Gays Often Struggle at Black Colleges

Hampton University graduate, April Maxwell, left, and current Hampton University student, S.M., right, are photographed Saturday, March 30, 2007, in Hampton, Va. Both women tried to organize a gay support group on campus, only to be denied a charter by the school. (AP Photo/Gary C. Knapp) (Gary C. Knapp - AP)

But just as gay students can rightfully request campus inclusion, so too can black college administrators deny it, argued the Rev. William Owens, an HBCU graduate and head of the Coalition of African-American Pastors in Memphis, Tenn.

Those administrators may cite the Bible, or simply personal beliefs _ and they don't have to be politically correct, Owens said.

"They can say 'no' and I don't think they have to give a lot of reasons," said Owens, who joined other black pastors worried that, along with dismal marriage rates, socially accepted homosexuality "is a threat to the black family."

In 2002, the issue of gays on black campuses grabbed the attention of the Human Rights Campaign, an advocacy group that organizes annual "coming out" days.

"We would send out information to all the colleges and universities about getting national coming out packets, and for some reason the only institutions they were not hearing back from at all were the historically black colleges," said the group's diversity manager Brandon Braud, who began calling campuses.

He learned of gay groups at two historically black schools: Washington's Howard University, and Spelman College, in Atlanta.

Administrators elsewhere denied having gay students, or said that while gays attended, "they're very underground," Braud said.

He later spoke to students alleging outright hostility. Some were required to find an adviser to form gay groups _ unrealistic on many small campuses, Nashville AIDS educator Dwayne Jenkins said.

Through his Brothers United Network, Jenkins mentored upstart groups at Tennessee State and Fisk universities.

"Finding an adviser was always hard because nobody wanted to be associated with the gay-straight alliance _ it was the thinking that 'Oh my god, are they going to think I'm gay?'" he said.

Formed mostly across the segregation-era South, historically black colleges emerged as academic training grounds and finishing schools for blacks entering white society.

The most esteemed schools earned a reputation for students with impeccable manners and clean-cut behavior.