For Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Black History Month starts with terrorism. Multiple institutions of learning have had terrorists call in bomb threats, yesterday and today. Here are the ones I can find direct evidence of, either thru (semi)local reporting, or the school’s website/twitter/facebook:
- Southern University and A&M
- Howard University
- Bethune-Cookman University
- Albany State University
- Bowie State University
- Delaware State University
- University of the District of Columbia
- Coppin State University
- Morgan State University
- Edward Waters University
- Xavier University
- Fort Valley State University
- Spelman College
- Kentucky State University
- Edward Waters University
- Alcorn State University
- Mississippi Valley State University
- All HSCUs in Hinds County, Miss
- Rust College
- Jackson State University
- Tougaloo College
I would assume there are others. I would emphasize these are all acts of terrorism, with all that implies. Furthermore: this is certainly meant to, at a minimum, send a message. To put fear into Black folx and those who stand with us.
Therefore: I list all of them in this way, as a small act of defiance. Not just to the terrorists, but to a media that will certainly will make the reporting on this act murky, will dump a partial list on the public without underlining the lives at risk, and the fear the students, faculty, and community rightly feel, at this time. Presenting each institution with its own report, as separately and directly as I can, is a small pushback against how these narratives tend to fail the people involved.
More than that, I’ll leave to experts in the field.
I’ll just close on a bit of the statement from the Morgan State University President on these tragedies:
My message to you this morning is to stay strong, remain resilient, and continue to prepare yourselves to grow the future and lead the world because our nation and world desperately need more leaders steeped in the values we teach here at Morgan. Those values are Leadership, Integrity, Innovation, Diversity, Excellence and Respect. Hate is not one of them!
MisterDancer
Forgive if I’m not able to reply to question or concerns. This was stressful enough, and I cannot imagine what the people involved in these situations are dealing with.
Baud
Thanks for highlighting this.
And please fix the last block quote so it doesn’t break the mobile site.
brendancalling
Goddamn, this makes me mad.
BGinCHI
I wonder if John Roberts has heard about any of this.
Kathleen
Thank you so much for posting this on the front page. I didn’t think it has been coveered much if at all in our Rethuglican courier press. I know about it because of Twitter. I applaud your act of defiance.
trollhattan
@BGinCHI: Stop, you’re killing me!
To think he considered VRA to be a quaint leftover from an unenlightened time.
Kathleen
@brendancalling: Me too. Shaking with rage.
Betty Cracker
I hope the perpetrators are caught quickly and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Scumbags.
Josie
Thank you for front paging this. Please keep telling us the things we need to know.
raven
Cracker ass mothefuckers
mrmoshpotato
Deplorable.
Ohio Mom
I wish I could say I’m surprised but of course I’m not. I am surprised though by the number of HBCUs. A lot of the names are new to me.
West of the Rockies
The engines behind this as ever, are racism and greed (there may be more).
And to my mind, racism and greed are driven by fear. Fear of “others”, those not in the tribe. Fear of perceived limited resources (be it cash, water, jobs, land, sexy women, press coverage, fame).
These people want to kick others off the hill, not lift them up.
BGinCHI
@trollhattan: Right? Makes my blood boil.
cain
thanks for bringing this out into the light – it’s awful to see this domestic terrorism, and let’s not mince words, that’s exactly what it is – I hope that the DOJ civil rights division is alerted and can investigate.
SpaceUnit
My younger self would have never looked into the future and imagined that this bullshit would still be happening in 2022.
Never really cared about the flying cars, but this is ridiculous.
rikyrah
Thank you for highlighting this. I am, of course, concerned, but, more enraged.
But, here’s the thing….
These muthaphuckas are nothing but cowards. And nobody is playing with you.
zhena gogolia
@raven: As always, raven is eloquent.
Thanks for bringing this to our attention, MisterDancer.
Cameron
It’s probably inappropriate, but the word that comes to mind to me is “obscene.”
Soprano2
I heard about it this morning, but didn’t realize the extent of it. What deplorable assholes these people must be. Let’s hope they’re caught quickly before they can do more damage.
