- This program is made possible by a grant from the A.J.

Fletcher Foundation.

The North Carolina-based foundation supports social justice, public broadcasting, education, the arts, and human services throughout North Carolina.

[soft music, piano leads] * - [Gay] There's a saying that without knowledge the people perish.

Education is key in that because it opens your eyes to a world that is beyond what is just in front of you.

- [DeGregory] As the oldest HBCU in the South, Shaw has led the way.

- [Forbes] Shaw's mission is to educate, to inform and to be a laboratory where solutions can be struggled with.

- [Etheridge] Education is an investment.

It is not an expenditure.

We spend money on things that depreciate, we invest in things that appreciate - [Forbes] HBCUs have learned to do more with less.

to make brick without straw.

- [Lomax] These were not only academic institutions, they were freedom schools.

- [DeGregory] They provide the first truly interracial spaces in America.

- [Gay] Without this institution, without Henry Martin Tupper, sitting in a room, teaching freedmen the Bible, I would not have a college education * - [Narrator] This is Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina For the graduating class of 2016, today will be a celebration of their academic achievement that also marks the end of a year long commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the school's founding, by Baptist missionaries.

- Smile.

- [Narrator] For students and faculty, it is a time of excitement, pride, and quiet reflection.

- My name is Dr. David C. Forbes Senior and I am the interim dean of the Shaw University Divinity School.

I grew up four and a half blocks from this campus.

And as a kid, my mother trusted me to walk over to the campus so I was a campus brat.

I applied to two schools, my senior year in high school, Shaw and Yale.

And I was a little intimidated by going north to major white institution so Shaw was a natural for me.

In my view, Shaw University is a marvel.

Henry Martin Tupper has robbed me of the ability to have bias against white people.

He was a white man, who was a Union chaplain, who at the end of the war decided rather than to go to a promising future back in New England to stay and to teach newly freed slaves, how to read and how to write.

- Tupper is a Massachusetts native, he was educated at Amherst and also at Newton theological Institute and he had, had the desire to be a African missionary.

The Civil War interrupted that great desire and so he found himself looking for ways to give back in order to provide opportunities that were so desperately needed and wanted by the freedman's community.

- [Narrator] To oversee the transition from slavery to freedom, Congress establishes a new federal relief agency, backed by Union troops.

The Freedmen's Bureau provides humanitarian aid, legal protection, and educational opportunity for millions of newly freed slaves.

- The situation following the Civil War would have been chaotic.

The war would have turned the world upside down.

No one yet knows what the rules will be, what the new society will be.

The old society is definitely gone.

And so it was a time of chaos, but also possibility.

The big question becomes how will we build a new society in which African Americans are not enslaved?

- I'm Erich Pfalzer - I'm Fritz Ballard.

And we are the great-great-grandsons of Dr. Henry Martin and Sarah Tupper.

- After the war, he wanted to be a missionary in Africa.

And he went to the Baptist Home Mission, I believe it's called - American Baptist Home Mission and they said, "We want you to go to Raleigh, and gather the emancipated slaves and educate them."

So he and Sarah got on a train and headed south.

[train whistle blowing] - So arriving in Raleigh in 1865, what he would have found is a host of newly freed people who saw education as a vehicle to personal and also racial advancement, and who were very much interested in accessing this great thing called education, which had been so long denied them as a consequence of slavery.

- African Americans were denied knowledge.

It was a crime back then to teach African Americans the art of reading and writing, because the slave owners believed that once Africans were educated, and they know how to read and write, then obviously they know what their rights are and it would be very difficult for them to control them, - [Narrator] Now emancipated, many families are hungry and living on the streets.

So Tupper turns to the local Baptist Church for support.

- There was a movement at that time that was trying to get slaves or ex-slaves to go back to Africa, and what the general Baptist State Convention understood was that a lot of the ex-slaves were here to stay.

And so the mission was outreach, making sure they had the basic necessities for survival, housing, jobs, food.

- So they depended on the Freedmen's Bureau, which was set up through the government to help the former slaves.

So Henry was able to secure clothing for them.

