relative newcomer to Black college leadership even though he ran a public housing research institute that involved Xavier University of Louisiana

Over the past two decades, presidents who have been newcomers to Black institutions have stirred up both suspicion and admiration among their respective faculty, administrators, students and school supporters. The Mason presidential appointment process illustrates that Black academic leaders whose professional experience occurs outside HBCUs can still be suspiciously regarded as outsiders.

This new breed of Black college president -- which also includes North Carolina A&T State University's newly installed chancellor, Dr. James Renick -- is distinguished largely by the fact that its members became president of their institutions after having spent careers outside the HBCU community, largely in majority White institutions.

Diverse Black Leadership

Over the years, autonomous HBCU trustee boards have broadened their presidential searches to recruit from candidate pools that include Blacks whose careers have unfolded outside the HBCU community.

Dr. Barbara Hatton, president of Knoxville College in Tennessee, says that prior to desegregation of higher education in the 1960s and '70s, Black college presidents came largely from within the Black college and Black church community.

"I think boards are reaching out to find people who are prepared to bring change to the campus," says Hatton, who gained professional experiences at HBCUs and predominantly White institutions before becoming a college president at a historically Black college. With the desegregation of higher education, significant numbers of Blacks have had the chance to build careers in majority White institutions.

As a result, the diversity among Black academic leaders has brought some highly talented people to the Black college leadership ranks.

For example, the accomplishments of leaders such as Dr. Johnnetta Cole, Dr. Donald Stewart, H. Patrick Swygert, Dr. Edward Fort and Dr. Walter Massey are well-known in HBCU and national higher education circles. As HBCU presidents, these individuals earned acclaim for their leadership.

Nevertheless, Stewart concedes that his background as a former administrator at a major foundation and majority White schools initially invited skepticism and suspicion on the part of Spelman College supporters. That wariness eventually faded away.

"I think there was some concern that I wouldn't be understanding of issues peculiar to African Americans and to women," Stewart says, adding that being a northerner and male also contributed to others' skepticism.

Adding to the interest in the new breed of Black college leaders is that trustee boards have recognized Black institutions are no longer insulated from pressures they did not have to face prior to the 1970s.