Martin
You know, this happens every year. I guess being inside of higher ed, this was sort of common knowledge. My school didn’t get bomb threats around the black population, but we sure as shit got them around the muslim and jewish population.
Saw a report that they found white supremacist fliers around some town this week. Every Monday I’d go to work early so I could pull down the white supremacist flyers taped up around my unit that sprung up during the weekend before the students would see them. There were almost no Mondays that there wasn’t any to take down. And not just from one source. This shit is endemic. But like gun shootings, it’s a dog bites man story – it’s so common you can’t really inform the public of it.
Nothing will happen to the terrorists because this is so frequent that law enforcement can’t be bothered with it. So with no consequences, this is now tacitly approved of. That dressing down of Boris in the House of Commons was very refreshing to see. We shouldn’t tolerate this shit.
geg6
I saw this on the local news this morning. Infuriating. Gawd, I hate these people.
I have colleagues I know from conferences at several of these schools. Some of the best people in the field. And the nicest. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr. I can’t believe this is where we are in 2022. Obama really did freak these assholes out and now everyone has to pay the price for their inadequacies.
Martin
@Ohio Mom: Yeah, HBCUs are generally head-down, get the work done institutions. They don’t chase rankings and TV notoriety for their sports teams. They are educators. One of my favorite examples of head-down universities is City University of New York (CUNY). Unless you are from the city you generally aren’t aware they exist, but they have a quarter million students and a fuckton of low income and first generation students wouldn’t have a college degree without CUNY.
Kathleen
@geg6: As part of an exchange program my university offered in the late 60’s I attended Xavier in New Orleans in the Spring semester of 1969 and it was one of the best experiences I’ve had in my life.
HinTN
@Betty Cracker: Very very publicly, too.
RandomMonster
No doubt, though I wouldn’t be surprised if these incidences have escalated with the poison known as Trumpism.
raven
@Martin: Cept for Prime Time!
geg6
I just went to Lincoln University’s website to see if they got caught up in this and am glad to see that they weren’t. Since they are the only PA HBCU in the same category as Pitt, Penn State and Temple (not really state universities, but state-related universities), I know their financial aid staff the best because we interact with the other state-related schools a lot. All I could think about was Kim, Theresa, Nicola and Anthony, their financial aid staff. Going to send them an email anyway. They may not have gotten threats this time, but they probably will next time.
MisterDancer
@Baud: should be all good now — an errant line break that I didn’t see in the way it presented in the editor or my browser caused the WP resolver to treat that line different.
schrodingers_cat
@Martin: We always had a contingency plan for what to do if we had to evacuate in case of a bomb threat during the finals of the huge freshman level classes.
Kathleen
Denise Oliver-Velez @Deoliver47 on Twitter has a link to a piece she wrote on Daily Kos which has more details. I have no link fu on my phone or I’d include a link. This has been going on for awhile and FBI is inivestigating.
J R in WV
It is enraging, isn’t it? I hate that we still have this kind of obscene behavior on the part of RWNJ racists.
And I don’t care how common it may be!
if the police agencies won’t hunt these monsters down, what exactly are we paying them for? To harass people over their tail-lights? If these White Power RWNJ terrorists go to jail for their terrorism, I would 1presume it would then be impossible for them to make threatening phone calls from inside.
Why make things illegal if the cops won’t lift a finger to protect us from these mouth-breathing idjits?
Many Thanks to MisterDancer for putting this news up on the front page!!
schrodingers_cat
@Kathleen: She liked one of my tweets today! I am stoked.
Baud
@MisterDancer:
?
opiejeanne
Terrible. I’m so ashamed that people, white people obviously, would do this. And yes, I’m not brand new, I know this type of bullshit has been with us from before the start.
Seeing Tougaloo on that list made me jump. The father of my best friend from college was a volunteer there in the mid-70s, helping them reorganize their math department. He had spent a couple of years in the Peace Corps after retiring from the aerospace industry in SoCal.