And then he went about setting up services for them to get them into church and have that support system in place.

So there was a great amount of need.

And five months later, he writes that there's still a great amount of need, but we've been able to make a dent.

- People coming down from the North, would not have been received very well by local white people.

They would have been seen as interlopers, troublemakers, outsiders.

They would not have been accepted into the society.

They would have had to forge their own way.

- [Narrator] The Tupper's take a room in the Guion Hotel directly across from the state capitol.

And in December, began holding a small Bible study for freed men.

- Most private historically Black colleges and universities were founded either as teacher training or as preacher training.

And so in the case of Tupper, Shaw began modestly in a hotel room as a theological class, and steadily grew over time until it outgrew its modest accommodations, sending Tupper in search of in a more ideal location which he purchased with $500 that he had saved during his Union army service and Tupper along with his handful of friends and I would probably imagine some of the students actually had to go out into the woods and get the wood with which they would construct the school.

- The first building they built was essentially a log cabin that they worked from.

They would go out into the country, and they gather them together and try to help them and then Sarah took it upon herself to see that the women were educated also.

She was very adamant about that.

- You can imagine that most of the students who came here were illiterate, could neither read nor write.

This was an opportunity for the first time to be in a classroom and to have formal instruction.

- [Narrator] In October 1866, the Raleigh Theological Institute opens its doors.

250 students attend day classes and another 100 attend at night.

But while Blacks are eager for education, White resistance to Tupper's school is mounting.

- Well he was not accepted in regard to his arrival to Raleigh.

There was great resistance to he and Sarah being here.

"How dare these Yankees come down here 'to help after the war?

You're not welcome."

The story that's passed down through the family is that the Ku Klux Klan was coming to lynch him.

So, Henry sends, Sarah, out in the cornfield for protection.

And he stays in the parlor to pray.

And sure enough, the Klan shows up and there was one particular Klansmen who just didn't think it was quite right to hang a man of the cloth and was able to talk the rest of them out of doing this, and he was spared.

[low screaming, horses neighing in background] But the anger, the hatred was still there and he had to fight that.

[horse neighing] - [Narrator] In his first four years, nearly 1000 men, women, and children learned to read and interpret Scripture at Tupper's small school, but by early 1870, it had outgrown its quarters again.

Tupper offers $20,000 to purchase Peace Institute on the north edge of town.

His bid is initially accepted but when word spreads about his plan to expand his school for colored people, banks refuse to give him a mortgage, and the deal falls through.

Undeterred, Tupper turns his attention to another nearby property.

- Well, there certainly was a need to expand the school, greater than just this little house that they were in and having Bible study.

His eye was on the Barringer Plantation.

Here's this piece of ground right here in the heart of Raleigh, and it was well suited for his needs, but Henry wouldn't be able to buy it because of what he was doing.

So he had to go through backdoor contacts and bring in people that - names that were not associated with his to be able to purchase the property.

These other people were buying the land and then deeding it over to Henry to build the school.

- [Narrator] The estate is acquired for $13,000 with a $4,000 deposit from the Freedmen's Bureau.

That summer Tupper returned north to raise the balance from church groups and private donors.

- He was able to engage his philanthropic and Industrial friends in New England to support this institution.

This is holy ground to me because of the investment that people made to see that this university would be able to grow and to develop and thrive.

- [Narrator] Elijah Shaw, a wealthy textile merchant, contributes $5,000 to the growing school and its first building his named in his honor.

By 1871 Shaw Hall stands on the cornfields where earlier Tupper's family had hidden from lynch mobs, and the Raleigh Theological Institute is reborn as Shaw Collegian Institute.

Both Sarah and Henry Tupper believe that men and women should be educated together, just as they are reared in the family at home.

So in 1873, Estey Hall becomes the first building in the nation for the housing and the education of black women on a Co-educational campus.

Over time, enrollment in the school grew and in the spring of 1875, Shaw Collegian is officially incorporated as Shaw University with its motto Pro Christo Et Hvmanitate for Christ and humanity.

From the outset, Tupper hoped to establish a medical school to train Christian physicians to meet the healthcare needs of Blacks.

