Historic Cheyney University Needs Help
Historic Cheyney University Needs Help!
Junious Ricardo Stanton
Cheyney University
of Pennsylvania, a member of the state owned Pennsylvania State
System of Higher Education is the oldest institution of higher
learning for people of African descent in the United States. It’s
origins date back to 1829 with the Last Will and Testament of Richard
Humphreys a white man who was born on February 13, 1750 on the
British Colonial Island of Tortola in the West Indies.
Slavery was deeply
rooted in Tortola, it was the engine that drove the colonial island’s
agrarian economy. Humphreys father who raised sugar and cotton owned
slaves. Humphreys’ parents died when he was a young boy but his
father’s will provided for Richard and his older brother Thomas to
be apprenticed in America; Richard as a gold and silversmith and
Thomas as a tanner working in animal hides.
In America Richard
eventually became a successful silversmith operating a shop at 54
High Street in Philadelphia. Humphreys was also an upstanding member
of The Religious Society of Friends also known as Quakers. The
Quakers were renowned for valuing education, thrift, hard work and
piety. While living in Philadelphia Humphreys became keenly aware of
the horrid conditions of Blacks and provided in his will for the
establishment of an institution that would, “.. having for its
object the benevolent design of instructing the descendants of the
African Race in school learning, in the various branches of mechanik
arts, and trades and in Agriculture: in order to prepare and fit and
qualify them to act as teachers in such of those branches of useful
business as in the Judgment of said society they may appear best
qualified for...”
Humphreys
bequeathed $10,000,one tenth of his total estate, to fund that
institution. Richard Humphreys died on February 5, 1832. The thirteen
trustees he named in his will, all fellow members of the Yearly
Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends accepted the challenge to
execute Humphreys’ wishes. During their planning it was first named
The African Institute but was later changed to the
Institute of Colored Youth.
ICY
was not founded or chartered as a college. It didn’t have to be
considering the lofty standards the Quakers set for all their
educational institutions. Plus ICY was created to also teach
mechanical arts, trades and agriculture. ICY became a forerunner of
American land grant colleges and universities by several decades.
The
Quakers (actually the Humphreys Foundation) administered ICY which
later changed the name to Cheyney after the Quaker who sold farmland
for the school in Delaware County Pennsylvania to the Trustees, until
the foundation sold the school to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in
1922. Needless to say the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania lacked the
same passion, concern and commitment for
Cheyney’s mission to educate Blacks as
the Quakers. The
Commonwealth’s lack of fervor
and vision resulted in decades of neglect and racist policies that
continued after the creation of PASSHE in 1982. This neglect has
continued to the present.
Despite
an uninterrupted denial
of equal support by the Commonwealth, Cheyney’s administrators
still retained the commitment
to
education, moral uplift and service the Quakers infused in it when
they founded ICY. Under Commonwealth and PASSHE ownership, Cheyney
suffered from a continuous lack of equal and adequate funding from
the state. In the mid to late 60’s student unrest, protests and
direct
action forced the state to pay attention and up the ante. But once
Wade Wilson who was
appointed President of Cheyney State College after the first wave of
student uprisings retired as
Cheyney president, the Commonwealth and PASSHE refused to recruit the
innovative leadership needed to position Cheyney as a premier
educational institution.
But
it wasn’t just Cheyney, PASSHE as a system proved not to be ready
for prime time. Many think because of the early
Quaker influence in
Pennsylvania that
it is a progressive state,
it is not. It is as benighted and backward as its some of its more
infamous sister states, especially when it comes to public higher
education!
Just two years ago the
Commonwealth
out of necessity was forced
to merge six universities
into two new regional
schools due to massive
fiscal and enrollment challenges. Pennsylvania ranks at the bottom as
far as public higher
education goes and is one of the least affordable states for pubic
higher education in the nation.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/admissions/traditional-age/2023/07/12/pa-public-colleges-battle-students-and-funding,
In
many ways PASSHE is merely a “good ol’ boy’ network, a bastion
of cronyism and political
appointees with little or no insight into the
complexities and dynamics of higher
education. Governors and the legislature with the exceptions
of Tom Wolf the immediate past governor and the current Governor Josh
Shapiro, have not prioritized public higher education in the
Commonwealth with the
exception of Penn State University.
PASSHE as a system has
failed in its mission to provide low cost quality public higher
education in Pennsylvania for working class families.
https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/study-ranks-pa-worst-state-for-higher-education/
Now
Cheyney faces yet another challenge. The Middle States Commission on
Higher Education the regional accreditation agency placed Cheyney
University of Pennsylvania on probation on November 16, 2023. The
Middle
Sates Website
posted this,
“To
acknowledge receipt of the supplemental information report requested
by the Commission action of June 22, 2023. To note the on-site
follow-up team visit by the Commission's representatives to the main
campus at 1837 University Circle, Cheyney, PA 19319 on September 5-6,
2023. To acknowledge receipt of additional information provided by
the institution on October 23, 2023.