MisterDancer
@Kathleen: Try FBI is investigating dozens of bomb threats to historically Black colleges (dailykos.com), although I’m not certain she wrote it — it’s the link from her tweet at:
https://twitter.com/Deoliver47/status/1488580922026905601
West of the Rockies
How miserable to go through life so full of hate and fear.
opiejeanne
@Martin: We got a bomb threat at my college, Cal Poly Pomona, in 1974. It was directed at the music and drama departments. We were told to take our instruments and materials out of our lockers and go home. The jazz ensemble was about to start class so they went to the director’s house and held the rehearsal in his back yard.
Nothing to do with race, not even sure what it was about. It was rehearsal season, just before all of our concerts but it only affected that one ensemble. Everyone else was finished for the day. No idea what the drama department was up to because they’d closed their last performance of the year.
We had a bomb threat when I was in HS, in Temple City, CA. The kid made the call from the pay phone right outside his math class, where they were about to have a big test. I think he was suspended for a week.
Ajabu
Surprised – and relieved – not to see my wife’s undergrad school (Stillman) on the list. I would have thought Tuscaloosa would be a natural for these Peckerwood motherfuckers. Thanks for the heads up!
cthulhu
Huh, UCLA sent out a message this morning that there was a threat to campus and that classes would be remote. But they followed up that the person in question was out of state and under watch by authorities. Been years since I have seen a message like that – wonder if it is related.
Starfish
Given the timing, I expect that the threat is what everyone is assuming it is here, but I can’t help but to think about the JCC bomb threats of 2017.
RaflW
NPR covered this yesterday evening as a news item (ie anchor read a news bit during a news-roundup segment, not a reported piece by an NPR journo). I agree with whoever upthread said this needs much more news coverage.
It feels to me like it is of a piece with the latest couple of outrageously in-our-faces antisemitism and Nazi actions.
And our timid press will, I suspect, largely fail to connect this rising terrorism activity to the people who are playing open footsie with white supremacists. Even though there is reporting on the ties between multiple GOP candidates and officeholders and white supremacists groups and public figures.
News analysis is lacking. The connections aren’t hard to find or figure out. (I don’t mean specifically to the bomb threats. Those can be random, but the stochastic noise machine is not even 1% ‘both sides’. Not one iota.)
The Dangerman
@cthulhu: Makes me sad. Not that long ago (a few years), there was a shooting there and it made me heartsick to see the Police flood the zone around Boelter. IIRC, the shooting was what I recall was Engineering 1. Victim was from El Segundo, which was home for a while, so it hit in a lot of ways. So many Evil idiots in this world.
Martin
@schrodingers_cat: We have that for rolling power outages and earthquakes. Bomb threats kinda got tacked onto those.
My county has it’s own JTTF – lots of high-value targets here – and the university worked pretty closely with them which I interacted with from time to time. It’s pretty much a constant stream of threats – weekly at a minimum. Ecoterrorism groups, hate groups, etc. One of my staff was working for one of the Unabombers targets years ago – she unwittingly carried a bomb to her boss. I had dozens and dozens of FBI interviews after 9/11. We had the anthrax shit to deal with. You’ve got mass shooter threats – UCLA shut down in-person classes today due to a former instructor threatening a mass shooting there. We had a professor threaten to shoot up the local high school because they disciplined his kid. We had to metal detectors and security checkpoints for commencement because of the frequency and magnitude of threats. It’s just nonstop.
jonas
@cthulhu: The UCLA threat seems to have come from a disgruntled former faculty member — not related to the HBCU stuff.
RaflW
@Martin: A family friend was a prof there. Boston brahmin sort of guy, with the most delightful accent and literal suede elbow patches on his tweed blazers. I suspect he could have ‘moved up’ into a better paying university, but from what I could tell (50 years his younger, just observing) I think he loved it there. The family had a great life, if very carefully budgeted.
I guess I never thought of the race-class position of City College. I see now that it’s ranked #5 in “the 50 Top Ethnically Diverse Colleges In America”.