And in 1881, that dream became reality.

When his brother-in-law, Judson Leonard contributes $15,000 to build Shaw's first professional school, the Leonard School of Medicine.

It's significant that Shaw University began almost as a seminary to teach slaves how to read the Bible.

But it's unbelievable what quantum growth Shaw University had under the leadership of Henry Martin and Sarah Tupper.

- Newly freed slaves began learning how to read in 1865.

In 1883, the med school was established.

I mean, here 18 years earlier folks couldn't read and now they are in the only four-year medical school in the United States.

[Narrator] The medical training is rigorous and thorough.

Its aim, to prepare Shaw's graduates to qualify to practice anywhere.

All six men in the first graduating class passed their state medical board exams and set up practices throughout the South.

To aid in the training, a 25-bed hospital is opened to serve the Black community.

- Blacks in the South need medical care and they don't have a lot of access to it.

So in addition to the training of doctors, you have the actual act of performing medical service in a community that really desperately needs access to it.

- [Narrator] Southern Blacks also needed access to legal services.

So in December 1888 Tupper opens the School of Law to train Black attorneys.

Two years later Tupper founds the Leonard School of Pharmacy to both serve the community and train students in the dispensing of medicine.

- I believe that somehow he had intuitively a sense that while newly freed slaves were poor and ignorant as in unlearned, that they had the capacity.

No way in the world that you would've had three professional schools developed that early on if he did not have a conviction that these newly freed slaves were capable.

- This is basically the foundations of the building of the Black south and really a Black America.

This is the training of Black America's first professional class which began initially as teachers and as preachers and now is extending into other fields of endeavor.

- The period of Shaw between 1865 and the 1890s were certainly what some have labeled the golden era of Shaw University.

Henry Martin Tupper certainly was a visionary.

He had the faith and the capacity and also the desire alone with his wife Sarah Tupper to come and to give his life for these freed slaves.

He could've easily packed his bags and left but he stayed with his plan, stayed with his vision.

And I would imagine if Henry Martin Tupper were here today he would be pleased with how far Shaw and the community has come, but like the visionary he was, he wouldn't be totally satisfied.

- [Narrator] Henry Martin Tupper remained Shaw's president until his death in November 1893.

At his request he is buried on campus.

The simple epitaph on his gravestone reads, "He counted not his life dear unto himself "that he might lift Godward his brother."

For over 25 years Tupper fought to fulfill his mission but soon his expansive vision for his beloved university will be challenged by the advancing threat of Jim Crow.

- [Lucas] Shaw University was the first HBCU in the South.

And out of Shaw, at least five other institutions of higher education were formed and assisted in their development by Shaw.

- So we looked upon Shaw as being the mother of HBCUs.

- In less than 50 years out of the Civil War there are 800 African-American schools built.

Many of them were turned into colleges and universities.

But the Northern commitment to equality, to advancement, to justice among African-Americans did have limits, in part because Southern White culture is so vehement in its opposition and also violent in its opposition so that when you have the South fighting back, the North basically says that's not my fight.

[train horn blows] - [Narrator] In 1896, southern resistance wins a major victory when a Louisiana law requiring separate railway cars for Blacks and Whites is upheld by the Supreme Court.

The landmark decision in Plessy versus Ferguson legitimizes state laws that mandate segregation by race.

Across the South, state legislatures quickly extend the doctrine to cover many areas of public life, and the Jim Crow system is born.

- Plessy versus Ferguson institutionalizes separate but equal and it signals that federal courts who had been on the side of African-Americans are now turning away from that and won't uphold African-American equality.

What formal institutionalized legal segregation does by law rather than by choice is that it begins a whole process of the inequitable distribution of resources that continues over generations.

So separate is not equal in the schools and social services in any kind of way.

- When Plessy versus Ferguson came down, Shaw University like many institutions that had seen golden years of establishing opportunities for freed Blacks, began to struggle with finances, began to struggle with its identity and it began to struggle with its very existence.

- [Narrator] To make ends meet Shaw's second President Charles Meserve faces the grim prospect of closing the professional schools which are the pride of many but operate at a loss.

