How Paul Quinn College Put History on Its Basketball Court

[TexasTowelie]

How Paul Quinn College, the state’s oldest HBCU, is using a unique canvas to tell the story of its university and the history of the people it serves.




DALLAS -- To commemorate its 150th anniversary, Paul Quinn College, the oldest historically Black university in the state, wanted to do something on a similarly momentous scale. The school has endured generations of anti-Black public policies, particularly during Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era, and, more recently, its leadership has watched as state and local policy makers seek to limit how that history is taught and recognized.

Looking back at these years, Paul Quinn President Dr. Michael Sorrell wanted to find a way to highlight this story, to remind people that it wasn’t that long ago that Black Americans were not welcome in downtown Dallas.

Sorrell found a perfect canvas: the school’s basketball court in its new gym.

“Historically Black Colleges were founded with an acknowledgement that, for the American experiment to be fully realized for all of its citizens, there are going to need to be some extraordinary steps,” he says. Steps, like the creation of the nation’s first urban college work model: a higher education program where low-income students are introduced to high-paying careers through off-campus internships, organized by direct partnerships with local corporations.

HBCUs like Paul Quinn were founded to educate recently freed enslaved people and economically marginalized individuals. The existence of HBCUs in the state and national consciousness is a physical reminder of the antiquated racist policies that built the southern United States.

Read more: https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/2022/january/how-paul-quinn-college-put-history-on-its-basketball-court/