Martin
@cthulhu: I don’t think so. From what I’m hearing this is a person having a mental health crisis.
It actually speaks to the absolute commonality of this that you can pick pretty much any date of note and there will be countless random threats showing up on those dates just coincidentally.
gvg
It is not on the same scale as the HBCU’s face, but schools in general do get a lot of bomb threats and have for decades. Most of them honestly are kids trying to get out of class or especially tests. We had them when I was in elementary and middle school which was ahem 60’s and 70’s. It is tiresome and I would like to see it fade away. Seems to me they didn’t usually manage to catch them when I was a kid but these days they often do. We had a bunch to the local schools this fall and they caught several people. There had been copycats so, there were multiple unrelated arrests. I think the technology has changed enough that they actually can catch the bastards now. I think it was harder in the past. The need to catch a bunch and publicize it. Not just the ones threatening the HBCU’s, but all the threat calls, so that it seems like an ineffective tactic.
Martin
@RaflW: Yeah. If your passion is teaching and helping lift people up, you don’t want to leave CUNY for an ivy or big public. Rankings are the name of the game there, and pretty much the last thing the rankings care about it teaching or quality of education.
HRA
Steny Hoyer sent the message out about the threats either yesterday or the day before. His list of schools was smaller. He was very upset about it. Does anyone think this was sent to change the narrative about something else in the news.
The Moar You Know
@J R in WV: that seems to be it. Had occasion to call 911 on a live burglary in progress in my dad’s neighborhood last week. Took 45 minutes for someone to show up – bad guys were obviously long gone by then.
Kathleen
@schrodingers_cat: I know! She’s liked one of mine too and I was thrilled!
Kathleen
@MisterDancer: Thank you for providing that link. It appears some local media are on it.
Kathleen
@RaflW: Remember First Commandment of News Media: Thou shalt not encroach upon the delicate feelings of white people.
Kathleen
@HRA: I would normally agree with that but I believe this action deliberate attemp to terrorize Black people pure and simple.
Mike in NC
“Many fine people are making bomb threats against HBCUs” — D. J. Trump
SiubhanDuinne
MSNBC just reported this story (without using the word “terrorism”) and said the FBI is working closely with the HBCUs and local law enforcement. It was brief, but I was gratified to hear it mentioned at all.
H.E.Wolf
Thank you for front-paging these shameful acts of terror. We can stand and witness, at a minimum.
This would be a good election cycle to volunteer in. I want to see the Republicans absolutely gobsmacked by the overwhelming volume of Democratic voters in the midterms this November, particularly in under-represented communities… and that means a bunch of new volunteers stepping up, to do a small part of helping get out the vote. There will be a lot of options for working remotely, too.
jonas
@SiubhanDuinne: There’s a difficult balance to strike between reporting on this as (important) news, and not giving the perpetrator what he wants, which is a bunch of media attention showing how he successfully terrorized a bunch of black people.
Dan B
A bill banning teaching about racism that would cause “discomfort” passed out of the Florida committee today, the first day of Black History Month. It also bans corporate diversity trainings if they cause discomfort. The vote was 16 – 8 on party lines.
I read in the “liberal” press that half a dozen HBCU’s had bomb threats. Your list is much longer, much longer!
Texas appointed to oversee school curriculum revisions a man who says blacks are taking over and whites must oppose this violently.
Felanius Kootea
Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science also received a bomb threat on January 11 (Los Angeles Times link) and another one today. There was a closure with the first threat but business as usual following the second threat. The FBI is monitoring.
Van Buren
Not an HBCU, but there was an active shooter on the campus of Bridgewater College (VA) today. Seems to be resolved.
MomSense
Thank you for giving this front page attention. I will give this a proper read when I get home and have time to fully pay attention.
bnatebuckeye
Can this country just not sadden me for one damned day…
Brachiator
@Dan B:
Instead of being “woke,” scared white folks can safely go back to sleep, comforted with the knowledge that all their fantasies about the world have been reinforced.
cmorenc
@SpaceUnit:
There were a actually a few months between November 2008 and roughly March 2009 when we could plausibly believe that except for a fringe minority of the country/electorate, the USA had moved past racism because Obama had won the Presidency with an unquestionable, solid majority of popular and electoral votes.