By 1914 low enrollment and high deficits force the closure of the law school and Leonard Medical School and its pharmacy are shuttered soon after.

Like many historically Black colleges and universities, Shaw struggles financially, limited both by her students inability to pay tuition, and a lack of a sufficient endowment to draw upon to cover shortfalls.

Under Jim Crow, churches become even more essential to Shaw's survival.

They hold Shaw Days to raise money and direct promising students into the school.

In turn, Shaw trains teachers and pastors that preach about the importance of education in the face of social injustice.

- Because the church was the centerpiece of the African-American community at that time, the General Baptist State Convention established a committee that would make sure that funds were raised solely for the purpose of Shaw and churches were focused on making sure that Shaw would remain in existence.

- At that stage 90% of all African-Americans who pursued a college degree attended Black colleges.

Their role was really to develop the full individual and not just to provide academic preparation.

These were not only academic institutions, they were freedom schools, and they were preparing their graduates to challenge the established order, to challenge the status quo.

- My elementary school teachers and my parents taught us that you can be anything that you choose to be.

We were not trained to the limitations that racism imposed.

We were trained to dream and my teachers used to say, "Get ready for the opportunity that is on the way."

[gentle piano music] * - Ella Baker is important to Shaw because she initiated change.

She had the courage to lead, to sacrifice, and to make the example of what may be needed in order to move ahead.

- Ella Baker is the kind of student that Historically Black Colleges and Universities produced and boast of.

When Ella Baker graduates as valedictorian of her class in 1927, the administration's probably happy to see her go.

She's shaken a lot of leaves here and ruffled a lot of feathers in part because of her commitment to social justice.

- [Narrator] As a girl Ella Baker listened to her grandmother's stories about life as a slave in Warren County, North Carolina.

And she witnessed firsthand the early struggle for Black civil rights.

- The family story had it that during election time if White people tried to intimidate Black voters Ella Baker's grandfather was one of the men who would go and offer them protection.

So she comes from a family that's proud, that's independent, who pass on this idea that you must improve yourself and then help to improve the community of which you are a part.

- [Narrator] After graduating from Shaw, Baker worked as a journalist in Harlem before being hired by the NAACP as a field secretary, and quickly moves up the ranks to Director of Branches.

She is an outspoken advocate for equality and pushes for more support of local activist campaigns.

- She challenges the kind of autocratic leadership that is part and parcel of the NAACP, its kind of patient preaching and practices.

She really wants to see a diversity of its membership.

She wants it to move out of its middle class box and to embrace the working class and kind of bring them into the fold.

[bus air brakes] - [Narrator] On December 1, 1955 the modern Civil Rights Movement begins when Rosa Parks refuses to surrender her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama.

Her arrest sparks a 13-month mass protest that ends with the Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public buses is unconstitutional.

Following the success of the bus boycott, church ministers from across the South form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to coordinate local protest groups in nonviolent resistance.

Led by Martin Luther King, the SCLC becomes a new base for political social action and drafts Ella Baker to organize its efforts, but Baker favors a broad grassroots approach over King's top-down charismatic leadership.

- I think my favorite quote by Ella Baker is, "Strong people don't need strong leaders, they need training in how to become leaders themselves."

On February 1, 1960 the sit-ins begin in Greensboro, North Carolina and Ella Baker recognizes that this is a new phase of activism.

- [Narrator] Within weeks, students at other HBCUs across the South mount similar protests.

- The beginning of 1960 was a breath of fresh air for her.

It was the very thing that she'd been looking for, the opportunity she'd been waiting on, and she was able to convince the SCLC to convene a meeting of those student activists at her alma mater.

Undoubtedly in the back of her mind when she returned home to Shaw it must have been a kinda, "I told you so."

- I was literally a son of Ella Baker.

I met her in 1960 when SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was established on this campus.

She was a wise lady.

- Now the NAACP and the SCLC had an ulterior motive in mind.

They had intended to bring these students into their folds and they in fact were competing to see who among them could get as many as students as quickly as possible and it was in fact Ella Baker that said, "Oh no, we want them to remain independent."