To place the institution on probation and note that the institution's
accreditation is in jeopardy because of insufficient evidence that
the institution is currently in compliance with Standard II (Ethics
and Integrity), Standard III (Design and Delivery of the Student
Learning Experience), Standard VI (Planning, Resources, and
Institutional Improvement), and former Requirements of Affiliation 5
and 11. To note the institution remains accredited while on
probation. To note further that federal regulations limit the period
during which an institution may be in non-compliance, which started
on November 16, 2023.”
https://www.msche.org/institution/0480/
The
underlined
emphasis is mine. Go
to the Website and read it for yourself. The
wording of this post
is a direct indictment against the administration of President
Aaron
Walton and an indirect indictment against PASSHE and the Governor who
appointed him. Middle States is saying the institution lacks
integrity and ethics and questions the administration's ability to
even accomplish the mission of the university! This is a huge
development. It places the Commonwealth in a major conundrum. What to
do, how does
PASSHE
get out from under this indictment by an extremely influential and
independent third
party accrediting
agency?!
The
knee jerk
letter of support from the Chancellor and the PASSHE Board of
Governors is worded in such a way when
you read it,
it is
obvious
they didn’t even take the time to read the Middle States’ notice.
Contrary to their letter, Middle States did request additional
documentation and additional meetings with the university.
Let’s
be honest,
Aaron Walton did not create the problems at Cheyney University,
Cheyney
was a mess.
However
he
continued
them as a member of PASSHE’s Board of Governors by being a company
man especially
when he served
as Vice Chair. Walton exacerbated the school’s problems when PASSHE
sent him to Cheyney as president! He
was simply not a good leader. There
is no way to get around Middle State’s placing Cheyney on Probation
without a change of leadership! That is the first
step towards a practicable
solution.
It
is one thing for
a president to be
inept or incompetent but it is catastrophic when he
or she
is inept, unethical and unable to carry out the processes for
accomplishing the university’s mission and
reason
for existence! Frankly
I
don’t see how any
additional documentation will alter this reality!
Albert Einstein said, “You cannot solve problems using the same
consciousness that created them.”; to which I add or the same
energy and the
same
people who created or contributed to the problem! The
bottom line is, Aaron
Walton must go!
-30-
George Washington Carver
Junious Ricardo
Stanton
In the mid to latter part of the twentieth century in the US you
could rarely go to a city or county in the South that didn’t have a
school named after George Washington Carver. Even during the days of
virulent racial oppression and caste, George Washington Carver was
viewed as “a credit to his race” and famous scientist who
single-handedly saved Southern agriculture. Today many Black people
and Euro-Americans don’t even know who George Washington Carver
was. So as part of this year’s Black History articles I will share
a bit of Carver’s personal and professional history, genius and
accomplishments.
The exact date of George Washington Carver’s birth is not known.
It is surmised he was born between 1863-1865 in Diamond Grove
Missouri during the formal enslavement era. He was born into
servitude, into a large family. His parents were “owned” by a man
named Moses Carver. His family was given the surname of the White man
who owned them, Carver. Before he was born George’s father died in
an accident. As an infant George suffered several traumatic
experiences. When he was only a few days old, George along with his
mother and a sister were kidnapped by raiders and transported to
Kentucky. Only George was found and retrieved by an agent working on
behalf of Moses Carver. This was the norm during enslavement;
“owners” would pay “agents”, trackers aka slave catchers to
trail and retrieve their “property” as part of the federal
government's Fugitive Slave Act.
When Carver was returned to Moses Carver’s farm he had no parents.
His father had died before George was born and the trackers weren’t
able to recapture his mother and sister so George and another brother
James were raised by Moses Carver and his wife Susan.
George was a sickly boy so he was spared the hard work in the fields
even after the War Between the States was over. Early on he developed
a fascination with plants and herbs while living with the Carvers
working in Mrs. Carver’s garden. Moses and Susan Carver also taught
young George and his brother how to read and write.
George unlike many of his peers was able to attend school. He was
sent to an all Black school in Neosho Missouri where he lived with a
Black couple named Andrew and Mariah Watkins. He learned more about
plants living and working for and with them but he subsequently left
Neosho and migrated to Kansas. He completed high school in Kansas,
applied to and was accepted at a White college that rejected him once
they discovered he was Black. He applied to, was accepted and
attended a college in Iowa, Simpson College, where he studied art and
music but later transferred to and graduated from Iowa State
Agricultural School now known as Iowa State University. Carver
studied botany earning a Bachelor’s Degree in 1894, the first
African American to do so. Carver remained at Iowa State Agricultural
School earning a Master’s Degree in Agricultural Science in 1896.