RaflW
Yeah the party that supports free enterprise and letting business do whatever they want. But – no shock – that only applies to things like wage theft, pollution, worker safety, etc.
SpaceUnit
@cmorenc:
Yeah, I believed it. With Obama’s election I felt as though we’d turned a page as a nation, that we were moving on to a better place.
Then came 2016, and I lost my faith in humanity. In 2022 I’m still trying to salvage something of it.
Dan B
@RaflW: The only benefitt is that these trainings typically increase racism.
The other catch is that state law will be at odds with Federal law. The Feds can sue corporations that fail to support civil rights.
Death Santa seems to have timed this to pass during Black History Month. Such sadism is nauseating.
Laydeebe
Rust College is my alma matter (BA, 1991). “Not all white people,” I know, but can y’all please reign in your MAGA family, co-workers and friends? Please? The only way white hatred against minorities is going to stop is if other whites put their foot down!
I don’t care how many letters y’all write to your congressman, I don’t care how many Twitter messages you post, it’s obviously NOT WORKING!. Look at what you have, the privilege to not live in fear of your lives, and your jobs. The privilege to vote unimpeded, and drive away from a minor traffic infraction. You have so much fucking privilege, you cannot comprehend. Yet you still want to “what about meeee?” What about being gay, transgender, disabled, etc? Those are real issues. But they have nothing to do with the mistreatment of blacks, Jews and Asians in this country. Nobody is hanging nooses in your yards. And frankly, except for transgender females, how many of you can hide behind your whiteness?
Yes I’m angry, and may have offended some of you, and I’m sorry. But do something! You marched with “pussy hats,” or whatever statement you thought you were making, but a lot of minorities thought that was silly. It did nothing to change the political environment in this country. So be serious, and march for human lives! Sexism is real, but talking about the fact that you have a vagina has never changed a horny boy’s or a crooked man’s mind.
March for our rights to live in a country that has minorities who have preceded the arrival of your ancestors on Ellis Island for decades! Native Americans can tell you your family homestead didn’t always belong to you.
These racist clowns are your brothers in skin color. Fucking stop acting like you can’t do shit! Stop the misinformation, stop caping for clowns like Joe Rogan (free speech shouldn’t include speech that is actively killing people). Do something! Or live in a life of authoritarian rule where if you’re white and don’t have money, you get treated like shit. That’s where we are headed. Do something! You have ALL the power just being by being white. Get out of your fucking bubble and make meaningful, long lasting change. You’ll have to pay more in taxes, but at least you’ll be saving democracy.
SiubhanDuinne
Since this is an open thread, I will note in passing the announcement (or leak?) from the WH that former Sen Doug Jones (D-AL) has been named as Sherpa for the eventual SCOTUS nominee. This feels significant, as though the Democratic establishment wants to keep Jones close to the levers of power even though he’s out of office. A white Democrat from a Deep South state who made his bones successfully prosecuting the Birmingham church bombers, named in advance to help ease the Senate’s confirmation labyrinth for the first Black woman nominee — it strikes me as more than just a symbolic appointment.
Elizabelle
Haven’t read the thread, but here is another one for you. From January 11th: Charles R. Drew Medical School in [Los Angeles] Willowbrook, CA shut down a few days (Sunday through Tuesday) for a bomb threat.
[ETA: Felanius Kootea got there first, comment 61.]
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-01-11/bomb-threat-shuts-down-charles-r-drew-university-in-l-a
** Mt. San Antonio is a community college located in the foothills. 50,000 students, diverse student body.
Baud
@Dan B:
Safe spaces!
Next, they will mandate trigger warnings.
Elizabelle
@cthulhu: Crazy ass philosophy grad student/lecturer, who put up 300 disturbing Youtube videos on his channel (since removed) and an 800-page manifesto. Has had mental health issues in past, and has been accused of sending pornography to a student. Other students found him erratic. Apprehended today in Boulder, CO.
