FOR GENERATIONS TO COME: SOUTHERN HBCUS AND THEIR COLORED CONVENTIONS ROOTS

FOUNDERS, EDUCATORS, AND THEIR DESCENDANTS

State Normal and Industrial College for Colored Students, the predecessor of Florida A&M University, was a dream that took years to come into fruition. Convention delegates, politicians, educators, and community members all had to come together to build and sustain the institution. That Thomas V. R. Gibbs introduced legislation for the establishment was almost a guarantee that Black educators would be central to the institution unlike other Black educational institutions of the time. Many of these institutions were established and sustained by the American Missionary Association who believed Black people were not equipped to teach in the early years of Reconstruction. This belief ignored the educational opportunities many Blacks took advantage of throughout the nineteenth century and the work of Black educational activists. The storymap below explores where Black educators were trained. As graduates, they relocated to different states to secure educational justice for others. Many of their children and grandchildren did the same. The following pages trace the lives of the Saverys, Headens, and Gibbs to show how generational activism animates the histories of HBCUs