- Dr. Martin Luther King wanted the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to be under the parentage of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

She said, "No way, old folks haven't made any changes, so don't stop young folks from making changes."

So SNCC remained independent throughout those years.

I had heard all of my life, "Prepare for the opportunities that are coming."

That was one of the opportunities that came.

We went monthly down to Atlanta, Georgia to Morehouse College to sit with Dr. King and Ella Baker and other members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference who supported us.

- So you had a bunch of personalities coming together to convene, to centralize a fairly decentralized movement.

There was one faction who wanted to concentrate on voter registration and another who wanted to concentrate on direct action protests.

And it was in fact Ella Baker who negotiated this kind of mutuality that the organization could have these two foci and they didn't have to be mutually exclusive.

- I was one of the major organizers of the sit-ins.

The sit-ins were directed at variety stores that would allow us to shop but we could not sit down at the lunch counters.

After A&T had sat-in at Woolworth's in Greensboro we organized ourselves a couple of weeks later and we sat-in at Woolworth's in Cameron Village.

I was the first to be arrested.

[prison door slamming] - The reason that we could be a potent weapon is that we didn't have jobs.

If our parents had gotten out and demonstrated, the economic order, and political order, would've decimated them.

When we were demonstrating, we would not allow students who had high-profile parents.

Teachers and postal workers, we would not allow them because we didn't wanna take a chance that their picture would be taken, and it would be in the paper, and their parents would be fired.

My father was a minister.

They couldn't fire him.

- Those young men and women who came to create the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee fanned out throughout the South, put their lives on the line, and worked arm-in-arm with other civil rights organizations to tear down the walls of segregation and help build you know, the foundation for a nation that provides social justice for all, yet to be achieved, but, fought for by students and faculty and administrators alike.

- With the coming of student activists, you see that there is a very consistent and persistent effort to dismantle segregation through direct action, nonviolent protests.

And that had been unheard of until that time, and that is in part why student activists from Black colleges were so unique, and Black colleges were so special, because they were arguably at the nexus of this modern civil rights movement, in a way in which even the black church was not.

- The impact of that is: had there not been the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, there would not have been the Civil Rights Act of 1964, signed by President Lyndon Johnson.

No SNCC, no Civil Rights Act, no Voting Rights Act, no Obama.

It's just as clear as anything.

So, what we did as young college students was revolutionary in changing the condition of things in this nation.

[birds chirping] [serene music] - [Narrator] Throughout its history, Shaw University has faced many challenges, and been shaped and reshaped by its leaders, both to insure its survival, and to meet the needs of its students.

During the turbulent 1960s, Shaw is transformed by one of her own.

- I was here in the '60s, when Doctor James Cheek became president, and I saw this person with charisma, with leadership to the hilt, he had a very good relationship with students, a very excellent relationship with his staff and faculty, and it just looked like a new day.

- [Narrator] As a student at Shaw, Cheek had agitated for change, and his vision for the school attracts much-needed financial support.

He retires owed debt, and implements the Shaw Plan of Education, which revamps the curriculum, while raising academic standards in providing remedial support for students with deficiencies.

He also launches a $10,000,000 building campaign, to restore and expand the campus.

It's an ambitious period of growth and renewal.

During his five year tenure, enrollment doubles, and Shaw's operating budget increases from $700,000 to nearly $6,000,000 a year.

But Doctor Cheek's departure for Howard University leaves his alma mater saddled with debt that future presidents will contend with for years.

To make matters worse, as Shaw struggles to balance its books, desegregation in higher education is driving a decline in enrollment at HBCUs.

The drop in student revenue hits Black colleges hard, as many rely more heavily on tuition than majority schools with better public funding.

- Historically Black colleges, whether they've been public or private, they've always been under-resourced, in terms of public, federal, or state support.

I mean, they were, most of them, founded in the states of the old Confederacy, which were hostile to notions of African Americans achieving their educational aspirations.

They've always received lesser amounts of funding than equivalent institutions that were built for White students.

