CHARLOTTE, N.C./JUNE 27, 2023 – More than a dozen students from Kingston University in Kingston, South West London, arrived in Charlotte in mid-June for a summer program at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte to study anti-racism and climate change.
The program partnered with Dr. Terza Lima-Neves, chair of the Department of Social Sciences and Interdisciplinary Studies, director of Global Education and Engagement and professor of Political Science at JCSU. Lima-Neves, along with three students and a JCSU alumnus, spoke with the students about HBCU culture in the United States in James B. Duke Memorial Library on June 22, 2023.
“Knowing that I’m walking on the grounds of an institution where my ancestors walked and came before me to pave the way is appealing to me,” said Jessica McDonald ’25.
“We are the best HBCU in North Carolina,” added Willie Smith ’14. “JCSU allowed a lot of people to turn their lives around and become great.”
The Kingston University students were unfamiliar with what HBCUs were, and didn’t even know what the acronym meant. In the UK, there are no historically Black colleges or universities.
The students from Kingston were surprised to know that there were historical Black spaces in the United States, and were intrigued when McDonald discussed the Divine Nine organizations in detail.
After introductions, Lima-Neves shed some light on her own experience as a student at an HBCU.
“I went to a predominately white institution (PWI) for undergraduate school, and it was very different from my experience in graduate school at Clark Atlanta University, where I earned my master’s and doctoral degrees,” she said. “That’s the place where I really came into my blackness. It was the first time I didn’t have to explain myself or where I came from.”
Lima-Neves hails from Cape Verde, an island country in the central Atlantic Ocean. She said seeing a campus filled with people who looked like her made her feel at home. That’s when she knew she wanted to teach at an HBCU.
“I knew I was in the right place,” she said. “I learned how to be unapologetically Black. That’s what I love about HBCUs. They allow us to be audacious with our blackness.”
Following introductions and a short synopsis on HBCU life, the students broke into small groups with a representative JCSU student or alumnus. In the small groups, they further discussed the similarities and differences in their experiences.
After the small group, the students walked through the Courage Exhibit, an installation donated to the University by the Levine Museum of the New South in 2012.
The exhibit focuses on the history of racism in the Carolinas, specifically segregation, separate and unequal education and the specific brutality endured by the Delaine family in Claredon County, South Carolina.
“The students from Kingston didn’t know how hidden the history of our people is here,” said Smith. “I learned that the UK has only a few unmarked police cars, and they can’t pull you over. With police brutality being what it is in the United States, I found that interesting.”
The students will finish their program at UNC Charlotte in mid-July.