Matthew Harris is a person of color himself.
LA Times:
Hoosierspud
I want to add Oakwood University to the list because I am so impressed by their choir, The Aolian Singers: https://youtu.be/GcOs5kSFqvo
sdhays
NPR’s top of the hour news bulletin led with this story, so it seems like the media is treating it at least somewhat seriously.
Elizabelle
More on the UCLA postdoctoral student/lecturer. From LA’s ABC7, at least Colorado’s gun laws worked in this case.
laura
Uncle Cracker’s revenge and the factions of increasingly domestic terrorists are getting harder to ignore or excuse or pretend there are not what they so very obviously are. I’m concerned about infiltration into LEO and other paramilitary public and private sector agencies and companies.
But the absolute actions to create an Apartheid America at the local, state and federal level have to be a coordinated effort by somebody or somebodies and I do not know if or who is tracking that simultaneous threat to the nation. I’d sure like Adam Silverman’s thoughts on both.
sdhays
@SiubhanDuinne: He seems like a perfect choice. It’s a shame that Alabamans decided to replace him with Tommy Tubers. SMH
Gravenstone
When this was brought up in a thread on TPM this morning, one of the commenters seemed to almost minimize it as “thanks for making note of it this time“. With the obvious implication that this is an all too common occurrence for these institutions. While that may well be the sad truth, it seems like the sheer scope and coordination for this particular assault remains worthy of note. Hopefully it is properly investigated and those behind it duly punished for this hate crime.
Roger Moore
@Soprano2:
An important point to remember is that bomb threats are a favorite of lazy terrorists because they require nothing but a phone and a number to call. The large number of HBCUs called doesn’t necessarily represent a correspondingly large number of terrorists; this could fairly easily be done by one person with a phone and a box to spoof their caller ID. At most it would take a handful of people.
lowtechcyclist
@Martin:
But they still enforce traffic laws for some reason.
Basically, cops enforce the laws they want, for who they want, on who they want. Or what Wilhoit said.
Roger Moore
@cthulhu:
The UCLA thing seems to be a former postdoc/lecturer who was unhappy about being fired, apparently for good cause. In addition to being an openly racist POS, he also sent porn to one of his students.
phdesmond
@sdhays:
yeah, i heard that too. seems it always takes a while for the news to get fully broadcast.
phdesmond
@MisterDancer:
i admire Denise Oliver Velez.
prostratedragon
@Laydeebe: I avoid oppression derbys, but as to those people who need to get much busier as a group, I couldn’t agree more, because this problem is not one of Black people, it’s one of White people, so that tells you who has the social access needed to do something about it. It will take serious, sustained effort for a long period of time. I know that there are those already hard at work, some around these parts, and many other people have learned that their petty racist behavior in public places can get them ostracized, but it needs to be understood that every right-thinking person needs to do more than just think right. The present wave of laws attempting to prevent the teaching of proper American history with all its ugliness toward Black people is just one of many occasions where White people can get loud.
cthulhu
@Martin: Apparently he is now in custody in Colorado based upon the last alert sent out. Clearly a coincidence but as I don’t recall getting such an alert in many years, it was odd timing.
debbie
@Ohio Mom:
It’s the number of threats that makes me think VPP may be behind all of this.
Dan B
@Baud:
There may be some steps towards preventing Black and LGBTQ from attending school if some students feel uncomfortable, complete with clever language about making it difficult for students* to learn.
*Translation: white
louc
@Dan B:
In honor of these bills and laws, many Black social media types are now “celebrating” Uncomfortable History Month instead of, you know.
Starfish
@cthulhu: Yeah, they had parts of town shutdown for several hours here in Colorado over this.
Starfish
Tehanu
LA Times this morning had an article, but it did NOT say how many of these threats there were. I’m truly horrified, angry, and disgusted, and very sorry I share skin color with the creeps and Nazis doing this.