- [Narrator] For some HBCUs, the challenge is too great.

Over time, they lose accreditation, students, and funding, forcing them to close.

And by 1986, Shaw's financial problems are front-page news.

Dwindling enrollment, allegations of fraud and financial mismanagement, bring the university to the edge of insolvency, before a small group of alumni and professors makes an extraordinary personal sacrifice to keep the university open.

- Well, the challenge at that time was one of renewal and resolve.

We were in need of finances.

We were in need of support.

And many of us at that time joined together to mortgage our homes, to generate a loan to save the institution.

To us it was Shaw now, and Shaw forever.

- [Narrator] In time, that same passion that many Shaw alumni feel for their alma mater will be brought to bear.

- I just loved Shaw University.

I can't tell you enough how important Shaw has been to me in my life and my family.

I never thought I'd see the day I thought it would be an honor just giving away money.

But, when it comes to Shaw, you just can't do enough.

- [Narrator] The University Board of Trustees hires a consultant to evaluate Shaw's fiscal health.

And soon, the school is making different headlines.

Shaw restructures her debt, and launches a $40,000,000 fund drive, with support from state politicians and local business leaders.

To further stabilize the school, Talbert O. Shaw is named the university's 12th president.

He held a master's degree and doctorate in ethics, and was a tenured professor and dean at Morgan State, an HBCU outside of Baltimore.

He inherits a school with no endowment, behind on its taxes, struggling to meet payroll, and drowning in debt.

Editorials in the Raleigh News & Observer are calling for the school to reform or close.

- News and Observer said, "We were gonna close."

There was no need for us to exist.

And that probably, That probably was the best thing that could have happened to Shaw University, for them to say that.

Talbert Shaw said, "I'll be clear, it would not happen.

Not in my tenure."

- The man was born to lead.

There's just no question about it.

He pulled corporate America, corporate Raleigh, he pulled them in, he got the little guy on the streets, he got everybody.

I mean... Shaw's name was like ringing throughout the city.

He had that fire about him that made you wanna work.

- [Narrator] Under Shaw's firm leadership, the university is soon on solid footing.

His campaign for excellence strikes a positive chord with students and faculty, and draws new pledges of support from the community and alumni.

- First of all, I don't think he was bashful about letting folk know where the need was.

There's a saying, if you've got money, you can get money.

[laughs] You know.

And so, when someone was willing to make the kind of contribution that Mr. Gary had made, then all of a sudden, there were other donors who were willing to contribute.

- [Narrator] Though some bristle at Dr. Shaw's leadership style, his tireless fundraising revives the school and sparks new investment across campus.

In time, even the News & Observer's publisher would donate to his cause, so that by the end of Shaw's tenure, he had nearly doubled enrollment, established an endowment, increased the graduation rate, renovated many buildings, and constructed the Talbert O. Shaw Living/Learning Center, the largest building project in school history.

But good times come and go.

And Shaw, like many other HBCUs, continues to operate on a thin margin made worse by economic downturns, federal and state budget cuts, and uncertain alumni support.

- Sometimes, some of us catch amnesia.

We make it, and we hang out our do not disturb sign.

Put on shades of indifference.

Think we got to where we are on our own, but you didn't.

It was a Shaw University, it was a St. Augustine College, it was a Livingstone, North Carolina Central, and I can go on and on, that helped a lot of us make it.

- If you're a private school, you know, your funds, you don't get a budget from the state every year.

You have to go out and raise it.

You started at zero base.

You have to go out and say, alumni, please, every dollar that you can, please, distribute it back to Shaw, in order for Shaw to continue doing for others what they've done for you.

- It's important to give back so somebody can go foreword.

If nobody had ever given to Shaw before I got here, even Estey Hall wouldn't be here.

So somebody did something for me, that I don't know who they were, and I don't know how much they gave, but somebody was giving.

So now it's my turn to give, and when I move off the scene it's time for the others to give.

If every graduate of Shaw would just send Shaw $100, they would have some money.

You owe it to the next generation.