He taught at the college once again he was the first Black to do so.
Booker T. Washington was looking for science teachers for his
Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama. In 1896 Booker
T. Washington heard about George Washington Carver and recruited him
to come to Tuskegee. There Carver spent his life teaching,
researching, becoming a world renowned innovator, inventor and highly
respected scientist.
Carver focused on service providing practical education and
information to the rural Blacks in Alabama. Under Carver’s tutelage
Tuskegee initiated mobile agricultural education programs, hands on
demonstrations in the local communities to teach farming and animal
husbandry skills to rural farmers. Using his research and ideas
Carver showed the farmers how to use crop rotation to replenish the
soil because exclusive cotton planting was depleting the nutrients in
the soil. Carver used what he learned and taught at his Tuskegee
teaching laboratory to help farmers increase the yields on their
cotton crops by alternating planting cotton with soil improvement
crops like soybeans, sweet potatoes and peanuts. He expanded the
mobile outreach to offer midwifery, family hygiene with nurses to
help educate and service rural Alabama communities.
Alabama farmers’ most profitable crop was cotton and many of them
were leery of Carver’s instruction to plant soybeans, sweet
potatoes and peanuts. Carver meanwhile was hard at work discovering
new products that could be developed from those crops. Carver
discovered and developed over three hundred products and new uses for
those alternative crops which allowed the farmers to profit from his
discoveries and save Southern agriculture in the process.
Carvers work and success brought him to the attention of government
officials and industrialists like Henry Ford and Thomas A. Edison.
Carver was often invited to Washington D.C. to testify before
Congress or as a speaker at important policy meetings and educational
seminars. His work benefited the whole nation not just Alabama!
George
Washington Carver’s research saved Southern agriculture from
self-destruction and in the process created new markets for plants
many ignored, took for granted or failed to recognize their
potential. Carver was not bitter about the racial caste and
oppression he experienced during his life. He had
an extremely
positive philosophy about life. One of his many quotes about living
and life was,
“When
you can do the common things of life in an uncommon way, you will
command the attention of the world.”
Carver
explained his success this way, “God
is going to reveal to us things He never revealed before if we put
our hands in His. No books ever go into my laboratory. The thing I am
to do and the way of doing it are revealed to me. I never have to
grope for methods. The method is revealed to me the moment I am
inspired to create something new. Without God to draw aside the
curtain I would be helpless.”
During his life, Carver
overcame obstacles and
barriers and ended up a highly respected scientists during an era of
virulent racial
animus and terror.
Carver discovered hundreds of uses for peanuts, soybeans and sweet
potatoes as food, commercial and industrial products such as cooking
oils, milk, soaps, cosmetics, medicines, dyes, paints, paper, and
alternatives to silk and rubber. Prior to Carver arriving on
Tuskegee’s campus in 1896 the peanut wasn’t even recognized as a
bona fide US crop; but thanks to Carver by 1940 the lowly peanut was
ranked number six and had become the second leading cash crop in the
South behind cotton!
For all of his accomplishments and recognition George Washington
Carver has a mild mannered humble and deeply spiritual man. He prayed
and meditated and said the plants spoke to him and shared their
secrets. Carver eschewed the spotlight and remained committed to
serving his people using botany and chemistry to make a tremendous
impact where he was. He turned down lucrative requests from Henry
Ford and Thomas Edison to work with them. He only owned a few
patents on his discoveries, he allowed others to take credit for his
research and work.
What can we take from the life of this genius? My take-away is:
cultivate our innate gifts, follow your passion, be committed, stay
single minded and focused, remain humble and appreciative of your
successes. My family owes a deep gratitude to George Washington
Carver. On my paternal side my ancestors owned land and were peanut
farmers (along with corn, soybeans and other crops) in Southampton
County Virginia from the late 1870’s to the present. Thank you Dr.
Carver!
-30-
African Genius and Originality
African Genius and
Originality
Junious
Ricardo Stanton
Over
the years, I have shared information about the accomplishments of
Africans that largely go unrecognized and overlooked due to a
deliberate campaign to suppress, obfuscate and ignore African people
and our history. For example few people know Africans were the first
boat builders,
https://keyamsha.com/2019/09/07/the-8000-year-old-dugout-canoe-from-dufuna-ne-nigeria/
the first navigators of the rivers and lakes in African who later
circumnavigating the world.
https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-important-events/did-ancient-humans-acquire-nautical-knowledge-sailing-prehistoric-megalakes-021434
Celebrating African and Black history during the shortest month of
the years is counterproductive even though we need the exposure. We
should celebrate African/human/world history all year long, daily
because it is human history.
