HBCU!

An excerpt from the Huffington Post -

The Candidates Embracing Their Black-College Roots
Andrew Gillum and Stacey Abrams are part of a wave of black politicians who are playing up their HBCU bona fides, and in turn raising the profile of the beleaguered institutions.
By ADAM HARRIS

Another, perhaps unforeseen renaissance, however, has been the rise of black politicians who graduated from these colleges. In addition to Gillum, Stacey Abrams, a gubernatorial candidate in Georgia, and Mandela Barnes, a candidate for lieutenant governor in Wisconsin, both attended historically black colleges. The prospect of so many black-college graduates being elected to statewide office in the same year is unprecedented, Keneshia Grant, an assistant professor of political science at Howard University, told me.

Now, of course, there are HBCU alums across all levels of government. Senator Kamala Harris graduated from Howard University, and the mayors of Atlanta, New Orleans, and Birmingham—all of whom were elected in 2017—also attended HBCUs. And there have previously been governors who attended black colleges: In 1989, Douglas Wilder became the governor of Virginia and the first elected black governor in the United States. In the 1870s, there was P. B. S. Pinchback, who very briefly served as the governor of Louisiana. These candidates—Abrams, Gillum, and Barnes—are continuing that black political tradition.

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/11/gillum-abrams-and-blue-wave-hbcu-politicians/574921/?utm_source=feed