[bell rings] - [Narrator] In 2009, during The Great Recession, Shaw found itself on the brink of foreclosure, before Congressman Bob Etheridge helped secure an emergency federal loan to consolidate and restructure her debt.

- I called the secretary of education, we had a chat.

He said, "Well, we maybe, I don't know if we get on it."

And I said, "Wait a minute, let me explain to you."

This was a Thursday afternoon.

"This has to be done by Monday."

He understood, he had attorneys work through the weekend.

Cause this institution is too important to not have it survive and thrive.

[piano music] - I was hoping that having elected the first Black President of this country, the issue of race, would have been subsided, but it's not.

- I think we are striving to live in a world that's nonracial, by removing a lot of what we have inherited and what we have been taught, and what we have been willing to accommodate.

- For African Americans, there are still huge gaps of educational attainment, huge gaps of employment attainment, huge gaps of wealth attainment.

And so, the notion that we're in a post-racial society, that we've achieved all of the goals of this great democracy, you know, I think you'd find most African Americans hard pressed to embrace that notion.

- I believe that racism exists because we turn to fear more than we do love.

We fear what we don't understand, we fear what we don't recognize, we fear what we feel will take something from us.

And if you really sit and think about it, none of that is real.

No one is trying to take anything from anyone, no one is trying to overthrow anyone's power, or infringe on anyone else's rights.

Everyone, I think, wants the same thing we all want, opportunity, we all want to be happy, we all want to achieve.

We want that for our children, we want that for our communities and to deprive, actively deprive, one group of that for one reason or another, I think it really boils down to fear.

- I think so often, we become complacent with things as they are, rather than how things ought to be.

So we need more soldiers of truth, who are willing to step forward and follow that inner voice that lets you know what's right and what's wrong.

[birds chirping] - [Narrator] It's graduation day at Shaw University, 150 years after it was founded, to teach freed slaves to read and write.

The seeds sown here by Henry Martin Tupper, are still bearing fruit.

- [Group] Shaw.

[laughter] - [Narrator] But given the broad range of options, and higher education today, some question the ongoing need for Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

- We need HBCU's, because there are still underrepresented people, who need education.

They may not have had the money, they may not have had the grades, they may not have had the family support, but Shaw provides, and other HBCU's provide that opportunity, that leg up, to level the playing field and maintain opportunity for all.

- If there is an antidote to racism in this nation, it is education.

And that is why it is so important that we invest in it, and we invest in institutions that have proven track records in serving the best interest of their students, and of their communities, despite whatever difficulties they face.

If you, even for a moment, just removed blackness from these institutions, I don't think that anyone would argue about their validity.

What we're basically arguing about, is should race matter?

And fortunately or unfortunately, it still does.

The way in which it matters here, matters best and matters most, I'd like to believe, in order for America to live up to its creed, and to be the nation that it has aspired to be.

- In my mind, are HBCU's relevant?

I think yeah.

You know, any institution that can provide an education to somebody is definitely going to be relevant.

And to say that HBCU's aren't relevant, is very offensive to some people.

[bell ringing] [crowd clapping] [crowd cheering] - What mattered at the origination of HBCU's, why HBCU's were created in the first place?

We needed opportunities for education, we needed advocacy, we needed a support system, we needed a safe haven and those things that were needed then, are still needed now.

- We need them because of the outstanding service that they have rendered to a significant population, that has been ignored.

And until racism is removed in our society, there will still be a need to have institutions, that push for justice and equality.

- There are many minority students who can go to the Dukes and the Stanfords, and the NYUs, and the Penn States, but there is still is such a disparity in education, at the lower level.

That there are some students who can graduate from high school, but the major universities, have not mastered the ability to be able to move students, who come to school with challenges, to raise them up to the level that they graduate with competence.

That's a specialty of HBCUs, raising the human spirit and stimulating students, who come from challenged backgrounds, to invest four years and to leave on par with others.

- [Announcer] Steven A. Quimby - HBCUs have demonstrated, for well over a century and a half, their ability to produce leaders, who go out into the world and make the world a better place.

And if indeed that is the function of education, then we all ought to support HBCUs, not as a vestige of separation or of segregation, but rather as a demonstration of possibility.