Let’s
look at the things we take for granted that were begun, invented and
developed by our aboriginal African ancestors. Africans developed the
concept of family as an organized social as well as a biological
unit. Family formed the basis of social organization and culture.
Africans recognized the importance of blood connections and used
those blood connections what we call families as the core foundation
of their group, tribe, clan and society. Leadership and governance
were based on the family or clan.
While
animals have instinctive ways to determine leaders for example the
proverbial “alpha male”, humans developed specific methods to
create formal leadership and governance. On the most primitive level,
leadership was conducted by group consensus through elders who had
life experiences and served as leaders because of their and direct
connection to their ancestral family members. These elders were
charged with not just wisdom and guidance in daily affairs but also
with propitiating the spirit realm, serving as intermediates between
the family members, the forces of nature and the invisible energies
they perceived all around them.
The
leaders created traditions, rituals, and ceremonies to acknowledge
births, deaths, status changes such as young adulthood and marriage,
seasonal variations and to map the passing of the heavenly bodies.
This was the origin and purpose of Adams Calendar, Nabta Playa and
the similar megaliths.
https://thyblackman.com/2019/02/15/2019-ancient-african-megaliths/
This is also the origin of what we call culture. These rituals and
ceremonies included chants, hand clapping, foot stomping with
rudimentary instruments that had deliberate and specific meanings,
reasons and intentions for doing them.
In
short Africans invented government whether it was tribal elders,
tribal council, selected chiefs, hereditary chiefs or kings and
queens. As their groups expanded over territory and their populations
grew, they developed hierarchies for social administration, they
created divisions of labor, work details and they encouraged and
incorporated artistic skills and incorporated them into their daily
lives.
So
when we attend a wedding or a funeral or witness governments in
action remember our ancestors were the first to do these things! When
we look at Africa we see the beginnings of social/civil organization
what we now call civilization. We see aboriginal people exchanging,
battering and trading amongst themselves, other tribal groups in
other lands. This was the beginnings of commerce across the continent
and later into Asia and Europe.
https://african.business/2021/10/trade-investment/a-short-history-of-african
trade#:~:text=The%20very%20earliest%20evidence%20of,paintings%20dating%20from%2010%2C000BC.
Our
ancestors were the first to chop and carve trees into boats and
canoes, to weave reeds to make water tight vessels. Africans were the
first to use these boats, canoes and sailing vessels to engage in
trade, taking their surplus crops, goods and artifacts first to
nearby groups, then throughout Africa and subsequently the world.
Europeans admit the first
articulated and practiced system of ethics (Maat) originated in
Africa. Timelines indicate the first monarchy/dynasty in the world,
extensive territorial occupation and social organization originated
in Africa along the Nile Valley. Africans had empires but they were
not all created by violence and invasion, some were the result of
force and conflict some were not.
In
review Africans created: family based social organization; we created
rites of passage to mark the growth and transition of members within
the community and determined how they each fit into within the social
fabric and scheme using trial and error and later formalized
traditions. We invented rituals and ceremonies, we invented and
developed trade and commerce.
Africans
created metallurgy, working in metals like gold, cooper, bronze and
iron.
https://oxfordre.com/africanhistory/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.001.0001/acrefore-9780190277734-e-148
We invented clothing, we created early weaving machines
https://www.amatuli.co.za/2021/12/woven-together-the-art-of-african-weaving/
we invented adornment, demarcations and decorations to distinguish
social status, to tell whether a female was married was an adolescent
or a male was an initiated member of the community, a warrior or an
elder. We were the first to map the heavens.
Africans
recognized sound had power and invented music, instruments and
incorporated music and sounds into our daily activities. We invented
meaningful symbols and their recognition whether it was hieroglyphics
on papyrus, on the walls, the megaliths or Her-em-akhet (misnamed the
Sphinx by the Greeks).
Africans
created practical technology whether it was a digging stick, a
rudimentary plow, the ramp, and pulley or a weaving loom.
https://www.adireafricantextiles.com/textiles-resources-sub-saharan-africa/an-introduction-to-sub-saharan-african-textiles/loom-types-in-sub-saharan-africa/
We developed farming techniques like crop rotation, using fire to
burn the soil to give it nutrition. We were the first fishermen. We
created the first planned urban centers and cities. We were the first
educators.
I
could go on but you get the drift, we are a creative, inventive and
profoundly gifted people. This same creativity resides in our/your
DNA; it is in our genes and blood. We do ourselves our ancestors and
progeny a disservice if we allow our genius to be stifled and
atrophy, not be fully developed or expropriated by others for their
benefit and not ours!
-30-