- These institutions play the same role today that they played before.

I mean they educate people, who want to be educated.

And today, it's not that African Americans can't be educated anywhere else, but today 10% of all African American college students, about 300,000 of them, continue to choose Historically Black Colleges.

You ask a Black college student, why she is at a HBCU, and she's going to tell you because it's a nurturing environment.

It's more like family, I'm gonna be an individual and not a number.

But we've also encountered there are other students who are going to college, for the first time, and will break the cycle of under education and under employment, because they'll have a college degree.

- Seeing folks who look like you, who come from where you come from, achieving things that may have never occurred to you, may not have been presented to you, to see that that's possible, that is important.

And that is why HBCUs matter.

- [Narrator] Our future is based on the young people who show up at this university, and every university across this country.

They chose Shaw, because they wanted that kind of relationship, that only Shaw can offer.

Because of its history, because of its heritage, because of those missionaries that showed up here, 150 years ago, and said we need to start something here.

- I think he'd be proud, I think he would say mission accomplished.

And yet we aren't where I think we were going to be.

- Shaw is legacy, history, performance, outcomes.

The president said, "Shaw is epic," I agree there too.

- Shaw is family, we love each other, we love the institution, we love its history, we love its story, we love its mission for Christ and humanity.

That's what it's all about, that's what life is all about, far as I'm concerned.

- The best thing about Shaw University, is the fact that it is in existence, and has done so much to provide a future for so many.

- It's an experience like no other.

I don't care how far you go, or what you do, or how many years pass, Shaw is always, always home.

- Shaw is a great university.

Shaw changed me by allowing me to be in a space, where I can cultivate my educational and professional talents, and turn it into a clear, obtainable plan.

Now that I know what I want to do in life, I know what I want to accomplish in life, and I know how I'm gonna do it.

- [Announcer] Jordan David Galloway.

[crowd cheers] [crowd applauds] - [Dubroy] Shaw University graduating class of 2016, you are epic men and women, and I am proud to call you fellow alumni, of this great university.

You are our future, we depend on you to repair what earlier generations have broken, to create what we have yet to create, to discover what we have not yet discovered, and to heal what we have so far left unhealed.

[multiple conversations, greetings] [crying] - Oh my daddy, I love you so much.

- I think Shaw is essential to the higher education landscape, and while there will be those who challenge that notion, as long as there are graduates of this institution, and graduates of the other 105 Historically Black Colleges, as long as we have the strength of purpose, of the vision and the determination, and the persistence, these institutions will not only survive, they'll prosper.

And they'll continue to do what they been doing now, for a century and a half, and that is giving young people a chance to get an education in an environment, which celebrates them for who they are, for where they came from, and gives them the tools to chart their own paths to the future.

[piano music] - The 150th provided us an opportunity to really look back, and reconnect to our history and just how far we've come.

But Shaw's story has to be more than what we've done.

We can't afford to rest on our laurels, we have some of the greatest students in the world, the greatest faculty, administration, and we have a history of excellence and for blazing new trails.

So, I absolutely feel like we'll have a place going forward.

[piano music] [violin music] - [Dillard] People support things that they can believe in, and things that appear to them to be stable and contributing.

The ability to read, to think critically, to be creative, to see possibilities, is what this university has been about.

The mission has been to provide a quality education for students, who might otherwise not have the opportunity.

I'm gonna hold on tightly to that part of its mission.

To make sure that we continue to produce leaders and thinkers, and creators.

Sometimes we have to help you determine what it is that you're capable of.

And because we're small, we can do that, we can spend the time, we can invest in getting to know individuals, and when we do that, we're able to help individuals realize their potential.

And Shaw's legacy is about giving people the opportunity to go change the lives of communities, of nations, and that's what we do.

[background music] * - This program is made possible by a grant from the A.J.

Fletcher Foundation.

The North Carolina-based foundation supports social justice, public broadcasting, education, the arts, and human services throughout North Carolina.

A DVD is available at mpt.org/shop For more on Shaw Rising and HBCUs, visit... mpt.org/ShawRising * *